Thomas Merton???

[Live]

Intriguing me now...a Trappist monk, who goes to the East, after study and service at the monastery. and dies. It could be foul play?
He seems to me to be undoubtably a man ahead of his time, thus prophetic.
Or are we behind?

[KenL]

Merton's Seeds of Contemplation is one of my favorite books, liveweyered. I once started a thread based on his writings. Some deep stuff regarding who I am and why I am. Here's the quote from Merton...very deep stuff.

"For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of
sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I
am and of discovering my true self.

Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are
without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied.

With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whateever we like.
We can be ourselves or not, as we please. But the problem is
this: since God alone possesses the secret of my identity. He
alone can make me who I am or rather, He alone can make me
who I will be when I at last fully begin to be.

The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment,
by God's will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own
reality, my own hapiness, my own sanctitiy.

To refuse them is to refuse everything: it is the refusal of
my own existence and being: of my identity, my very self.

Not to accept and love and do God's will is to refuse the
fullness of my existence.

And if I never become what I am meant to be, but always
remain what I am not, I shall spend eternity contradicting
myself by being at once something and nothing, a life that
wants to live and is dead, and a death that wants to be
dead and cannot quite achieve its own death because it
still has to exist."