Detachment

Detachment is knowing things for their true value; the things of this world are good and useful, sometimes even lovely, but can never be of more than limited, finite, value.  Meton says this well:

"Although the grace of the Holy Spirit teaches us to use created things "as if we used them not"—that is to say, with detachment and indifference, it does not make us indifferent to the value of the things in themselves. On the contrary, it is only when we are detached from created things that we can begin to value them as we really should. It is only when we are "indifferent" to them that we can really begin to love them. The indifference of which I speak must, therefore, be an indifference not to things themselves but to their effects in our own lives."  No Man is an Island

No Man Is an Island

Cover of No Man Is an IslandFrom Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island, I think it one of his best books.

The spiritual life is oriented toward God, rather than toward the immediate satisfaction of the material needs of life, but it is not, for all that, a life of unreality or a life of dreams. On the contrary, without a life of the spirit, our whole existence becomes unsubstantial and illusory.

Miscellaneous Musings, January 18, 2011

From No Man is An Island, Thomas Merton

This discovery of Christ is never genuine if it is nothing but a flight from ourselves. On the contrary, it cannot be an escape. It must be a fulfillment. I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are, with all their limitations. The religious answer is not religious if it is not fully real. Evasion is the answer of superstition.

I've known a number of people in my life, non-believers, who insist that religion is a crutch.  Unfortunately, at the time I knew most of them, I didn't know how to answer such an assertion.  Merton gives us some idea in the above quote.  Having faith, believing what God says and taking Him at His word, requires the strength to walk without crutches.  It takes the most difficult thing of all, the courage to admit to ourselves who and what we are, sinners, fallen, weak human beings.  Then it takes accepting that truth.  I'm learning that only then can one begin to grow in faith.  It ain't easy.