De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

Here's a Twitter thread conversation between me and my Twitter friend "Bodmin Hermit" (@The Carceri) taking Thomas Merton as our starting point. Bod = MERTON: No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees... But what can the wind say where there is no hearer? That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude. Me = Merton was my first encounter with spiritual writing as a teenager during a retreat at Downside Abbey: "Contemplative Prayer". I still have that copy. Later, "No Man Is An Island", "Seven Storey Mountain", which had a big impact, and others. Time to see what he says to me today. Bod = His approach & record of his life, 7SM, and his hermit experiences are very head-on, without frills... Yet other writings & poetry, deeply mystical... Our spiritual journey with God is often about paradoxes! Dipping in...

The following devotional from the PocketFuel team struck a chord with me when I first read it a few months ago: I've spent so much of my life being afraid of the dark. Literally, and figuratively. Afraid of the night and the unknown. Afraid of hard times. I've pursued light and ease and fortune, and every time I was met with darkness, I fought it, struggled it, preached at it, quoted scripture, denied its power… And missed out on its glory and beauty and gifts each and every time. A favourite quote of mine by Thomas Merton has changed my life: "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." It is in facing our darkness, entering into it, even embracing it - the covering of bandages for healing; the dark cold pressure of earth that forges gold; the dark place of conception - that we find what we're truly seeking: strength, clarity, meaning, change, purpose, compassion, connection, and more. Mary Oliver wrote: "Someone I loved once gave m...

Just read this on the back of a bookmark that I was given sometime back. It eloquently expresses some thing that I was trying to say during a discussion on Sat. at the Living Joyfully vocations event in Liverpool as regards to calling, discernment and trust in God: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me,  and You will never leave me to face my perils al...