Hi tom lynch

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Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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There is a poem by Thomas Merton I would like to share with you; it reveals The Turn in his life. I offer it because it helped me go beyond the conventional wisdom and values of the world to a place of a bigger peace, where I happened upon forgiveness and compassion for all those men still in bondage to their primitive views. There was less and less room for virtues, which appeared, surprisingly, to make more and more room for God. It may have a place here.

 "When in the soul of the serene disciple
With no more fathers to imitate
Poverty is a success,
It is a small thing to say the roof is gone;
He has not even a house.

"Stars, as well as friends,
Are angry with the noble ruin.
Saints depart in several directions

"Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares,
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

"Here you will find
Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
There are no ways,
No methods to admire
Where poverty is no achievement.
His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

"What choice remains?
Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
It is the usual freedom
of men without visions.

It is the barren land of no ideals or authoritative voices but just the wind of the spirit desert, that blows where it will.