Sunday, January 11, 2009

A THOMAS MERTON QUOTATION

I posted this yesterday, tried later to edit it, and it got screwed up by the "blockquote" function. If you ever use blogspot, don't use the "blockquote" function. It screws up everything and is difficult or impossible to unscrew.

So where was I? Thomas Merton. A terrific quotation from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

"God is asking of me, the unworthy, to forget my unworthiness and that of all my brothers, and dare to advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us all in God's likeness. And to laugh, after all, at all preposterous ideas of 'worthiness'."

I am beginning to discover in my own life that so much of my bad feelings about any problem I have are compounded by a sense (whether well founded or not) that I brought it about or deserve it. How much easier things are if you just find some way to accept God's forgiveness and carry on from there!

2 comments:

Queen of the Universe said...

Agreed. I have been writing about relationships a lot lately, this is one of those things, whether its your relationship with God or with a parter, we all could use some thought on. Too much of our pasts tend to effect the present. Everyone deserves a happy, healthy life!

kswolff said...

I wouldn't worry too much about it. It just seems daft to blame man for his God-created imperfections. (God did create the Apple after all and He is omniscient, therefor He knew what Eve was going to do.)

It just seems unhealthy to accept this guilt as somehow your responsibility. Guilt for something you never did (Eve, apple, etc.).

My two cents.