Thursday, January 4, 2007

a sign of freedom, a sign of truth

"Untitled" brush drawing by Thomas Merton

(image size 10 1/4"h x 6" w)


The "new being" of the Christian ... is the effect of an inner revolution which, in its ultimate and most radical significance, implies complete self-transcendence and transcendence of the norms and attitudes of any given culture, any merely human society. This includes transcendence even of religious practices ... There is in the depths of man's heart a voice which says: "You must be born again." It is the obscure but insistent demand of his own nature to transcend itself in the freedom of a fully integrated, autonomous, personal identity.

(Love and Living pp. 193-194)

Sounds a lot like the way Merton knew Boris Pasternak.

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