Another Re-read

I started another one of my many re-reads in the last few days.  Some folks are deeply opposed to reading a book a second time.  Me?  Some I keep on the shelves and have read more times than I can count.  As far as I am concerned they are so good, I cannot get it all in one, or two, or three reads.  Of course, such is the case for any self-professing slow learner.  If I ever write a book, I hope it will be one that readers just have to read a second time!  The book I picked for this second read is "New Seeds of Contemplation" by Thomas Merton.  

I know why I never bothered to read this book years ago.  I was too busy.  I was too much in a hurry to get somewhere at which I do not think I ever arrived.  The word "contemplation" belonged in a monastery, not in a busy parish where God's business was getting done on the clock.  And then, back then Thomas Merton did not seem to have anything to say to me.  If he had written a book about growing a successful church, I would have had one in my hands, but for too long I was too busy to see any value in silence and stillness and struggling with the invisible internal stuff of the spiritual life.   

None of this is meant to pass judgment on anyone else.  It is simply a means of offering a confessional.  Others who worked in the larger growing churches may have managed to stay on track in their inner life with God, but I fear that I was not as adept at juggling the balls of being busy and being still.  Being busy felt better.  It felt too good.  And now as I read the words of Merton again, I find the spiritual hunger gnawing away at my insides again.  Maybe this time, I will chew on what the Spirit is seeking to reveal a little longer.