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Wow. Does this not describe myself and about half the people I know?

The value of our activity depends almost entirely on the humility to accept ourselves as we are. The reason why we do things so badly is that we are not content to do what we can. We insist on doing what is not asked of us, because we want to taste the success that belongs to somebody else. We never discover what it is like to make a success of our own work, because we do not want to undertake any work that is merely proportionate to our powers. Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a “means of livelihood” while he waits to discover his “true vocation.” The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies.

-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, Ch.7 Sec.5

Concerning the last line, I think what we should rather shoot for is to be SUCCESSFUL businessmen who also still nurture our interest in music, art, and writing because we find joy in it regardless.

On knowing if you’ve found your vocation:

We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to.

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, Ch.8 Sec.9

The law is written on our hearts, that is, in our own conscience. Living by it frees us from the written law, since it is only an attempt to put the conscience the creator weaved for all of us down on paper. A perfect attempt of course, but still limited by the medium.

The conscience that is united to the Holy Spirit by faith, hope, and selfless charity becomes a mirror of God’s own interior law which is His charity. It become perfectly free. It becomes its own law because it is completely subject to the will of God and to His Spirit. In the perfection of its obedience it “tastes and sees that the Lord is sweet,” and knows the meaning of St. Paul’s statement that the “law is not made for the just man” (I Timothy 1:9)

-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, Ch.3 Sec. 10

On free will and spontaneity:

Free will is not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the air. There are some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proportion as they are without purpose, as if a rational purpose imposed some kind of limitation upon us. That is like saying that one is richer if he throws money out the window than if he spends it.

This is seen in icky postmodern art where careful design is scorned. Meaningless paint flung on the canvas gives rationalism the finger, and moralism while it’s at it.

At first I was going to write that this idea plays a part in the elevation of spontaneity as well: that something is more valueable if it is done with very little forethought – that a flower picked suddenly on the walk home is better than the one picked in a very premeditated fashion at the florist. Or that praying outloud and making it up as you went along was more spiritual/powerful/whatever than writing something down earlier and reading it. But I think this is different than what Merton is talking about here. That is rationalism and systematic reasoning versus intuition and spontanaity. Not free will fireworks versus motivated purpose.

I had taken little more than a year and a half, counting from the time I read Gilson‘s The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy to bring me up from an “atheist”-as I considered myself-to one who accepted all the full range and possibilities of religious experience right up to the highest degree of glory.

I not only accepted all this, intellectually, but now I began to desire it. And not only did I begin to desire it, but I began to do so efficaciously: I began to want to take the necessary means to achieve this union, this peace. I began to desire to dedicate my life to God, to His service. The notion was still vague and obscure, and it was ludicrously impractical in the sense that I was already dreaming of mystical union when I did not even keep the simplest rudiments of the moral law. But nevertheless I was convinced of the reality of the goal, and confident that it could be achieved: and whatever element of presumption was in this confidence I am sure God excused, in His mercy, because of my stupidity and helplessness, and because I was really beginning to be ready to do whatever I thought He wanted me to do to bring me to Him.

But, oh, how blind and weak and sick I was, although I thought I saw where I was going, and half understood the way! How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. I remember how learnedly and enthusiastically I could talk for hours about mysticism and the experimental knowledge of God, and all the while I was stoking the fires of the argument with Scotch and soda.

-Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, p.204

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In mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.

-John von Neumann

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Before discussing a subject, Wright often begins by dealing with the potential pitfalls of contemporary linguistics:

This is where our word “belief” can be inadequate or even misleading. What the early Christians meant by “belief” included both believing that God had DONE certain things and believing IN the God who had done them. This is not belief that God exists, though clearly that is involved, too, but loving, grateful trust.

-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.207

My first week as a freshman in college, I was given the swift kick in the rear that is Dan Bukvich’s music theory and ear training course. 5 days a week. Very intense. No whining. I loved it, though I fell into some of the traps he sets for students early on.

I remember the very first lecture. After no introduction and with 80 students cramped together on the rehearsal room floor, we were taught a rhythm and concentration exercise involving plastic cups. After 30 minutes of this, he gave a short introduction and wrote a few notes on the chalk-board. He quickly mentioned that we would be learning a lot of something called “solfege“, and also said that the Library of Alexandra, which held all the knowledge of the ancient world, was burned in 391 AD as collateral damage when Emperor Theodosius had all pagan temples destroyed. Just an anecdote.

Back for class the next day. Chairs all out in rows. Exam! Test! Your first test of the semester already. This WILL count heavily in your grade. Etc. Take out a piece of paper. Write you name down. The test is pass or fail. One question: What year was the Library of Alexandria burned? OK, times up, hand you test into one of the TAs.

The collective murmer of “oh crap…” that went up from the room was a CLASSIC moment. From then on, my eyes and ears were glued to Dan. You learn to love him. Or not. Within a week, the class was down to about 50. They decided they didn’t really want to study music after all.

Reading scripture, like praying or sharing in the sacraments, is one of the means by which the life of heaven and the life of earth interlock. (This is what older writers were referring to when they spoke of “the means of grace.” It isn’t that we can control God’s grace, but that there are, so to speak, places to go where God has promised to meet with his people, even if sometimes when we turn up it feels as though God has forgotten the date. More usually it’s the other way around.) We read scripture in order to hear God addressing us – us, here and now, today.

– N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.188