“I stand before you tonight to represent the people who do not count: The poor, the poets, and monks. As long as there are people who are trying to realize the divine in themselves, there shall be hope in the world.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2014Thomas Merton<\/p>\n

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Thomas Merton distills the experience of being human in this life.\u00a0 He was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.<\/p>\n

As a writer, poet, activist and continual student of comparative religion, he wrote timeless words that continue to resonate and teach.\u00a0 The quote above is from the closing he gave to an interfaith conference in Calcutta in 1968.\u00a0 Thomas Merton transitioned from this life a few days after he spoke these words.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I stand before you tonight to represent the people who do not count: The poor, the poets, and monks. As long as there are people who are trying to realize the divine in themselves, there shall be hope in the world.” \u2014Thomas Merton Thomas Merton distills the experience of being human in this life.\u00a0 He … Continue reading The Poor, The Poets and Monks<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[368,369,28,1266,367,25],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sweet-breathing","tag-monks","tag-poets","tag-quotes-2","tag-sweet-breathing","tag-thomas-merton","tag-uplifting-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Monks-in-Bhutan-copy.jpg?fit=3008%2C2000&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4358,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetbreathing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}