Today I came across a passage that precedes yesterday's quote from Thomas Merton: "A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It “consents,” so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree....For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self."
Merton himself spent a long time searching and even after entering the monastery he still did not stop discovering his true self. Many people come to a good sense of self during their late teens. It took me almost twice those years. While I am now pretty comfortable with who I am, who God has helped me become, I want to keep open to further discovery.
I came to love e. e. cummings in college. One of my favorite quotes from him is "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else --means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." He was one of several writers who encouraged me through the years in my struggle to come to terms with myself.
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