seeing the light left burning on the porch...

The human soul is still the image of God, and no matter how far it travels away from Him into the regions of unreality, it never becomes so completely unreal that its original destiny can cease to torment it with a need to return to itself in God, and become, once again, real.

From The New Man by Thomas Merton (Farrar, Straus, Giroux Publishers, New York 1961.) Page 112

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am.

From No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Inc. 1955,) page 125.

In one sense, "conversion" is nothing more than at long last hearing, and answering, God's long call home, the ache in the prodigal's father's heart; seeing the light left burning on the porch...