Today on Christmas, I’ll share with you Thomas Merton’s words. In Seasons of Celebration, he writes about the birth of Christ. Merton is particularly moved by Christ as light, and our human need not only to receive the light within us, but more, to allow the light to shine through us. This is what Merton says:
Christ is born. He is born to us. And, he is born today. For Christmas is not merely a day like every other day. It is a day made holy and special by a sacred mystery. It is not merely another day in the weary round of time. Today, eternity enters into time and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity. Today, Christ, the Eternal Word of the Father, who was in the beginning with the Father, in whom all things were made, by whom all things consist, enters into the world which he created in order to reclaim souls who have lost their identity. Therefore, the Church exults as the angels come down to announce not merely an old thing that happened long ago, but a new thing that happens today. For, today, God the Father makes all things new, in his Divine Son, our Redeemer, according to his words: Ecce nova facio omnia. . . .
At Christmas, more than ever, it is fitting to remember that we have no other light but Christ, who is born to us today. Let us reflect that he came down from heaven to be our light, and our life. He came, as he himself assures us, to be our way, by which we may return to the Father. Christ gives us light today to know him, in the Father and ourselves in him, so that thus knowing and possessing Christ, we may have life everlasting with him in the Father. . . .
Having realized, once again, who it is that comes to us, and having remembered that he alone is our light, let us open our eyes to the rising Sun, let us hasten to receive him and let us come together to celebrate the great mystery of charity which is the sacrament of our salvation and of our union in Christ. Let us receive Christ that we may in all truth be “light in the Lord” and that Christ may shine not only to us, but through us, and that we may all burn together in the sweet light of his presence in the world: I mean his presence in us, for we are his Body and his Holy Church. . . .
Christ, light of light, is born today, and since he is born to us, he is born in us as light and therefore we who believe are born today to new light. That is to say, our souls are born to new life and new grace by receiving him who is the Truth. For Christ, invisible in his own nature, has become visible in our nature. What else can this mean, except that first he has become visible as a man and second he has become visible in his Church? He wills to be visible in us, to live in us, and save us through his secret action in our own hearts and the hearts of our neighbors. So, we must receive the light of the newborn Savior by faith, in order to manifest it by our witness in common praise and by the works of our charity towards one another.
[Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, pp. 102-105.]
Showing posts with label Merton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Merton. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Learning a Different Wisdom
There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have any meaning? There must be a time when a man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill. [Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, p. 260.]
Black Friday . . . Small-Business Saturday . . . Cyber Monday . . . Giving Tuesday . . .
Who comes up with this stuff, anyway? Well, I think I know the answer,especially when I hear the many reports of how "successful" or "unsuccessful" these days are . . . when the impact of the days is measured in $$$ and %.
Advent arrives as a blanket warming the cold, market-driven days, urging me to "forget my plans" . . . "fall very silent" . . . "pray as if for the first time" . . . "learn a different wisdom."
Advent does not speak the language of market growth or GNP or China trade deals or even "what will I get the grandchildren for Christmas?"
The season offers a quieter, gentler invitation . . . to reevaluate and recalibrate . . . to stay rooted in that which is life- and light-giving, rather than getting carried away by the distractive pulls of the moment . . . to join a more universal design that transcends my little social gatherings and travel plans and musical specials.
Merton was not writing about Advent per se, but he might as well have been describing the season.
I am tempted, this early morning in Advent, to state my goals for the season: “forget my plans” . . . “fall very silent” . . . “pray as if for the first time” . . . “learn a different wisdom.” But I think I would regret placing my own agenda on the days, forcing this grand, unfathomable season into my own little gift box, so that by the end I could measure it - maybe in % - to see how successful or unsuccessful I was.
No, I think instead I'll just be alert what shows up . . . I'll stay open to the grace and mercy hiding in whatever is . . . I'll allow the warm blanket of Advent to cover all the coldness within me and in the world.
Black Friday . . . Small-Business Saturday . . . Cyber Monday . . . Giving Tuesday . . .
Who comes up with this stuff, anyway? Well, I think I know the answer,especially when I hear the many reports of how "successful" or "unsuccessful" these days are . . . when the impact of the days is measured in $$$ and %.
Advent arrives as a blanket warming the cold, market-driven days, urging me to "forget my plans" . . . "fall very silent" . . . "pray as if for the first time" . . . "learn a different wisdom."
Advent does not speak the language of market growth or GNP or China trade deals or even "what will I get the grandchildren for Christmas?"
The season offers a quieter, gentler invitation . . . to reevaluate and recalibrate . . . to stay rooted in that which is life- and light-giving, rather than getting carried away by the distractive pulls of the moment . . . to join a more universal design that transcends my little social gatherings and travel plans and musical specials.
Merton was not writing about Advent per se, but he might as well have been describing the season.
