If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.This quote is attributed to Thomas Merton, but I haven't found a source. Reading this passage, I wondered if I had unknowingly picked a fight with the good Trappist. Certainly, there was a time in my life when I knew that my compulsion to drink was keeping me from living for what I wanted to live for. Thank God, that time has passed, and I know that if I do my part, my desire to drink will not again crush my mind, body, and spirit.
Upon reflection, Merton and I don't have a quarrel. Merton describes a method to determine who you are at a point in time. It's who you are here and now. I think it would be valuable to use this question as the basis for an examination of conscience - a kind of Fourth Step, for you Twelve Steppers.
But, to be a valuable exercise, I'll need to be disciplined and rigorously honest. Every day, every week, every month, I'm sure I'd point to something new that's preventing me from from the full life I'm hoping for. And there are other dangers here. I need to make sure that the thing I want to live for is not what my ego wants to live for, that this exercise isn't an opportunity for my will to impose itself.
Of course, great opportunities never appear without risk. The opportunity here is that I can explore and understand who I truly am and who God created me to be. The Dominican mystic, Catherine of Siena, describes what constitutes success:
"If you are what you are meant to be, you will set the whole world on fire."
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