On receiving praise
How can he be puffed up with vain words, whose heart is truly subject to God? Not all the world can lift him up, whom the truth hath subjected unto itself; neither shall he, who hath firmly settled his...
View ArticleMerton on our tainted thinking
I think that if there is one truth that people need to learn, in the world, especially today, it is this: the intellect is only theoretically independent of desire and appetite in ordinary, actual...
View ArticleProjecting our own problems onto others
Anyone who has spent much time in introspection has probably realized that we are most critical of other people that are the most like us. We see something in ourselves that we hate – something we put...
View ArticleSeth Godin on short attention spans
Attention spans are getting shorter, thanks to clutter.In 1960, the typical stay for a book on the New York Times bestseller list was 22 weeks. In 2006, it was two. Forty years ago, it was typical for...
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Merton on Gossip
The function of gossip is, among other things, to permit people to enjoy danger vicariously, at no greater risk than that of being misled. -Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters, p.258 Photo credit...
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The power to be happy
Sometimes Merton can digress, but at other times he is brilliant. I’m reading his work No Man is an Island and have had to bookmark virtually every page in the chapter Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer....
View ArticleMerton on listening to our subconscious (or not)
I do not say that we should try, without training or experience, to explore our own subconscious depths. But we ought to at least to admit that they exist, and that they are important, and we ought to...
View ArticleGood poetry ->“A felt change of consciousness”
This, from the introduction to the Owen Barfield reader: Both as a writer and a thinker Barfield grounds his thought in language and literature. It is the subject of his earliest writing and remains...
View ArticleA blogging identity
This from a recent Times article that explored why people Twitter. I would include Facebook status updates and even a lot of blogging as being relevant to this passage: The clinical psychologist Oliver...
View ArticleJoy (Part 1/2)
Continuing on my Inklings kick, and this time prompted by my wife, I read C.S. Lewis’s selective autobiography this past week. Selective because he leaves out huge chunks about his life and work and...
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