Dancing in the Water of Life

"January 25, 1964. I am aware of the need for constant self-revision and growth, leaving behind the renunciations of yesterday and yet in continuity with all my yesterdays. For to cling to the past is to lose one’s continuity with the past, since this means clinging to what is no longer there.

My ideas are always changing, always moving around one center, and I am always seeing that center from somewhere else.

Hence, I will always be accused of inconsistency. But I will no longer be there to hear the accusation." ~Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life, p. 67
--from antony

I love this quote. It reminds me so much of where I live my life both personally and in the therapeutic world of counseling. It is possible and often necessary to take a look at the past to see from where we have come, but I appreciate Merton's words of the futility of "clinging to what is no longer there." To cling is to be stuck with no forward movement. Change is evidence of growth and maturity, and there is also a playfulness and freedom in Merton's words: "But I will no longer be there to hear the accusation." Beautiful.

Inconsistency or change? It is my belief that with each new day and encounter, we are called to change, to grow, to dance in the water of life.

Forever changed.
We are forever changed by each other.
Bumbling, blessing, crying, laughing,
raging, pushing away and holding together.
We mark each other with indelible ink
and move a little closer to glory,
as we taste the Gospel together.

Thank you, friends, for being a part of my dance and my "inconsistency."

photo by bill hughlett