I am tempted, this early morning in Advent, to state my goals for the season: “forget my plans” . . . “fall very silent” . . . “pray as if for the first time” . . . “learn a different wisdom.” But I think I would regret placing my own agenda on the days, forcing this grand, unfathomable season into my own little gift box, so that by the end I could measure it - maybe in % - to see how successful or unsuccessful I was.
No, I think instead I'll just be alert what shows up . . . I'll stay open to the grace and mercy hiding in whatever is . . . I'll allow the warm blanket of Advent to cover all the coldness within me and in the world.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
A More Expansive Dance
Fr Thomas Keating told an apocryphal story about an elder monk on his hands and knees, combing through the grass in front of the hut that was his living quarters. A younger monk walking by asked, "Father, what are you doing?"
"Looking for my keys," replied the elder.
The young monk immediately got down on his hands and knees and began to comb through the grass.
Other monks passed by. Each stopped to ask what was going on and each received the same answer: "We're looking for Father's keys." Before long the expansive yard was full of monks crawling through the grass, looking for lost keys.
Finally, one of the monks who had joined the search gathered the courage to ask the obvious question which no one to that point had the nerve to ask: "Father, are you sure you lost your keys out here in the grass?"
"Oh no, my son," the older monk answered. "I lost my keys in the house. But since there is no light in the house, I thought I'd look out here in the sunshine."
When Fr Keating told the story, he would summarize the imaginary scene this way: "And that is the human condition. We are all looking for the keys to happiness where happiness cannot be found."
This is the perennial challenge of the spiritual life . . . to shift our center of orbit from all the ways, places, and things to which we look for fulfillment . . . to shift our orbit to the One who is the Center of all life. The shift is so difficult because we receive almost no cultural validation for making this shift. In fact, culturally we are encouraged to chase after all sorts of other things that promise happiness, but in the end cannot hold the weight of our being.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the center of life is not measured by your bank account . . . by the number of friends you have . . . by what others think of your work . . . by how mannerly -- or petulant -- you are . . . by the success you achieve.
For many of us, at issue is the way life itself, by its very nature, tends to sweep us up and carry us along, so that we feel carried along by a train whose destination was determined by someone else, and from which we cannot seem to get off.
In the daily run of life, it is so easy to believe that the thing right here before us is the only thing.
I remember in 1998 when my dad died . . . his death was the big thing squarely in front of me, demanding all the attention I could muster. Trying to be present for my mom, for my own children, for the funeral preparations which needed to be made, and still attend to my own grief, my orbit became very small, very focused on that which was right in front of me.
But I also had a couple of experiences that week around his funeral which said to me, "While my world has stopped at this place . . . while all I can see is this loss and the shape of life now in the aftermath . . . there are many others in the world who are completely unaffected by his death. For them, life is moving on."
It was a moment of revelation for me. My world had stopped. But the world did not stop for others. Life continued. At first, I railed inwardly about it: "My FATHER has died!! Can't you have some respect?!?! Can't you stop for a moment as I have stopped?!" When I realized what I was thinking, the lesson for me became clear: My life and existence so easily becomes the center of the entire universe, and actually I'm not the center at all.
Usually it takes the created world to remind me that life is happening always and everywhere, sustained by God, whether I am present to it or not . . . regardless of what concerns fill my life . . . no matter the deadlines I'm facing that feel as if they are pinching or the "pressing work" that calls for all my attention.
The waves of the surf will continue to roll in and out, no matter what my life is like today.
The river which slices through these mountains will continue to sing whether I am sitting there to listen or not.
These deer grazing by the roadside will go on finding their own "daily bread" whether I meet my deadline or not.
The lush green woods will lose their leaves, but then produce them again, far apart from whatever I think is important in my life.
Thomas Merton described what he called the General Dance or the Cosmic Dance . . . the dance of the world which humans often miss, as we are consumed with the far smaller dances of our own creation . . . shuffling papers . . . tinkering with websites . . . posting for "likes" on social media . . . building the life we imagine we are supposed to have . . . crippled by anxiety over political and denominational realities.
The things that mostly consume us are too small . . . they are not substantial enough to hold the weight of your being. They are dances we have learned from culture, from those who tell us what we should dance around. Most of them are completely disconnected from the Cosmic Dance.
Read Merton's words as he describes this larger dance, then spend some time meditating on them over several days.
What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously. At any rate the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.
Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.
[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), pp. 296-297]
"Looking for my keys," replied the elder.
The young monk immediately got down on his hands and knees and began to comb through the grass.
Other monks passed by. Each stopped to ask what was going on and each received the same answer: "We're looking for Father's keys." Before long the expansive yard was full of monks crawling through the grass, looking for lost keys.
