The Spiritual life

For the past week, as my friend Rita Warren has been slowly dying, I have been occupying my mind partly by going through old journals, continuing a task I set myself of finding and indexing all the quotations I have noted in 41 years of journal-keeping. Among them I find this one, to which, despite diverging terminologies and concepts, I have resonated for all the 19 years since I came across it. It seems particularly appropriate to days and nights spent in the near presence of death and life as we experience them, inextricably mixed.

“The spiritual life is to be earnestly pursued as though no spiritual life existed. This is the only safe and sane way to travel in the deep waters of the Spirit. Indeed, such childlike simplicity in the face of God expresses a realization that there is, in fact, no spiritual life as such separate from life itself. There is only one life, and that is God’s life which he gives to us from moment to moment, drawing us to himself with every holy breath we take.”

Thomas Merton, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p 21.

2 thoughts on “The Spiritual life

  1. Dear Frank,
    I was guided to share with you this information:

    “Death, as birth is an amazing experience for every being. At the moment of death, the spirit fully merges with the physical body. In this moment, the spirit lovingly shows appreciation to its incarnation, bringing a lot of inner light and stillness into the last moment of their coexistence.”

    This statement said by God is part of a dialog between him and me from my new book ‘Healing God,’ which I just finished writing. God hoped that this information will help you to deal with your friend’s death.

    Also, I was guided to offer you a free healing session with me via Skype. Please let me know if you are interested.
    Mary

  2. Frank! Rita is dying?
    I am sorrier than I can say. I just love that woman! Please, if you can, give her my greatest regards and wings of love. What a loss her death will be to all of us who know her. She once said the wisest thing to me (about a guy in the program in which Rita and I roomed together) when I expressed exasperation at what an idiot he was being, “Yes, but I don’t believe I have enough information to make any judgement about that.” I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s changed my habitual leap to judgement. Love, to you and her, Katie
    —–

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