spiritual reading?

[jchinzilla]

anyone else like reading thangs concerning god/prayer/meditation/comparative mythology n theology/etc? cause i really enjoy doing so...maybe too much. what i mean is maybe there is too much theorizing, learning about concepts, and not enough application of whatever it is i'm reading.

well anyways ever since i read Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain earlier this year i have always looked out for merton related things...he's the man. the other day i picked out his Thoughts in Solitude from the library. it has been a joy to read so far, here's an excerpt:

If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

To unify your life, unify your desires. To spiritualize your life, spiritualize your desires. To spiritualize your desires, desire to be without desire.

To livein the spirit is to live for a God in Whom we believe, but Whom we cannot see. To desire this is therefore to renounce the desire of all that can be seen. To possess Him Who cannot be understood is to renounce all that can be understood. To rest in Him Who is beyond all created rest, we renounce the desire to rest in created things. By renouncing the world we conquer the world, rise above its multiplicity and recapitulate it it in the simplicityy of a love which finds all things in God.

This is what Jesus meant when He said that any one who would save his life will lose it, and he who would lose his life, for the sake of God, would save it.

[kitkat9]

I have a question, what does that mean to you?