Love Sails Around Me

"Love sails around me; I walk two steps on the ground and four steps in the air." --Thomas Merton

Many without any other influence might come to think the world of a contemplative serious or even dry, but this and other thoughts by the late Thomas Merton shows another side to living a simple life-a life that is simply full. Read more of his thoughts:

"It's love; it's consolation. I don't care if it's consolation. I'm not attached to consolation. I love God. Love carries me around. I don't want to do anything but love. That love, secret, hidden, obscure love, down inside of me and outside me where I don't care to talk about it... I have only time for eternity, which is to say for love, love, love... Love is the only thing that makes it possible for me to tick... I am all dried up with desire and I can only think of one thing--staying in the fire that burns me...Sooner or later the world must burn...sooner or later it will be consumed by fire and nobody will be left--for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with... But love laughs at the end of the world because love is the door to eternity, and before anything can happen, love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door, and he won't bother about the world burning because he will know nothing but love." 
--Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk, priest and mystic
A Thomas Merton Reader

Playing With Fire,True Without Defense

The truth needs no defense. It stands on its own. 'So let the horses run free.'

    Moment Of Surrender
by U2
Listen Here

I tied myself with wire
To let the horses run free
Playing with the fire
Until the fire played with me

The stone was semi-precious
We were barely conscious
Two souls too cool to be
In the realm of certainty
Even on our wedding day

We set ourselves on fire
Oh God, do not deny her
It's not if I believe in love
But if love believes in me
Oh, believe in me

At the moment of surrender
I folded to my knees
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

I've been in every black hole
At the altar of the dark star
My body's now a begging bowl
That's begging to get back, begging to get back
To my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my unconsciousness
To the rhythm that yearns
To be released from control

I was punching in the numbers at the ATM machine
I could see in the reflection
A face staring back at me
At the moment of surrender
Of vision over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

I was speeding on the subway
Through the stations of the cross
Every eye looking every other way
Counting down 'til the Pentecost*

At the moment of surrender
Of vision of over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

It is so ever present, so ignored, so irksome. It is the truth. We hear much, little and nothing at all about it; we learn that 'the truth will set you free.' Some of us know about the unpleasantness of the truth. We have been spiked upon its points. Uncomfortably reminded, goaded, compelled to return to the truth, to the center.

Why must it bring itself into our presence, why must we attend to it at all? For some of us, we choose not, and we just don't. Preferring our imagined mental states, many times we withdraw, disassociate, as if there were multiples of our self; retreating into our minds where we can call the shots without any other regard. It seems so much better that way at times.
Our personality seems so much the weaker when confronted with the truths that the world turns on and will continue to press. We so often fool ourselves into this lonely, alone state. There seems no other good options.

Truth asks and often demands primarily two things of us always, at all times. First it asks for acceptance, but not agreement. Simple acceptance will do; then it asks for what is greater and far more difficult: truth asks that we surrender to a place, a state, a grace that is much more than we are alone. It asks for and offers love. Here we play with fire; it is as thrilling as it is terrifying. To let the horses run free, believing in something greater, something we cannot see. We 'the begging bowl,' the surrender back to the heart of each and every matter because at the end of our time, the world will continue turning. Its spin will go on, 'to the rhythm of its soul, visibility over invisibility.' Our job here? Say yes. Say yes and accept.

*Pentecost