“Prayer is freedom,” Thomas Merton writes. How refreshing! How freeing!
I found the following, quoted from Contemplation in a World of Action, in one of my favorite daily devotionals, Through the Year with Thomas Merton. The piece is too lengthy as a daily quote, and besides, abstracting a sentence or two detracts from its power. So here it is in its entirety as offered in the devotional.
Prayer is freedom and affirmation growing out of nothingness into love. Prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom, in response to the Word of God. Prayer is not only dialogue with God: it is the communication of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit. It is the elevation of our limited freedom into the infinite freedom of the divine spirit and the divine love. Prayer is the encounter of our freedom, with the all embracing charity, which knows no limit and knows no obstacle. Prayer is an emergence into this area of infinite freedom. Prayer, then, is not an abject procedure, though sometimes it may spring from our abjection. But prayer is not something that is meant to maintain us in servility and helplessness. We take stock of our own wretchedness at the beginning of prayer in order to rise beyond it and above it to infinite freedom and infinite creative love in God.
I found the following, quoted from Contemplation in a World of Action, in one of my favorite daily devotionals, Through the Year with Thomas Merton. The piece is too lengthy as a daily quote, and besides, abstracting a sentence or two detracts from its power. So here it is in its entirety as offered in the devotional.
Prayer is freedom and affirmation growing out of nothingness into love. Prayer is the flowering of our inmost freedom, in response to the Word of God. Prayer is not only dialogue with God: it is the communication of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit. It is the elevation of our limited freedom into the infinite freedom of the divine spirit and the divine love. Prayer is the encounter of our freedom, with the all embracing charity, which knows no limit and knows no obstacle. Prayer is an emergence into this area of infinite freedom. Prayer, then, is not an abject procedure, though sometimes it may spring from our abjection. But prayer is not something that is meant to maintain us in servility and helplessness. We take stock of our own wretchedness at the beginning of prayer in order to rise beyond it and above it to infinite freedom and infinite creative love in God.
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