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“What I would call a supernatural and mystical experience has in its very essence some note of a direct spiritual contact of two liberties, a kind of flash or spark which ignites an intuition…plus something much more which I can only describe as personal in which God is known not as an object or as ‘Him up there’ but as the biblical expression, I am…this is not the kind of intuition that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and depends on the liberty of the person.”
Thomas Merton in a letter to Aldous Huxley
*
When I got to the hotel, Mrs Bailey came out from reception, said,
“You’ve been in the wars.”
“I have.”
“Give me that jacket, I’ll put a stitch in.”
“There’s no need.”
“And what, you’re going to walk around like a vagrant?”
It was easier to