Finally, one of the monks who had joined the search gathered the courage to ask the obvious question which no one to that point had the nerve to ask: "Father, are you sure you lost your keys out here in the grass?"
"Oh no, my son," the older monk answered. "I lost my keys in the house. But since there is no light in the house, I thought I'd look out here in the sunshine."
When Fr Keating told the story, he would summarize the imaginary scene this way: "And that is the human condition. We are all looking for the keys to happiness where happiness cannot be found."
This is the perennial challenge of the spiritual life . . . to shift our center of orbit from all the ways, places, and things to which we look for fulfillment . . . to shift our orbit to the One who is the Center of all life. The shift is so difficult because we receive almost no cultural validation for making this shift. In fact, culturally we are encouraged to chase after all sorts of other things that promise happiness, but in the end cannot hold the weight of our being.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the center of life is not measured by your bank account . . . by the number of friends you have . . . by what others think of your work . . . by how mannerly -- or petulant -- you are . . . by the success you achieve.
For many of us, at issue is the way life itself, by its very nature, tends to sweep us up and carry us along, so that we feel carried along by a train whose destination was determined by someone else, and from which we cannot seem to get off.
In the daily run of life, it is so easy to believe that the thing right here before us is the only thing.
I remember in 1998 when my dad died . . . his death was the big thing squarely in front of me, demanding all the attention I could muster. Trying to be present for my mom, for my own children, for the funeral preparations which needed to be made, and still attend to my own grief, my orbit became very small, very focused on that which was right in front of me.
But I also had a couple of experiences that week around his funeral which said to me, "While my world has stopped at this place . . . while all I can see is this loss and the shape of life now in the aftermath . . . there are many others in the world who are completely unaffected by his death. For them, life is moving on."
It was a moment of revelation for me. My world had stopped. But the world did not stop for others. Life continued. At first, I railed inwardly about it: "My FATHER has died!! Can't you have some respect?!?! Can't you stop for a moment as I have stopped?!" When I realized what I was thinking, the lesson for me became clear: My life and existence so easily becomes the center of the entire universe, and actually I'm not the center at all.
Usually it takes the created world to remind me that life is happening always and everywhere, sustained by God, whether I am present to it or not . . . regardless of what concerns fill my life . . . no matter the deadlines I'm facing that feel as if they are pinching or the "pressing work" that calls for all my attention.
The waves of the surf will continue to roll in and out, no matter what my life is like today.
The river which slices through these mountains will continue to sing whether I am sitting there to listen or not.
These deer grazing by the roadside will go on finding their own "daily bread" whether I meet my deadline or not.
The lush green woods will lose their leaves, but then produce them again, far apart from whatever I think is important in my life.
Thomas Merton described what he called the General Dance or the Cosmic Dance . . . the dance of the world which humans often miss, as we are consumed with the far smaller dances of our own creation . . . shuffling papers . . . tinkering with websites . . . posting for "likes" on social media . . . building the life we imagine we are supposed to have . . . crippled by anxiety over political and denominational realities.
The things that mostly consume us are too small . . . they are not substantial enough to hold the weight of your being. They are dances we have learned from culture, from those who tell us what we should dance around. Most of them are completely disconnected from the Cosmic Dance.
Read Merton's words as he describes this larger dance, then spend some time meditating on them over several days.
What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously. At any rate the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.
Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.
[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), pp. 296-297]
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Loving the Other
Through Advent I took a break from Only a Sojourner in order to post reflections on the daily Advent readings at https://adailyadvent.blogspot.com/
Now, well into the season of Epiphany, I'll offer a few words related to my two previous posts before moving on.
What does it mean to love another? It may be easy enough to "love" someone we are drawn to, someone with whom we share a close connection . . . family members, friends, those with whom we share common interests and concerns. But what does it mean to love the narcissist, the bully, the abuser, the cruel one?
The previous post of Thomas Merton's thoughts in No Man Is an Island provided some clues.
Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. . . . [No Man Is an Island, p. 5]
To love another person, we seek not our own good, not even the pleasant feeling of having done something good. Rather, we will what is truly good for the other.
I realize that sounds like a subjective standard. I can look at another person and think I know what is good for them, what is best for them, but I have to confess that like you, I never see all the way through another person. I never know what is hidden within the deepest caverns of their being. I never truly know what they need simply by observing them on the outside.
What I do know -- or at least what I believe I know -- is that God's design for every human being is wholeness, that we live fully human lives. (In the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus famously said, "The glory of God is the human person fully alive"). God desires that we each live as fully as possible into the unique personhood for which God created us.
Thus, to truly love another person means that we seek the other's wholeness . . . we act on their behalf that they might become more and more the person God created them to be . . . we act in their lives in ways that are healing, in ways that call forth from them the image of God that is written into their soul's DNA. For as Merton suggests, not only is this person's destiny to be considered, but also the destiny of God's entire kingdom (p. 8). God's work of moving persons toward wholeness is part of God's wider project, what Jesus called the "kingdom of God," to bring all people to this healing wholeness; therefore, to love another person truly is also to love what God is doing in the world.
