Blogger's Block

I guess it happens to all of us at some time or another – we simply have nothing to say that we haven’t said before.  Maybe it comes from not sitting quiet and still long enough (or at all) to hear something new.   Maybe these are the times we need to listen.  And so it is today, I share with you words from Thomas Merton that I shared in last Sunday’s sermon, probably as much for myself as for you.

There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist … most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help every-one in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his/her work... It destroys the fruitfulness of his/her own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom, which makes work fruitful. 

                           - Thomas Merton, from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander