"When I speak of the contemplative life, . . . I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development, which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated, busy-busy existence . . . A certain depth of disciplined experience is a necessary ground for fruitful action. Without a more profound human understanding derived from exploration of the inner ground of human existence, love will tend to be superficial and deceptive . . . He who attempts to act . . . without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas . . . We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country [the U.S.] that has made a fetish out of action and has lost (or perhaps never had) the sense of contemplation."
Thomas Merton
Photo: A dead snag hangs over Cedar Breaks Amphitheater; Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT; August 29, 2014
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