“This is some weird shit…..” is a statement coming out of the recesses of memory so far back that I doubt if I will ever remember who said it or what was being spoken of.  It has a “hippie” texture, something coming from the era of “free” love, –“tune in, turn on, and drop out.”  I don’t know.

Here is my take on what I just read out of Thomas Mertons journal entries, contained in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

1. There is just one principle, a prime principle: The Law of Love.
2. The Law of Love is the deepest law of our human nature, not something extraneous, something alien.
3. This deep principle is that we reach our fulfillment by loving.
4. Its progressive.  We begin by loving life itself, by loving survival at any price.  First of all we must love ourselves.
5. Then we must love others as our own fulfillment. 
6. Further, we must love others in order to fulfill them, to develop their capacity to love.
7. The pivot point of all of this:  We are commanded to choose our own object to love,–not simply to love anything placed before us.  The choices are limited by time, by place, by society.  We must chose to love those we actually encounter, whether as friends, or as individuals in spite of their hostility.

And the “money shot” the take-away is we thereby rise above the mechanisms of natural instinct, instead of being led, or blindly carried away.

I am speechless. Nothing remains to be added.

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