THOMAS MERTON TRAPPIST MONK THOMAS MERTON 1915 1968

THOMAS MERTON TRAPPIST MONK

THOMAS MERTON (1915 -1968) He wrote over 60 books, hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race Born in France to artists; both parents die young Rambunctious youth and adolescence Attends college at Cambridge (London), then Columbia (NY) Converts to Roman Catholicism Enters Abbey of Gethsemane , a Trappist Monastery in Kentucky Controversial Catholic writer

MERTON QUOTES TO LIVE BY… • “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers…. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. ”

QUOTES TO LIVE BY… �"It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, . . . now I realize what we all are. . If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are. . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. . . At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth. . . This little point. . . is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody. " - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

QUOTES TO LIVE BY… �“There is a paradox that lies in the very heart of human existence. It must be apprehended before any lasting happiness is possible in the soul of man. The paradox is this: man’s nature, by itself, can do little or nothing to settle his most important problems. If we follow nothing but our own natures, our own philosophies, our own level of ethics, we will end up in hell. ” - Seven Story Mountain

QUOTES TO LIVE BY… �Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. �The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. �In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself. ' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

QUOTES TO LIVE BY… �A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you — From "Thoughts in Solitude“ �Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another. �Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

QUOTES TO LIVE BY… • To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. • Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.