| Author Quoted | Marguerite Porete |
| Title Quoted | Mirror of Simple Souls |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1962/10/29 |
| Imprint | |
| Quotation | Thanks so much for The Mirror of Simple Souls. I am really enjoying it, though I find that I have a hard time getting anywhere for great lengths in such books. A little goes a long way. It is an admirable book, but one which one does not really "read." I hold it in my hand walking about in the woods, as if I were reading. But it is charming and bold and right. I am more and more convinced that if you are in dryness and such, these books only increase the problem (if it is a problem). At the same time I think we make problems for ourselves where there really are none. There is too much conscious "spiritual lif" floating around us, and we are too aware that we are supposed to get somewhere. Well, where? If you reflect, the answer turns out to be a word that is never very close to any kind of manageable reality. If that is the case, perhaps we are already in that where. In which case why do we torment ourselves looking around to verify a fact which we cannot see in any case? We should let go our hold upon our self and our will, and be in the Will in which we are. Contentment is very important, of course I mean what seems to be contentment with despair. And the worst thing of all is false optimism. |
| Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 355 |
| Letter to | Etta Gullick |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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