thomas merton on writing

"The work of writing can be for me, or very close to, the simple job of being; by creative reflection and awareness to help life itself live in me, to give its esse an existant, or to find place, rather, in esse by action, intelligence and love. For to write is to love: it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess, or to appeal. This testimony of love remains necessary. Not to reassure myself tha I am ("I write therefore I am"), but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men and women. To speak out with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning. The bad writing I have done has been all authoritarian, the declaration of musts, and the announcement of punishments. Bad because it implies a lack of love, good insofar as there may yet have been some love in it. The best stuff has been more straight confession and witness".

April 14, 1966