just before bed.

i came across another quote from The Seven Storey Mountain that I wanted to share. Some of this book is boring. I'm pretty positive it's mostly an autobiography, but if there's little things like this scattered about in the book, then it's worth reading it all.

Merton is talking about his childhood. He has a younger brother. Merton and his friends are building a fort and not allowing the little brother to participate. They throw rocks at him when he tried to come close, so he's standing just out of range.

"And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in this case.
Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation."

-i still need to turn this over in my mind more to grasp what it totally means, but i think it's important. input on it would be cool if you feel like it.

now goodnight for reals.