So given this notion of love, which acts for the benefit of the other in his or her becoming . . . and given that there is a sense of the common good, the kingdom which is coming . . . here are some examples of what love is not:
* Love does not stroke a narcissist and feed his or her narcissism.
* Love does not bow before a bully and enable his or her bullying.
* Love does not have a blind eye toward abusive behavior, excusing it as "he/she cannot help themselves."
* Love does not reward attention-seekers just because their ego wants to be continually in the spotlight.
Perhaps one obvious example will help. No one who truly loves an alcoholic would think of handing him/her a drink when they are trying to get sober. What family members and friends must learn on the road to sobriety is what some call "tough love," the strength to say "no" in order to keep the addict's health, wholeness, and best interest first and foremost.
In loving another, we don't act in ways that keep them imprisoned in the small egocentric self. We want to love them in ways that somehow release them or encourage them to their more expansive, truer, authentic self.
Then how shall we know how best to love another person? Good question. You see by now, don't you, that love is hard work. And because we don't see the inside of the other fully, our love for them is not always clear-cut. Here again, Merton helps.
One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. . . . The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him. . . .
In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God. . . .
If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudence which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom. (pp. 7-9)
In Merton's vision of love, the one who desires to love another must engage in his/her own strenuous inner work, deepening in God, knowing ourselves more fully, seeing our own light and darkness with more clarity. We engage in this work of spiritual becoming ourselves so that we see more clearly, slowly and over time, praying that we increasingly take on the heart and eyes of God within ourselves.
This attention to our own inner landscape is what Merton calls being "rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom."
Merton says I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for the other.
This is difficult work and no one gets it perfectly. The temptation for me -- your temptation may be different -- is to withhold love until I'm "doing it right." When that is the case, I will never love.
So the invitation for me is to begin where I am . . . to give attention to my own interior . . . to see more and more of my own truth . . . and to look on others with compassion, asking, "What does he/she truly need to be whole? How does God see them? Is there some way I can help love them to wholeness?"
Sometimes the answer is tangible food or clothing or cash for a utility payment.
Sometimes the answer is an affirming word, a listening ear, or quiet presence.
Sometimes the answer is a well-timed, well-placed question which allows the other to explore more deeply the implications of what they are considering.
And sometimes the answer is a firm, solid, "No, not now!"
Now, well into the season of Epiphany, I'll offer a few words related to my two previous posts before moving on.
What does it mean to love another? It may be easy enough to "love" someone we are drawn to, someone with whom we share a close connection . . . family members, friends, those with whom we share common interests and concerns. But what does it mean to love the narcissist, the bully, the abuser, the cruel one?
The previous post of Thomas Merton's thoughts in No Man Is an Island provided some clues.
Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. . . . [No Man Is an Island, p. 5]
To love another person, we seek not our own good, not even the pleasant feeling of having done something good. Rather, we will what is truly good for the other.
I realize that sounds like a subjective standard. I can look at another person and think I know what is good for them, what is best for them, but I have to confess that like you, I never see all the way through another person. I never know what is hidden within the deepest caverns of their being. I never truly know what they need simply by observing them on the outside.
What I do know -- or at least what I believe I know -- is that God's design for every human being is wholeness, that we live fully human lives. (In the 2nd century, St. Irenaeus famously said, "The glory of God is the human person fully alive"). God desires that we each live as fully as possible into the unique personhood for which God created us.
Thus, to truly love another person means that we seek the other's wholeness . . . we act on their behalf that they might become more and more the person God created them to be . . . we act in their lives in ways that are healing, in ways that call forth from them the image of God that is written into their soul's DNA. For as Merton suggests, not only is this person's destiny to be considered, but also the destiny of God's entire kingdom (p. 8). God's work of moving persons toward wholeness is part of God's wider project, what Jesus called the "kingdom of God," to bring all people to this healing wholeness; therefore, to love another person truly is also to love what God is doing in the world.
So given this notion of love, which acts for the benefit of the other in his or her becoming . . . and given that there is a sense of the common good, the kingdom which is coming . . . here are some examples of what love is not:
* Love does not stroke a narcissist and feed his or her narcissism.
* Love does not bow before a bully and enable his or her bullying.
* Love does not have a blind eye toward abusive behavior, excusing it as "he/she cannot help themselves."
* Love does not reward attention-seekers just because their ego wants to be continually in the spotlight.
Perhaps one obvious example will help. No one who truly loves an alcoholic would think of handing him/her a drink when they are trying to get sober. What family members and friends must learn on the road to sobriety is what some call "tough love," the strength to say "no" in order to keep the addict's health, wholeness, and best interest first and foremost.
