To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

If, therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy. — New Seeds, chapter 8

A year or two ago, I started writing a post about falling in love at first meeting. You know, you meet somebody, and in just a minute or two, you feel a connection in your soul, and you think, "I love this person." Well, the reveal at the end of the post was that I was writing about a little girl who was about six years old at the time, and who happens to be blind. She calls herself "Yozzie," although I have no idea what her real name is or how I'm supposed to spell her preferred nickname.

Whenever I'm in the correct mood, which is to say I'm not in a hurried and/or self-absorbed state of mind, I try to kneel down when I talk to little kids. I like to be on their level physically, because it helps to put us on the same level in other ways. They know I care enough to be right there with them on their terms, and I'm forced to be so. (Try it sometime. It works.) So on this particular day, I knelt in front of this little blind girl, we talked for a few moments, and she held out her hands to touch me. She even asked first, which I'm going to guess is a point of etiquette she'd been taught. So she placed her little hands on my shoulders, my chest, my neck and the sides of my face. Maybe she wanted to know what I looked like in her mind, or maybe she was just trying to remember me. Or both. But, what really amazed me was how much different it felt to be touched by this little blind child than to be touched by anybody else. I really, truly felt like she was seeing me. It was one of the most careful, thoughtful, gentle touches I've ever experienced. It was beautiful. I doubt I'll ever forget it.

I have a very, very soft spot in my heart for the way that life always strives to find a way to keep living; to make the most of whatever it has been allotted in life. I've written about it before, and I hope to write more about it in the coming months. But for the purposes at hand, I'll just say that it is all the more moving to me when it involves the youngest among us, those who in the prime of their innocence and hope find their own paths in life—sometimes more meandering by necessity, and perhaps sometimes more direct than the rest of us; distracted less, I suppose, by the trivial and mundane. And so, I've summarized two posts here tonight.

Before leaving with those two summaries, I'll end with a third. I want to say thanks to the life of Jeff Healey, who died this month at the tender age of forty-one. More than forty years earlier, Jeff lost his eyes to a rare ocular cancer. A blind toddler, Jeff went on to learn to play the guitar, starting at the age of three. Whether he was self-taught or not, I don't know, and can only guess. He learned to play famously, play well, and play uniquely—with the guitar resting flat on his lap. To me, it's one of those seemingly simple things—a thing about innocence, about hope, about chasing what you love, and about how life finds a way for itself. ( If you want to see Jeff play, here's a cover I like.)

Jeff, thanks for the music, man. And Yozzie, wherever you are, I wish you the greatest of life's joys. I pray that you find a way for yourself; a wondrous path that shines brightly and beautifully in the lives of all those you touch. Meeting you was a gift, and I love you.

A Catholic poet should be an apostle by being first of all a poet, not try to be a poet by being first of all an apostle. For if he presents himself to people as a poet, he is going to be judged as a poet and if he is not a good one his apostolate will be ridiculed. —New Seeds, chapter 15

Several times, I've seen all but the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie Meet Joe Black. It's one of those weird things; I've never seen the beginning, but every time I come in on the movie in progress, I have to sit and watch it. I think it's a terrific film, and in one of my favorite scenes the angel of death visits an old woman in a hospital. She is dying, in pain from the tumor that is killing her. She shares a few words of wisdom with the angel, and moves him to the point of tears. Summarizing human life, she says that we are lonely here, mostly, and that when we have to leave this place, "If we lucky, maybe, we got some nice pictures to take wit' us." The angel thinks for a moment, and asks, "Ya got enough nice pictures?" She looks into his eyes, smiles, and nods. Gently, relieving her pain, he takes her away.

I think my middle kid has a gift for mental imagery. She's only seven, but I've noticed a few things that raise an eyebrow. She does her math homework in her head. When I go over her weekly spelling list with her, not only does she typically get all the words correct, but she knows the words on the list; in order. I'll ask her if she's been studying them during the week, and she'll say no, that she just wrote the words down on the list last week and brought them home for me. She also does this thing where she'll start laughing uncontrollably and when I finally ask her what's so funny, she'll say she just saw something funny in her head. But the one that got me was a year or two ago. I was tucking her into bed, and she asked if I knew how she makes herself go to sleep when she's having trouble falling asleep. "No," I said. "How?" So, she told me that whenever she sees something beautiful, she takes a picture of it, and puts it into a picture-book inside her head. When she can't fall asleep, she takes out the book, and goes through the pictures until she falls asleep.

