We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that personal transformation is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.
Thomas Merton suggests that individuals experience multiple transformations throughout their lives, each stemming from various moments of realization and change. These continuous conversions and inner revolutions contribute to our growth and development as individuals, emphasizing that self-improvement is a lifelong journey rather than a singular event.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about personal development and resilience.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But 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 think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Since 9/11, there has been a huge leap in people wanting to get personally involved in public service and international affairs.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.
The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.
Get very clear about the kind of world we would like and then start living that way.
Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition.
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