Think About It (Thomas Merton)

“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. We destroy them, or try to destroy them, with our obsessive and absurd systematizations. Whether we do this in the name of matter or in the name of spirit makes little difference in the end. There are atheists [and even Christians] who fight God and atheists [ as well as Christians] who claim to believe in Him: what they both have in common is the hatred of life, the fear of the unpredictable, the dread of grace, and the refusal of every spiritual gift.”

Thomas Merton. A Thomas Merton Reader. Edited by Thomas P. McDonnell (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1962): 18.

Emphasis mine.