Love that overflows

We should seek to become reservoirs rather than canals. For a canal just allows the water to flow through it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, then it can communicate without loss to itself. In the church today, we have many canals but few reservoirs.

—Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

If we attempt to act and do things for others or for the world, without deepening our own self-understanding, our own freedom, integrity and capacity to love, we will not have anything to give to others. We will communicate nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressiveness, our own ego-centred ambitions…

—Thomas Merton (1915-1968)