Cool, huh?

I think about this from time to time, and it ran through my mind just yesterday. I had taken the day off from work, and so ended up taking my youngest one, who just turned five, to her little twice-a-week school. As we walked together through the parking lot, and she gripped my index finger tightly with her little hand, I had one of those grand experiences wherein I was struck by the profound beauty and Grace of the moment in space and time. This little girl, this particular parent. Her. Me. This sunny morning. This instant of glorious perfection. Clean, elegant, simplistically pure. I looked down at her hands, the little pink backpack on her shoulders, the sparkles in her hair, her smiling face, her happy motion as an innocent and almost new little human—born, like me, of the Heavens. I took a picture, and stored it away. I am not as organized as my seven-year-old. I don't have a special book. I have a shoebox, of sorts, in my jumbled-up, cluttered-up head.

My shoebox holds special things. Some of them are pictures. Some are more like video. Some are sounds or smells, and some are combinations of these things. In the most aware, most lucid times of my life I have placed the special things there, in the box, carefully and on purpose, and the reasons why—although universal—are difficult to convey with due depth. A video of one of my kids running joyously, trying to get a homemade kite into the air. One of my kids, three or four years old, climbing up into my lap silently, and hugging me, holding onto me, as if I were everything she needed in the whole world. The smell of a toddler's hair after a bubble bath. The way my eldest thrusts her arms into the air when she scores a goal in soccer. Laughter. Tears. And yes, the face and wagging tail of an aged, beloved dog or two.

This collection is sacred to me, and there is none other quite like it. In all of human history, there has never been a duplicate—and there never will be. It is mine and mine alone; the absolutely unique moment-gifts that I have been given by God; the pieces of God offered to me in God's Creative Grace in the guise of its creatures. The unique way I have witnessed them, processed them, treasured and internalized them. They are moments in the history of an entire universe's history, and only God and I know of them. What an amazing thing. What an amazing, awesomely profound thing.

And here, as best as I can tell thus far, is the beautiful poetry of it all: the truth that one proper moment, just one, can make an entire life meaningful and worthwhile—fully, completely worth having been lived. This is the magic of my shoebox—that on the best (and, on the worst) of days, I can find within it a picture that reminds me, "That moment there. Those two minutes. Those alone are enough to have made my entire life worth having been lived." Akin to a few other things life and living have taught me, I know this to be true. And, akin to a few other things life and living have taught me, it is far too immense for me to comprehend. Accordingly on this occasion, like those that have come before, I sit writing, awestruck, and weep.

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn. — New Seeds, Chapter 15

If somebody told me that I had to live on a deserted island for a year and could take only two books, here are the two I would pick: (1) How to Definitely Survive on this Particular Deserted Island, by a person who actually survived on this particular island, and (2) New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.

I have been reading New Seeds for about twenty years now. Every few months I pick it up and re-read a few chapters, and as the years pass, I always get something new and substantial from my reading. If you're a deeply introspective, spiritual, "God seeking" person, perhaps with a leaning toward contemplative spirituality in the Catholic tradition, New Seeds is, just, simply, a fantastic book. And if you're not, well, you'll find it to be absolutely boring and monumentally pointless.

Lately I've been thinking of a few quick thoughts Merton lists in New Seeds concerning writing. I was going to build a post around them, but decided instead that I would toy with the idea of putting some Merton quotes on this blog. So I'll start with those few on writing, and then get into a variety of others. And if you're one of those people who is going to rush out and buy the book, then good for you. My suggestion is that you skip the first two chapters and read a few of the others. If they get you hooked, then go back to the first two later.

If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy.

If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.

If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.

— New Seeds, Chapter 15

The trick, of course, is to discern the difference between God and your self.