The Key

The Key
by John Trent

As the sun slowly rises through the trees, creating a spectrum of purples, pinks, oranges, and yellow, I sit quietly and peacefully in contemplative awe.  Throughout our lives we overlook this daily miracle.  Not only are we blessed with the ability to see the rising sun everyday, we are free to experience this simple daily event.

Many people, including ourselves, are in prison.  As we tread life's twisting and turning path, we are taught, unconsciously, to fashion bricks out of fear and desires; thus, from a very young age we start building our own prisons.  Some call these survival skills for the modern world.  Maybe so, but these protective walls, still, prevent us from being free.

As I read Thomas Merton's "Thoughts in Solitude", I was inspired by how he dismantled the bricks, one by one, of his self-imposed prison. He allowed himself to be more vulnerable and through this vulnerability, he became more alive and free.  Below is a beautiful prayer written by this Catholic Monk from Kentucky.  In its message is the key to freedom.............faith.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."  ~ Thomas Merton