Father Louis, CSO
(Thomas Merton)
My solitude,
however,
is not my own,
for I see now how much
it belongs to [others] ---
and that I have a responsibility for it
in their regard,
not just in my own.
It is because I am one with them
that I owe it to them
to be alone,
and when I am alone,
they are not “they”
but my own self.
There are no strangers!
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
(Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1968), pp. 153-155.
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