My good friend Bob (who is also a writer and loyal follower of ClimbingSky) recently visited The Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky with his wife. The Trappist monastery was the home of Thomas Merton. It got me thinking about some of my favorite quotes from Merton.

Here are a few that I think my fellow writers and poets will resonate with.

Enjoy!

All good Christian poets are then contemplatives in the sense that they see God everywhere in his creation and in his mysteries, and behold the created world as filled with signs and symbols of God. To the true Christian poet, the whole world and all the incidents of life tend to be sacraments–signs of God, signs of his love working in the world.

… writers and poets [need] to live more as “contemplatives” than as citizens of a materialistic world.

The poet enters into himself in order to create. The contemplative enters into God in order to be created.

A certain Philosopher asked St. Anthony: Father, how can you be so happy when you are deprived of the consolation of books? Anthony replied: My book, O philosopher, is the nature of created things, and anytime I want to read the words of God, the book is before me.