THE contemplative… drinks fortitude and joy from the will of God in all things. Without any need for complicated reasoning or mental efforts or special acts, his life is a prolonged immersion in the rivers of tranquillity that flow from God into the whole universe and draw all things back into God.
For God’s love is like a river springing up in the depth of the Divine Substance and flowing endlessly through His creation, filling all things with life and goodness and strength.
All things, except our own sins, are carried and come to us in the waters of this pure and irresistible stream. If we accept them in tranquillity, submitting to the pressure of the waters by a clean and unquestioning faith and a love perfect and detached from all resistance, God’s will enters into the depths of our own freedom and carries our lives and all our acts and desires away on the tide of His own joy.
True peace is only found by those who have learned to ride and swim with the strong current of this stream. For them life becomes simple and easy. Every moment is rich in happiness. All events are intelligible, if not in their details at least in their relation to the great wholeness of life.
From Thomas Merton, “New Seeds of Contemplation”
Rob Gerhard 