"People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value." Stephen R. Covey

"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." Jorge Luis Borges

Integrity, Thomas Merton

"Many Poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves...

They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for all by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own. They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems or possess somebody else's spirituality.

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular - and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves....

In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. As far as the accidentals of this life are concerned, humility can be quite content with whatever satisfies the general run of men. But that does not mean that the essence of humility consists in being just like everybody else. On the contrary, humility consists in being precisely the person you  actually are before God, and since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe. But this individuality will not necessarily assert itself on the surface of everyday life. It will not be a matter of mere appearances, or opinions, or tastes, or ways of doing things. It is something deep in the soul...

To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or non-conformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise.

Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leaves the rest aside. He is able to see quite clearly that what is useful to him may be useless for somebody else, and what helps others to be saints might ruin him. That is why humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and a common sense without which there is no sane morality.

It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life?

And so it takes heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man, or the artist, that God intended you to be. However, you will be made to feel that your honesty is only pride. This is a serious temptation because you can never be sure whether you are being true to your true self or only building up a defense for the false personality that is the creature of your own appetite for esteem.

But the greatest humility can be learned from the anguish of keeping your balance in such a position: of continuing to be yourself without getting tough about it and without asserting your false self against the false selves of other people..."

"We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities." Norman Vincent Peale

Now Reading:
The Genesee Diary: report from a trappist monastery by Henri Nouwen
... Tuesday, 23rd ...

"...in the contemplative life every conflict, inner or outer, small or
large, can be seen as the tip of an iceberg, the expressive part of
something deeper and larger. it is worthwhile, even necessary, to
explore that which is underneath the surface of our daily actions,
thoughts, and feelings.
the most persistent advice of John Eudes in his spiritual direction is
to explore the wounds, to pay attention to the feelings, which are
often embarrassing and shameful, and follow them to their roots. he
keeps telling me not to push away disturbing daydreams or hostile
meanderings of the mind but to allow them to exist and explore them
with care. do not panic, do not start running but take a careful look.
it is interesting to mention here Diadochus of Photice's views on the
discernment of spirits. he says that we have to keep the surface calm
so that we can see deep into the soul. "when the sea is calm, the eyes
of the fishermen can penetrate to the point where he can distinguish
different movements in the depth of the water, so that hardly any of
the creatures who move through the pathways of the sea escape him, but
when the sea is agitated by the wind, she hides in her dark
restlessness what she shows in the smile of a clear day."
what is the importance of this? Diadochus says that with a clear mind
we will be able to distinguish the good from the bad suggestions so
that the good ones can be treasured and the bad ones dispelled.
That indeed is the value of being able to follow the movements of the
soul. when we do not panic and create waves, we will be able to "think
them through" to the end. when the end proves to be a dead end, a
blind alley, then we can be free to search for a new way without the
false suspicion that the old way might be the better one. when we keep
a diagnostic eye on our soul, then we can become familiar with the
different, often complex stirrings of our inner life and travel with
confidence on the paths that lead to the light ..."