I have been seeing Merton’s quotes come up before me for some time now, through Facebook links. The more I discover about him, the more I feel a kindred spirit and a resonance with and affirmation of the path I am on, the path of union with, as some Native Americans would say, “All My Relations.”

“In one of his journals he recorded a moment of mystical insight that marked a critical turning point in his life as a monk. It occurred during an errand in Louisville, ‘at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district.’

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was the waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

Merton suddenly experienced a sense of solidarity with the human race – not simply in sin, but in grace. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking about, shining like the sun…There are no strangers!…The gate of heaven is everywhere.

The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

— Thomas Merton

—  Robert Ellsberg

http://www.catholicworker.org.nz/cw/ThomasMerton-RobertEllsberg.htm