You have made my soul for Your peace and Your silence, but it is lacerated by the noise of my activity and my desires. My mind is crucified all day by its own hunger for experience, for ideas, for satisfaction. And I do not possess my house in silence. . . I am – noisy, full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my house is, You live there!
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Thomas Merton (1915-1968). Writer, Trappist Monk.
His books can be obtained here. Some of his writings include The Seven Storey Mountain, The Sign of Jonas, Contemplative Prayer.
