Finding God: From “Thoughts in Solitude” by the Reverend Thomas Merton (vegetarian), Part 1 of 2

The Reverend Thomas Merton, an important Catholic mystic and spiritual thinker, was born in 1915, to a New Zealand father and an American mother. Believing in the equality of all religions, Thomas Merton became deeply interested in Eastern traditions in the later years of his life. He also held lively discourses with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Today, we will present excerpts from Thomas Merton’s book, “Thoughts in Solitude,” where the wise Reverend explains how we can be closer to God.

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be a solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude.”

“Suppose one has found completeness in his true vocation. Now everything is in unity, in order, at peace. Now work no longer interferes with prayer or prayer with work. Now contemplation no longer needs to be a special ‘state’ that removes one from the ordinary things going on around him, for God penetrates all. One does not have to think of giving an account of oneself to anyone but Him.”

“It is necessary that we find the silence of God not only in ourselves but also in one another. Unless some other man speaks to us in words that spring from God and communicate with the silence of God in our souls, we remain isolated in our own silence, from which God tends to withdraw.”

“Humility seeks silence not in inactivity but in ordered activity, in the activity that is proper to our poverty and helplessness before God. Humility goes to pray and finds silence through words. But because it is natural for us to pass from words to silence, and from silence to words, humility is in all things silent. Even when it speaks, humility listens. The words of humility are so simple, so gentle and so poor that they find their way without effort to the silence of God. Indeed, they are the echo of His silence, and as soon as they are spoken, His silence is already present in them.”