Lent (Day 28)

    We modern Westerners are so busy with ourselves, so preoccupied with the question of whether we do justice to our own selves, that the experience of the transcendent becomes practically impossible...In this way of thinking there is scarcely room for Him who speaks whenever we are silent and who comes in whenever we have emptied ourselves. Instead of making ourselves susceptible to the experience of the transcendent God, we, busy with many things, begin to seek after the small flighty sensations brought about by the artificial stimulation of the senses.

    -Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic