Inspriation from a Monk of old.

I recently interviewed a young woman for a position at our church. I asked her about the books that have profoundly effected her. She made mention of Thomas Merton, whom I embarrassingly have never read. I did some research and found some lovely reflections from his writing.

There remains a profound wisdom in the traditional Christian approach to the world as to an object of choice. But we have to admit that the habitual and mechanical compulsions of a certain limited type of Christian thought have falsified the true value- perspective in which the world can be discovered and chosen as it is. To treat the world merely as an agglomeration of material goods and objects outside ourselves, and to reject these goods and objects in order to seek others which are "interior" and "spiritual" is in fact to miss the whole point of the challenging confrontation of the world and Christ. Do we really choose between the world and Christ as between two conflicting realities absolutely opposed? Or do we choose Christ by choosing the world as it really is in him, that is to say created and redeemed by him, and encountered in the ground of our own personal freedom and of our love?

Thomas Merton. Contemplation in A World of Action (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1973: 170-171.

We are so often quick to dismiss people and things as worldly. As Christians we are seemly unaware of the spiritual effect of our interactions with the living and the temporal.

We undeniably have an impact on those with whom we interact. Do we ever stop to contemplate just how our attitude and our internal dialog is revealed through how we interact with others. How would it effect us if we gazed on all as the creation of a loving God who seeks to redeem the created?