In loving another, we don't act in ways that keep them imprisoned in the small egocentric self. We want to love them in ways that somehow release them or encourage them to their more expansive, truer, authentic self.
Then how shall we know how best to love another person? Good question. You see by now, don't you, that love is hard work. And because we don't see the inside of the other fully, our love for them is not always clear-cut. Here again, Merton helps.
One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. . . . The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him. . . .
In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God. . . .
If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudence which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom. (pp. 7-9)
In Merton's vision of love, the one who desires to love another must engage in his/her own strenuous inner work, deepening in God, knowing ourselves more fully, seeing our own light and darkness with more clarity. We engage in this work of spiritual becoming ourselves so that we see more clearly, slowly and over time, praying that we increasingly take on the heart and eyes of God within ourselves.
This attention to our own inner landscape is what Merton calls being "rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom."
Merton says I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for the other.
This is difficult work and no one gets it perfectly. The temptation for me -- your temptation may be different -- is to withhold love until I'm "doing it right." When that is the case, I will never love.
So the invitation for me is to begin where I am . . . to give attention to my own interior . . . to see more and more of my own truth . . . and to look on others with compassion, asking, "What does he/she truly need to be whole? How does God see them? Is there some way I can help love them to wholeness?"
Sometimes the answer is tangible food or clothing or cash for a utility payment.
Sometimes the answer is an affirming word, a listening ear, or quiet presence.
Sometimes the answer is a well-timed, well-placed question which allows the other to explore more deeply the implications of what they are considering.
And sometimes the answer is a firm, solid, "No, not now!"
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Love Loves . . . Merton's Thoughts
Before posting my own reflection on, "What does it mean to love another?" as a follow-up to the previous post, "Love loves what is . . . as it is," I want to post some of Thomas Merton's words about love and charity.
These thoughts come from the first section of Merton's, No Man Is an Island. The chapter is called, "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." (I have retained Merton's original language, which uses masculine pronouns throughout. Merton was not only a product of his times, he was also the product of an all-male monastic community.)
There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be.
Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken.
***********
Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. . . . Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. . . .
To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. . . .
Charity is neither weak nor blind. It is essentially prudent, just, temperate, and strong. Unless all the other virtues blend together in charity, our love is not genuine. No one who really wants to love another will consent to love him falsely. If we are going to love others at all, we must make up our minds to love them well. Otherwise our love is a delusion. . . .
One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. . . . The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him.
************
In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God.
The true interests of a person are at once perfectly his own and common to the whole Kingdom of God. That is because these interests are all centered in God's designs for his soul. The destiny of each one of us is intended, by the Lord, to enter into the destiny of His entire Kingdom. . . .
If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudence which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom.
These thoughts come from the first section of Merton's, No Man Is an Island. The chapter is called, "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." (I have retained Merton's original language, which uses masculine pronouns throughout. Merton was not only a product of his times, he was also the product of an all-male monastic community.)
There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be.
Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken.
***********
Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. . . . Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. . . .
To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. . . .
Charity is neither weak nor blind. It is essentially prudent, just, temperate, and strong. Unless all the other virtues blend together in charity, our love is not genuine. No one who really wants to love another will consent to love him falsely. If we are going to love others at all, we must make up our minds to love them well. Otherwise our love is a delusion. . . .
One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. . . . The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him.
************
In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God.
The true interests of a person are at once perfectly his own and common to the whole Kingdom of God. That is because these interests are all centered in God's designs for his soul. The destiny of each one of us is intended, by the Lord, to enter into the destiny of His entire Kingdom. . . .
If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudence which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
A Case for God . . . Not the Experience of God
2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. (Mark 9:2 - 10)
The Transfiguration story is important at several levels. It is especially challenging to those who have given themselves to an intentional journey of deepening life in God. Within a narrative full of movement (Jesus took . . . led them . . . they were coming down . . . all indicating journey and action), Peter gets struck by how "good it is for us to be here" and his desire to erect shelters, tabernacles, or booths. His suggestion that they create a memorial marker speaks to the perpetual human tendency to freeze spiritual experience in time, to codify the experience in order to remember it and perhaps to have it again at some later time.
Did you have a meaningful spiritual experience at this particular retreat center? Then go to that place again, and see if you can replicate that experience.
Did you sense God speaking to you through this book or author 10 years ago? Then read the book again, or another by the same author, and God will repeat the vision.
Did you find a particular set of spiritual practices meaningful to you as an adolescent? Then return to those practices in order to have a similar spiritual experience.
Did something significant happen to you today? Take a picture, post it to Facebook, and set it to your social media timeline. Next year on this date you'll be reminded of what happened today.
Was a particular sermon or worship experience meaningful to you? Buy the cd of the sermon and service . . . you can replay it as you drive around town, and be reminded always of the way you felt God come close in that experience.
