| Author Quoted | Anselmus of Canterbury |
| Title Quoted | De Casu Diaboli |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1963/12/01 |
| Imprint | |
| Quotation | The seventeenth chapter of De Casu Diaboli brings up a very modern question - our creativity, that is, the creative power of our liberty is perhaps, as far as we ourselves [are] concerned, a non-destructiveness. If we can accept creation we concur in creating because we have the "power" to destroy. Our power to create is a power to consent in creation, or to work in common with the creative will that transcends both our freedom and our world. Our power to destroy seems more ours (and it is so) and more of a power. What is happening now is that we concentrate more and more on the power which is a rejection. Yet paradoxically, to have the power to destroy and not destroy is to "make." In this sense, by not destroying the world we seem to be creating it. We are said to make something "cum possumus facere utnon est et non facimus" ["when we could make something not be, and we don't do it"]. |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 41 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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