Spiritual Quote of the Day (Thomas Merton, on God Shining Through the ‘Absolutely Transparent’ World)

“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything ─ in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It's impossible. It's simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it. What is it that makes the world opaque? It is care.” —American Trappist monk, theologian, memoirist and poet Thomas Merton (1915-1968), 1965 informal talk “Life and Solitude" quoted by Basil Pennington, On Retreat With Thomas Merton (1995)