Of course, these methods are not all bad, and I'm not suggesting there is never a place for them. All of them, however, are attempts to recreate a particular experience of God. There are so many different ways to build shelters and set up monuments to spiritual experience, just as Peter suggested on the mountain.
The real danger in the spiritual life is that the experience itself becomes a commodity, sought in and for itself. Most humans are complete addicts in this way . . . when something feels good, especially when we feel we have tapped into the numinous in a significant way, we want more of it. We want to repeat the same experience of peace . . . we want to have the same sense of generosity again . . . we want to know ourselves loved deep-down, not just for a moment, but always.
Addiction to spiritual experience is especially seductive, and because it is "spiritual," we assume it must be good. If a little is good, then more must be better, right?
Hear Thomas Merton:
The one great danger that confronts every person who takes spiritual experience seriously, is the danger of illuminism or, in Monsignor Ronald Knox's term, "enthusiasm". Here the problem is that of taking one's subjective experience so seriously that it becomes more important than truth, more important than God. Once spiritual experience becomes objectified, it turns into an idol. It becomes a "thing", a "reality" which we serve. We are not created for the service of any "thing", but for the service of God alone, Who is not and cannot be a "thing". To serve Him Who is no "object" is freedom. To live for spiritual experience is slavery, and such slavery makes the contemplative life just as secular (though in a more subtle way) as the service of any other "thing", no matter how base: money, pleasure, success. Indeed, the ruin of many potential contemplatives has been this avidity for spiritual success. (The Inner Experience, ed. by Thomas Hart, p. 139.)
The language of "idolatry" hearkens back to the Ten Commandments, which begin with the command to have only one God. To be sure, to use the language of idolatry for something which is seemingly good, like spiritual experience, seems extreme. Yet, that is the very nature of idolatry. Even good things that are not God must not be worshiped.
Let me be clear. I'm for spiritual experience.
Worship may be a spiritual experience.
Retreats may provide an experience of God.
Spiritual practices may open us to spiritual experience.
But spiritual experience is at least one degree away from God. As Merton says, the goal of the spiritual life is not experience, but God . . . to know God in a direct, unmediated way.
For this reason, the Christian mystics have proposed silence and solitude as the most basic contexts for knowing God, rather than some setting in which emotions and excitability were the driving forces. In silence and solitude, there are no words to get in the way, nothing about silence and solitude that can truly be described or prescribed, no way for the experience to be manipulated in order to get a particular experience of God. There is only God in the naked silence.
Also, this is the reason many of the great monastic traditions -- going back to the Desert Abbas and Ammas of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries -- gathered in places which seemed extreme, building monasteries in places that were not lush or aesthetically abundant. Deserts, rocky outcroppings, and frigid tundras have provided monastic settings which tend toward the extremes. They have been chosen most often because their fierceness lends itself to the rawness and immediacy of God, rather than to an excitable religious experience. (20 years ago, Belden Lane's book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, was a testament to this fierceness.)
Again, please do not diminish spiritual experience. Most all of us are prodded forward by spiritual experience, even the experience of God. But the goal is not more experience. The goal of life is God.
5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. (Mark 9:2 - 10)
The Transfiguration story is important at several levels. It is especially challenging to those who have given themselves to an intentional journey of deepening life in God. Within a narrative full of movement (Jesus took . . . led them . . . they were coming down . . . all indicating journey and action), Peter gets struck by how "good it is for us to be here" and his desire to erect shelters, tabernacles, or booths. His suggestion that they create a memorial marker speaks to the perpetual human tendency to freeze spiritual experience in time, to codify the experience in order to remember it and perhaps to have it again at some later time.
Did you have a meaningful spiritual experience at this particular retreat center? Then go to that place again, and see if you can replicate that experience.
Did you sense God speaking to you through this book or author 10 years ago? Then read the book again, or another by the same author, and God will repeat the vision.
Did you find a particular set of spiritual practices meaningful to you as an adolescent? Then return to those practices in order to have a similar spiritual experience.
Did something significant happen to you today? Take a picture, post it to Facebook, and set it to your social media timeline. Next year on this date you'll be reminded of what happened today.
Was a particular sermon or worship experience meaningful to you? Buy the cd of the sermon and service . . . you can replay it as you drive around town, and be reminded always of the way you felt God come close in that experience.
Of course, these methods are not all bad, and I'm not suggesting there is never a place for them. All of them, however, are attempts to recreate a particular experience of God. There are so many different ways to build shelters and set up monuments to spiritual experience, just as Peter suggested on the mountain.
