“Recovery starts with desperation, then moves onto willingness.”

“When delusion arises in the mind, it causes us mental disturbances and anxieties. Delusion forces us to be attracted and attached to one’s own side; to feel hatred or anger toward the opposite side. Delusion creates divisions within community with others, through an underlying force of attachment to one’s own self. In meditation, we find escape from these attachments; to a new freedom offering wondrous opportunities for love.”

Adapted from The Path to Tranquility

“As long as I continue to bother about myself, what happiness is possible? If I continue to take myself seriously, how can I be free? In contemplative prayer, my innermost desires draw me more and more in one direction: to be little, to be nothing, to be glad and to not need much attention. This is the path to liberation. For the self that I bother about doesn’t really exist; it never will and never did, except in my imagination.”

Adapted from A Year with Thomas Merton

Meditation for the Day “Ask God in daily prayer to give you the strength to change. When you ask God to change you, you must at the same time fully trust Him. If you do not fully trust Him, God may answer your prayer as a rescuer does that of a drowning person who is putting up too much of a struggle. The rescuer must first render the person still more helpless, until he or she is wholly at the rescuer's mercy. Just so must we be wholly at God's mercy before we can be rescued. Prayer for the Day I pray that I may be willing daily to be changed. I pray that I may put myself wholly at the mercy of God.”

Adapted from Twenty-Four Hours a Day© 1975 by Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved.