Astronomy Photo Of the Day

     The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.  To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help every one in everything is to succumb to violence.  More than that, it is cooperation with violence.  The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace.  It destroys his own inner capacity for peace.  It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

                                                  - Thomas Merton

           Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander, p. 86.  Image Books, New York, 1968