We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes our struggle to accept life's complexities and contradictions, leading to turmoil.
Thomas Merton's quote suggests that our continual battle with life's inherent uncertainties creates a state of perpetual crisis. By failing to respect and embrace the contradictions and paradoxes that life presents, we push ourselves to the edge of disaster, denying ourselves the peace that comes from acceptance and understanding of life's complexities.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of accepting life's complexities.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
Jim Crow segregation was bipartisan. The refusal of women suffrage was bipartisan. The denial of the basic dignity of members of the LGBTQ community has long been bipartisan. The Three-Fifths Compromise was the creation of a punitive national unity at the expense of black people's basic humanity.
The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, 'Look, here it is,' or, 'There it is.' For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.
Speaking of Self-realizatio n is a delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realizatio n; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realizing it.
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.
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