Thomas Merton on Doing What We Do Because It Matters.

Thomas Merton on the hard work of the vocation of peacemaker. The words apply to any vocation that calls for human caring, from pastoral ministry to peace-making, from social care to social justice, from priesthood to foodbanks, and from counselling to any deep accompanying of friendship:

 

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you are taking on...you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.

 

As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.

 

And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people...In the end it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."

 

That kind of writing is why I still read Merton.

Comments

[Bob Sneddon]

Thanks for this and for your blog
Could you let me know the source of the quotation please? Book, page number etc
Best wishes
Bob Sneddon