Happiness For Blessing

We who say we love God: why are we not as anxious to be as perfect in our art as we pretend we want to be in our service of God? If we do not try to be perfect in what we write, perhaps it is because we are not writing for God after all. In any case it is depressing that those who serve God and love Him sometimes write so badly, when those who do not believe in Him take pains to write so well…

The fact that your subject may be important in itself does not necessarily mean that what you have written about it is important. A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it may be about the love of God. There are many who think that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say: If the ones who say they believe in God cannot find anything better than this to say about it, their religion cannot be worth much.

- Thomas Merton, from a meditation set down on 14 August 1947

(with thanks to Jeff Childers)