Evan Lenz

Here’s the full quote from Thomas Merton, now that I’ve got the New Seeds of Contemplation checked out from the library.

Fickleness and indecision are signs of self-love.

If you can never make up your mind what God wills for you, but are always veering from one opinion to another, from one practice to another, from one method to another, it may be an indication that you are trying to get around God’s will and do your own with a quiet conscience.

As soon as God gets you in one monastery you want to be in another.

As soon as you taste one way of prayer, you want to try another. You are always making resolutions and breaking them by counterresolutions. You ask your confessor and do not remember the answers. Before you finish one book you begin another, and with every book you read you change the whole plan of your interior life.

Soon you will have no interior life at all. Your whole existence will be a patchwork of confused desires and daydreams and velleities in which you do nothing except defeat the work of grace: for all this is an elaborate subconscious device of your nature to resist God, Whose work in your soul demands the sacrifice of all that you desire and delight in, and, indeed, of all that you are.

So keep still, and let Him do some work.

This is what it means to renounce not only pleasures and possessions, but even you own self.

The last thing I want to do is defeat the work of grace. God help me.

I read a passage from Thomas Merton at Barnes & Noble this evening that hit me right between the eyes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the quote online, except for this small excerpt. Maybe I’ll post it after I eventually buy the book.

Fickleness and indecision are signs of self-love. If you can never make up your mind what God wills for you, but are always veering from one opinion to another … from one method to another, it may be an indication that you are trying to get around God’s will and do your own with a quiet conscience. So keep still, and let God do some work.

The rest of the section included a couple examples that hit home–like starting another book before finishing the one you’re on, and starting new life pursuits every other day on every random whim. “Bilateral incongruence” is a related term I’ve come across (in the context of NLP). Also, this passage touched on what it means to fully give one’s life to God.

There. I placed a hold on it through Seattle Public Library.

This quote (by Scottish mountaineer W. H. Murray) was one of a million things that I reflected on the night that I decided to turn down an awesome job offer to pursue a new (yet old) dream:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

The next step is trusting in God and waiting with expectancy and planning the details and trusting in God.

Written in 1961 but useful for today:

The world is full of enemies, and as long as we are subject to the possibility of harm from these enemies, fear is inevitable. The effort to conquer fear without removing the causes is altogether futile. The heart is wiser than the apostles of tranquility. As long as we are in the hands of chance, as long as we must look for hope to the law of averages, as long as we must trust for survival to our ability to outthink or outmaneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. And fear hath torment.

To know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved–this and only this can cast out fear. Let a man become convinced that nothing can harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever. God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it. Nothing can hurt a good man.

This is an experiment.

The audio sucks because I did it with the built-in microphone on my laptop.

Psalm 84 (MP3)

Living with ADD is like going 100mph on an icy road with no guardrails.

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.

Structure in which to flow.

Meta-No :

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God…

And Meta-Yes:

…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

And another example juxtaposition:

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

The promises of God brought to bear on my reticular activating system. I have begun training. Training for godliness. I’m hard at work on my mental network of promises, laws, statutes, precepts, commands. Structure in which to flow.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.
The ordinances of the Lord are sure, and altogether righteous.