"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalm 19:1
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Can't Get No Satisfaction.
All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
Secular life is a life of vain hopes imprisoned in the illusion of newness and change, an illusion which brings us constantly back the same old point, the contemplation of our own nothingness. Secular life is a life frantically dedicated to escape, through novelty and variety, from fear of death. But the more we cherish secular hopes, the more they disappoint us. And the more they disappoint us, the more desperately do we return to attack and forge new hopes more extravagant than the last. These too let us down. And we revert to that insufferable condition from which we have vainly tried to escape.
1 comment:
Secular life is a life of vain hopes imprisoned in the illusion of newness and change, an illusion which brings us constantly back the same old point, the contemplation of our own nothingness. Secular life is a life frantically dedicated to escape, through novelty and variety, from fear of death. But the more we cherish secular hopes, the more they disappoint us. And the more they disappoint us, the more desperately do we return to attack and forge new hopes more extravagant than the last. These too let us down. And we revert to that insufferable condition from which we have vainly tried to escape.
Thomas Merton
Post a Comment