Parting Shot
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My current daily devotional is Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day by Peter Scazzero. Today began with the scripture reading of 1 John 2:15-17. The entry includes a quote from Thomas Merton about the Desert Fathers.
Ever since I went to where Merton was cloistered away at Gethsemane in Kentucky, I’ve pondered on his take that finding a desert away from the world makes us more fit to live in that world.
One of my formative books has been Geography of Holiness: The Photography of Thomas Merton. Photography has opened for me a means to carve out my cleansing desert. To Merton, the contemplative monk/photographer who contends the world of the spirit and the world of the senses are inseparable and form a single whole, “Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”
By: Eric Mattson