“The danger of education, I have found, is that it so easily confuses means with ends. Worse than that, it so easily forgets both and devotes itself merely to the mass production of uneducated graduates – people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade which they and their contemporaries have conspired to call ‘life’.”
- Thomas Merton in “Love and Living.”
My mother (of all people) sent me this timely prayer from Thomas Merton
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
And the fact that I think I am following
Your will does not mean
That I am actually doing so.
But I believe that my desire to please you
Does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
In all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
For you are ever with me,
And you will never leave me
To face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
