Always a beginner

I have been enjoying using Thomas Merton's 'Contemplative Prayer' for my daily devotions. Not so much because it is written well (it's not, really), but taking one small chapter a day, and letting it soak in... Plus the content - reading about these ancient mystics, and the struggle between 'active prayer' and 'contemplative prayer'; and being drawn 'away from' the world or more 'into' the world. Stuff that for so many is mere nonsense, but is very real within my own self.

One reading I found particularly enthralling was in chapter 3. Merton says...

"One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience himself as one who knows little or nothing, and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments. Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything."

"We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners all our life!"

We all know how annoying the "know-it-alls" can be. And who among us really knows it all anyway? Only One.

I feel like this is an important attitude with which to face life. I am so often guilty of thinking I know "better" than someone else. And maybe sometimes we actually do. Yet how much more could we learn and grow if we considered ourselves always-a-beginner?

I recall reading some years ago about how, when a child tells you something, you should act as though you are learning it for the first time too. Because even if you already knew it, it's a discovery for them, and for them to think you can just be learning something with them reinforces that we can all always be learning. Always beginners.

Which reminds me of this fantastic thought from G.K. Chesterton:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." 

I love that thought, and the idea of always being a beginner. Sort of a curiosity about life, and things.

I wish I were better at it. Here's to hoping...

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"For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." - 1 Corinthians 2:2

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." -- 1 Corinthians 13:12