It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of personal development as a precursor to broader societal change.
Thomas Merton suggests that while it is vital to strive for a better world, the foremost responsibility lies in shaping our own lives. By focusing on personal growth and self-creation, we prepare ourselves to make a positive impact on the community around us. This inner transformation is exalted, indicating its significance in contributing to the larger goal of improving the world.
In practice
During a leadership workshop, this quote can inspire participants to focus on self-improvement.
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.
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive.
This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.
Novels can change attitudes. Maybe we should speak quietly otherwise politicians will use novels as propaganda.
And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.
Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.