We Cannot Bring Peace into the World Until We are at Peace with Ourselves

“All people seek peace first of all with themselves. That is necessary, because we do not naturally find rest even in our own being. We have to learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other people and with God. A person who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him. Even when he tries to do good to others his efforts are hopeless, since he does not know how to do good to himself. In moments of wildest idealism he may take it into his head to make other people happy: and in doing so he will overwhelm them with his own unhappiness. He seeks to find himself somehow in the work of making others happy. Therefore he throws himself into the work. As a result he gets out of the work all that he put into it: his own confusion, his own disintegration, his own unhappiness. “

Thomas Merton

Today, may each of us make the effort to spend quality time within our own inner desert, and there discover the beauty, the silence, the peace and the creativity to act truly and harmoniously in the world.

​Photos: Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, UT, November 29-30, 2015
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