Highlights
Death gives us the opportunity of posing our first completely personal act.
We bring Thomas Merton into our conversation about consenting to our births, our deaths, and all of the consents in between.
Waking from the dream of separateness—our deepest identity cannot be found apart or separate from others.
Spontaneous freedom is linked to a lived authenticity.
Guided Reflection
If possible, use headphones.
Cited Quotations
Death gives man the opportunity of posing his first completely personal act; death is, therefore, by reason of its very being, the moment above all others for the awakening of consciousness, for freedom, for the encounter with God, for the final decision about his eternal destiny.
Ladislaus Boros
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate to heaven is everywhere.
Thomas Merton
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others…”
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake…
I have the immense joy of being a man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
I have the immense joy of being a man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Thomas Merton
The real freedom is to be able to come and go from that center (that little kernel of gold that is the essence of you or that name of God you truly bear, that innermost quality of your own aliveness) and to be able to do without anything that is not immediately connected to that center. Because when you die, that is all that is left. When we die, everything is destroyed except for this one thing, which is our reality, and which is the reality that God preserves forever… The freedom that matters is the capacity to be in touch with that center. Because it is from that center that everything else comes.
Thomas Merton
Reflection Questions
Think of this Merton’s virgin point less as a theological concept or as a dense and specific spot in the body and more as an experience.
Have you ever accessed that virgin point…?
How was it experienced in your body…?
Did it shift or change your identity—your sense of your self…? What about your relationship with other people and the rest of reality…?
Are you aware of the secret “yes” written on the interior of your heart…?” How do you carry it in your body…? How might you nurture it…?