How do we truly light the fire of love in our lives? We all know the core

teaching of Jesus to love God with all our hearts and love our neighbors as

ourselves, but has it become a pat phrase? How do we actually live it?

Thomas Merton pulls us deeply into an ‘I Thou’ awareness that changes

everything:

Contemplation is not a trance or ecstasy

not emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation

not enthusiasm, not the sense of being “seized” by an elemental force

and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy.

Contemplation is no pain-killer.

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing

that he (she) no longer knows what God is;

this is a great gain,

because “God is not a what,”

not a “thing.”

There is “no such thing” as God

because God is neither a “what” nor a thing”

but a pure “Who,”

the “Thou” before whom our inmost “I” springs

into awareness.