Thomas Merton goes on to comment about the importance of an "inner unity" within Gandhi so that satyagraha (holding on to truth) would not merely be seen as a technique for attaining a pragmatic end to something.
...the spiritual or interior life is not an exclusively private affair. The spiritual life of one person is simply the life of all manifesting itself in him. While it is very necessary to emphasize the truth that as the person deepens his own thought in silence he enters into a deeper understanding of and communion with the spirit of his entire people (or his Church), it is also important to remember that as he becomes engaged in the crucial struggles of his people in seeking justice and truth together with his brother, he tends to liberate the truth in himself by seeking true liberty for all.
There is a necessary dialogical dynamic to this journey...inward...outward....both together....like breathing...in and out. Time spent doing only one will exhaust us, if not bring us to our end. Humanity is a private and public being. Our creativity is unleashed as we nurture both aspects of what is essentially human about us. Within a community, this can also happen as we bring ourselves together in a fashion that allows us to be vulnerable and let the various journeys of inside and outside come together to share the warehouse of possibility that is the community together.
Connection: Inside...outside....inside...outside - a constant daily journey. Hmmm.
Like the breath of life that you bring to the world, O God, pull us in and send us out. Take us to places we have not yet considered and to people we have not yet encountered. Amen.
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