“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves,
the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image."
-Thomas Merton
Merton goes on to wisely suggest that if we do want a person to fit to our own image, then we simply desire a mirror. I've been thinking a lot about love and what it means to love another. This thought does not just encompass romantic love, but a love that can be from the depths of intimacy for another that perhaps cannot even be expressed through intimate contact beyond a sharing of words.
Perhaps that is why we are enchanted by poets or other weavers of words that speak to us. I've always appreciated poets but not in a deeply intimate way. I read postings by Padraig O' Tauma and realize that there is an art to being an enriched reader of poetry. To understand the poem is to step inside it and experience the words, feel into them as one who loves music can embody the lament that pours forth from a violin or a saxophone.
It is my goal this year to sit in the stillness. The practice of prayer or meditation has become an automatic response in my body. What would either feel like if I were to become silent? The introduction to "The Intimate Merton" states that Merton wrote about silence to become silent. It seems so obvious yet I think, how would one experience that in the body? How could such a practice manifest into breaking oneself open to the infinite Universe? Would that fracture reveal a new horizon, one beyond the naked reach of wintering sycamore limbs...one can only pray to discover. ~ a
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