What keeps you going?

The late Trappist monk Thomas Merton was a prolific writer. And his writing has been a source of comfort to me no matter what is going on in the world, or simply to me in my life. Consider the following:

Speak words of hope.

Be human in this most inhuman of ages.

Guard the image of man,

for it is the image of God.

What I found novel and most helpful in this quote is the reminder that even the person who has harmed me the most—that person—deserves respect and care because there is more to him than his treatment of me. He, just as I am, just as you are, warrants guarding because we bear the image of God within us. It may be buried deep, crusted over, denied more than once, but it is there.

Here’s another Merton gift:

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

Reminders such as these serve notice that each of us presents a bit of God to those whom we meet.

I hope that anyone looking at me can recognize, if only briefly, some resemblance to the source of any goodness they see.