{"id":3767,"date":"2009-12-10T09:36:47","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T09:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/merton-the-beginning-of-love.html"},"modified":"2009-12-10T09:36:47","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T09:36:47","slug":"merton-the-beginning-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/merton-the-beginning-of-love.html","title":{"rendered":"Merton: &#8220;The beginning of love&#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/merton280.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"merton280.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/212\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/12\/merton280-thumb-300x277-10000.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"277\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. &#8220;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\">&nbsp;&#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mertoncenter.org\/\">Thomas Merton<\/a>, who died on this date in 1968.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\">&nbsp;It was also on this date that he entered the monastery, in 1941.  <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\"><\/div>\n<p>Also, James Martin over at America&#8217;s blog has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;id=52476411-3048-741E-7059898770482605\">a lovely reflection<\/a> on our guy Tom. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. &#8220; &nbsp;&#8212; Thomas Merton, who died on this date in 1968.&nbsp; &nbsp;It was also on this date that he entered&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thomas-merton"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Merton: &quot;The beginning of love...&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/merton-the-beginning-of-love.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Merton: &quot;The beginning of love...&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. 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