Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
Interpretation
Solitude is about being present in your current moment rather than seeking it as a future goal.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes that solitude is not a distant aspiration, but rather an experience that can enrich the present moment. Merton suggests that true solitude can only be found by focusing on the current moment and recognizing its value, rather than waiting for the right time or place to seek it out.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a mindfulness workshop to highlight the importance of being present.
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.
What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural power in the most ordinary circumstances of life?
Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
There is very little moral mixture in the 'Antislavery' feeling of this country. A great deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it.
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
I come to Jerusalem. There, the sky is blue and memory becomes clear.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
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