Today is the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death in 1968. He was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion. He has influenced many of us with his profound insights about faith, and contemplation. The quote below seemed a fitting post as we walk through the season of Advent. It resonated with me because of my desire to see all of us make more room for those we have excluded – a sentiment that I expressed in the poem in my post Come Thou Unexpected Jesus
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.”
Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52
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