I think the question of “turning to the world” is in fact a question of being patient with the unprepossessing surface of it, in order to break through to the deep goodness that is underneath. But to my way of thinking, “the world” is precisely the dehumanized surface. What is under the surface, and often stifled and destroyed, is more than “the world”: it is the spirit and likeness of God in men. Much of the ambiguity in talk about the world — especially mine — is that everyone tends to be quite selective about the elements he admits into his concept of “the world.” My particular concept focuses on the sham, the unreality, the alienation, the forced systematization of life, and not on the human reality that is alienated and suppressed. This has to be made clear.
Thomas Merton, OCSO
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 234
