And you — what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down —
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: "Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I'm through
with blooming".
You are not obliged to be beautiful You don't have to shine. Blooming will happen when it happens. If you can be still for a moment you might notice that the roots that feed you are still reaching silently through the dark.
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that
responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or
a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of
itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever
achieve.
~ Thomas Merton in A THOMAS MERTON READER ed. by Thomas P. McDonnell