The real danger in the spiritual life is that the experience itself becomes a commodity, sought in and for itself. Most humans are complete addicts in this way . . . when something feels good, especially when we feel we have tapped into the numinous in a significant way, we want more of it. We want to repeat the same experience of peace . . . we want to have the same sense of generosity again . . . we want to know ourselves loved deep-down, not just for a moment, but always.
Addiction to spiritual experience is especially seductive, and because it is "spiritual," we assume it must be good. If a little is good, then more must be better, right?
Hear Thomas Merton:
The one great danger that confronts every person who takes spiritual experience seriously, is the danger of illuminism or, in Monsignor Ronald Knox's term, "enthusiasm". Here the problem is that of taking one's subjective experience so seriously that it becomes more important than truth, more important than God. Once spiritual experience becomes objectified, it turns into an idol. It becomes a "thing", a "reality" which we serve. We are not created for the service of any "thing", but for the service of God alone, Who is not and cannot be a "thing". To serve Him Who is no "object" is freedom. To live for spiritual experience is slavery, and such slavery makes the contemplative life just as secular (though in a more subtle way) as the service of any other "thing", no matter how base: money, pleasure, success. Indeed, the ruin of many potential contemplatives has been this avidity for spiritual success. (The Inner Experience, ed. by Thomas Hart, p. 139.)
The language of "idolatry" hearkens back to the Ten Commandments, which begin with the command to have only one God. To be sure, to use the language of idolatry for something which is seemingly good, like spiritual experience, seems extreme. Yet, that is the very nature of idolatry. Even good things that are not God must not be worshiped.
Let me be clear. I'm for spiritual experience.
Worship may be a spiritual experience.
Retreats may provide an experience of God.
Spiritual practices may open us to spiritual experience.
But spiritual experience is at least one degree away from God. As Merton says, the goal of the spiritual life is not experience, but God . . . to know God in a direct, unmediated way.
For this reason, the Christian mystics have proposed silence and solitude as the most basic contexts for knowing God, rather than some setting in which emotions and excitability were the driving forces. In silence and solitude, there are no words to get in the way, nothing about silence and solitude that can truly be described or prescribed, no way for the experience to be manipulated in order to get a particular experience of God. There is only God in the naked silence.
Also, this is the reason many of the great monastic traditions -- going back to the Desert Abbas and Ammas of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries -- gathered in places which seemed extreme, building monasteries in places that were not lush or aesthetically abundant. Deserts, rocky outcroppings, and frigid tundras have provided monastic settings which tend toward the extremes. They have been chosen most often because their fierceness lends itself to the rawness and immediacy of God, rather than to an excitable religious experience. (20 years ago, Belden Lane's book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, was a testament to this fierceness.)
Again, please do not diminish spiritual experience. Most all of us are prodded forward by spiritual experience, even the experience of God. But the goal is not more experience. The goal of life is God.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Thomas Merton: The Will of God as a Creative Act
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us – by the will of God.
This is my big aim – to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation.
[Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, ed. by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo, (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) p. 125]
This is my big aim – to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation.
[Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, ed. by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo, (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) p. 125]
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
The Journey of Unknowing (part 2): Two Maxims
Those looking for certainties are seldom long on a deepening spiritual path. Many of us have experienced that the life of the Spirit does not offer an abundance of answers as we journey on, but rather more questions. At the same time, however, there also grows more tolerance for the questions, more willingness to let things be unresolved, more acceptance of what we do not know, more willingness to step into areas that seem dark and foreboding in the soul's landscape.
I try to keep these two maxims about spiritual growth before me always. They help me to stay open to whatever is next, whatever comes, whatever is.
1. The spiritual journey is going to take you to a place you cannot imagine.
If you think you know what the destination of your journey looks like, it is not truly a spiritual journey -- that is, guided by Spirit. The spiritual journey means stepping into the unknown, into cloud and darkness, without have a predetermined notion of what the outcome will be.
Many of us begin the journey because we want some specific outcome from it. That's fine. Go ahead and begin the journey that way. But hold the outcome loosely, because eventually you will find your own expectations altered as you realize God has an altogether different goal in mind for you.
Thomas Merton wrote about this sense in which we travel without knowing where exactly we will land.
"No amount of imagination and metaphor can begin to convey what is meant by contemplative experience of God present in one's own soul. . . . It is a kind of interior revolution, drawing the soul inexplicably out of its normal routines of thought and desire to seek what cannot be thought and to grasp what lies beyond all desire. . . . The soul simply plunges into the darkness without knowing why, and tends blindly toward something it knows not. Only later is there a strong, subjective verification of the truth that this "something" toward which the soul is groping is really God Himself and not just an idea of God or a velleity for union with Him." (Merton, The Inner Experience, "Infused Contemplation," pp. 72-73.)
