If you allow people to praise me, I will not suffer for it. If you let them criticize me, I will not be troubled any more, but I will be glad. If you send me work, I will take it on with joy and it will be my refuge, because it is your will. And if you send me peace, I will rest in you. Just protect me from myself. Protect me from my own private annoying urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move everything just for the sake of movement, to violate all that you have established. Let me rest in your will and be quiet. Then the light of your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for your celebration. And for this I live. Amen, amen.
(Thomas Merton /1915–1968/, diary entry from November 16, 1947)
