This time of year, I always find other's words to be more meaningful than anything I can muster. I need the comfort and joy that can be found leaning into them, inevitably finding some support. So, with great appreciation to Parabola Magazine, The Society for the Study of Myth and ... (a rich and rewarding subscription gift to give btw!) for bringing my attention to the following hallow words of Thomas Merton:
"When I am not present to myself, then I am only aware of that half of me, that mode of my being which turns outward to created things. And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull
of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God.
of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God.
My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. My senses, my imagination, my emotions,
scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth. Recollection brings them home. It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit, and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love that reaches down into the mystery of God."
—Thomas Merton from "No Man is an Island," (Shambhala, Boston) 2005 (first published in 1955).
May we all return to this inward gravitational pull as the season dictates. May we bring home this recollection of other possibilities.
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