An Excerpt from Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation by Thomas Merton, edited by Jonathan Montaldo

Jonathan Montaldo has edited this top-drawer collection of meditations by Thomas Merton on contemplation, silence, solitude, prayer, and action in the world. Here is an excerpt on grace.
"All life tends to grow like this, in mystery inscaped with paradox and contradiction, yet centered, in its very heart, on the divine mercy. Such is my philosophy, and it is more than a philosophy — because it consists not in statements about a truth that cannot adequately be stated, but in grace, mercy, and the realization of the 'new life' that is in us who believe, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Without this gift we would have no philosophy, for we could never experience such simplicity in the midst of contradiction. Without the grace of God there could be no unity, no simplicity in our lives: only contradiction. We can overlay the contradiction with statements and explanations, we can produce an illusory coherence, we can impose on life our intellectual systems, and we can enforce upon our minds a certain strained and artificial peace. But this is not peace."