A person knows whey they have found their calling, wrote Thomas Merton, when they stop thinking about how to live and just begin to live.
When I wasn’t following my true calling, thought worry and deadened my life and overwhelmed me with uncertainty and anxiety. I substituted thought for life.
My mind overwhelmed my spirit with caution and fear or substituted itself for meaning, and I made myself mad.
I was so busy worrying about how I might live that I forgot to live.
When I found my calling – some call it a vocation-, my life and my thoughts came together and became one thing, not two things crashing around in my head and fighting with one another. I no longer needed to agonize about my life.
I was accepting it, living it.
Meditation and contemplation no longer need to be another state, another consciousness, a curtain to hide behind. There was just life itself, I no longer have to think of giving an account of oneself to anyone but my own God. I owe no one anything but honesty. I owe no one anything but the truth that lives in my heart.
The photo is evocative of transcendentalism.
Profound.
Amen to that! Love reading your words… & the wisdom of your loving heart.
love this post. And……I have finally found a copy of your book *Running to the Mountain* which I began reading last night. On the same note as your post………. I am enjoying it already!
Susan M
I read it in 2000 after seeing a blurb in my St. Louis newspaper about it. Became my “thanks, I needed that” push. I have followed Jon ever since, even met him at the Texas Book Festival in Austin in 2007(?) and Cambridge, NY in 2017 at his open houses with Maria. Now in North Carolina, I think of Running to the Mountain frequently. I wish you the same inspiration.
Fond memories, the Texas book festival was wild..
Best photo evah!