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BarbaraTherese
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Another reflection from Thomas Merton…
THOMAS MERTON REFLECTION for the week of September 19, 2005
It is possible to receive a weekly email with a reflection from Thomas Merton…….register on Thomas Merton Foundation site: http://www.mertonfoundation.org/
“The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be “converted” – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that viewing things from a basically different perspective – that of our adversary – we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.
Our willingness to take an alternative approach to a problem will perhaps relax the obsessive fixation of the adversary on his view, which he believes is the only reasonable possibility and which he is determined to impose on everyone else by coercion…This mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover. ”
http://www.mertonfoundation.org/merton.php3?page=quote.ext
From** Passion For Peace by Thomas Merton**
Edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Crossroad Publishing 1995), pgs. 255-
THOMAS MERTON REFLECTION for the week of September 19, 2005
It is possible to receive a weekly email with a reflection from Thomas Merton…….register on Thomas Merton Foundation site: http://www.mertonfoundation.org/
“The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be “converted” – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that viewing things from a basically different perspective – that of our adversary – we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.
Our willingness to take an alternative approach to a problem will perhaps relax the obsessive fixation of the adversary on his view, which he believes is the only reasonable possibility and which he is determined to impose on everyone else by coercion…This mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover. ”
http://www.mertonfoundation.org/merton.php3?page=quote.ext
From** Passion For Peace by Thomas Merton**
Edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Crossroad Publishing 1995), pgs. 255-
