It is not difficult to understand why music often touches us so deeply. Music is the key to the power within -- a bridge of sorts -- and there is an infinite variety of music suitable to individual tastes and preferences to lead in this inward search. Composers are often aware of the power of the music that comes from within them and have from time to time spoken of it ... Brahms, being deeply aware of the source of his creative gift, stated that his creative power was released in the moment of his realization of his oneness with the Creator.
The function of faith is not to reduce mystery to rational clarity, but to integrate the unknown and the known together in a living whole, in which we are more and more able to transcend the limitations of our external self.
~ from NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
To do work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself with God's will in my work. I become an instrument for God to work through me.
~ from NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware, that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source.
~ from NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
