As soon as you are really alone you are with God.
Do not flee to solitude from the community. Find God first in the community; then he will lead you to solitude.
Those who live with God also live for him, but they do not live in what they do for him; they live in what they are before him. Their life is to reflect him by their own simplicity and by the perfection of his being reflected in their poverty.
We find God in our own being which is the mirror of God.
But how do we find our being?
Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act we have no way of knowing what we are… Hence we cannot find the depths of our being by renouncing all activity… Hence to find our spiritual being we must travel down the path made by our spiritual activity.
– Thomas Merton
Elantris [the next-after-last] 