2. The road that takes you to your destination will not be the road you would have chosen for yourself.
Most always, the road that leads to our destination is full of difficulties and the pain of letting go the things -- ideas, beliefs, people, possessions, achievements, and so on -- to which we have clung for happiness over the years or decades. At the very least, we are invited over the course of the journey to be in relationship with those "things" in very different ways than previously.
In reality, we don't get to choose what appears on the path. The road we walk is itself out of our control, beyond our ability to manage, at least if it is a true spiritual path. We don't get to choose the options that are necessarily easy or pain-free, the courses of travel that have least resistance.
For example, I don't have the option of choosing yes or no on the cancers, the deaths, the forced terminations, the hurricanes and floods, the economy, the random acts of violence, the divide between me and family members.
In her classic poem "The Journey," Mary Oliver describes the path that seems to choose many of us. In the middle of the poem she describes the impediments on the journey in this way:
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
(Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Boston: Beacon Press)
"The road full of fallen branches and stones" . . . who chooses that? Yet, most always the spiritual path will be littered with various fallen branches and stones.
As I said previously, if you can imagine the journey's outcome and the path you need to take in order to get there, then you may be on a journey of your own design and your own making. The spiritual journey is a journey laid out, guided, and shepherded by the Spirit of God . . . a journey to which we are invited in trust and faith, not in certainties and absolutes.
I try to keep these two maxims about spiritual growth before me always. They help me to stay open to whatever is next, whatever comes, whatever is.
1. The spiritual journey is going to take you to a place you cannot imagine.
If you think you know what the destination of your journey looks like, it is not truly a spiritual journey -- that is, guided by Spirit. The spiritual journey means stepping into the unknown, into cloud and darkness, without have a predetermined notion of what the outcome will be.
Many of us begin the journey because we want some specific outcome from it. That's fine. Go ahead and begin the journey that way. But hold the outcome loosely, because eventually you will find your own expectations altered as you realize God has an altogether different goal in mind for you.
Thomas Merton wrote about this sense in which we travel without knowing where exactly we will land.
"No amount of imagination and metaphor can begin to convey what is meant by contemplative experience of God present in one's own soul. . . . It is a kind of interior revolution, drawing the soul inexplicably out of its normal routines of thought and desire to seek what cannot be thought and to grasp what lies beyond all desire. . . . The soul simply plunges into the darkness without knowing why, and tends blindly toward something it knows not. Only later is there a strong, subjective verification of the truth that this "something" toward which the soul is groping is really God Himself and not just an idea of God or a velleity for union with Him." (Merton, The Inner Experience, "Infused Contemplation," pp. 72-73.)
2. The road that takes you to your destination will not be the road you would have chosen for yourself.
Most always, the road that leads to our destination is full of difficulties and the pain of letting go the things -- ideas, beliefs, people, possessions, achievements, and so on -- to which we have clung for happiness over the years or decades. At the very least, we are invited over the course of the journey to be in relationship with those "things" in very different ways than previously.
In reality, we don't get to choose what appears on the path. The road we walk is itself out of our control, beyond our ability to manage, at least if it is a true spiritual path. We don't get to choose the options that are necessarily easy or pain-free, the courses of travel that have least resistance.
For example, I don't have the option of choosing yes or no on the cancers, the deaths, the forced terminations, the hurricanes and floods, the economy, the random acts of violence, the divide between me and family members.
In her classic poem "The Journey," Mary Oliver describes the path that seems to choose many of us. In the middle of the poem she describes the impediments on the journey in this way:
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
(Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Boston: Beacon Press)
"The road full of fallen branches and stones" . . . who chooses that? Yet, most always the spiritual path will be littered with various fallen branches and stones.
As I said previously, if you can imagine the journey's outcome and the path you need to take in order to get there, then you may be on a journey of your own design and your own making. The spiritual journey is a journey laid out, guided, and shepherded by the Spirit of God . . . a journey to which we are invited in trust and faith, not in certainties and absolutes.
Friday, June 8, 2018
On Being Contemplative (part 3): "Oh, that we might see better times!"
In two previous posts, I've offered thoughts on being contemplative, reflecting on Thomas Merton's ideas about how active contemplation shapes our lives. I offer these words today as a kind of real-world-fleshing-out of those ideas.
For context, I'll begin with a psalm-prayer:
Offer sacrifices in the right spirit,
and place your trust the Lord.
Many are saying, “Oh, that we might see better times!”
Let your face smile on us, Lord.
You have given me greater joy
than in seasons of abundant harvests of grain and new wine.
I lie down in peace and fall asleep at once,
for only you, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
(Ps. 4:5 - 8)
If the nightly news and up-to-the-minute news feeds via smartphone are your barometer for the world's sanity, then the entire planet is going mad. Each day seems crazier than the last, and each tomorrow promises something even more outlandish that hasn't yet been imagined.
"Oh, that we might see better times!" I read that in Psalm 4 a few days ago and just stopped in my tracks. How perfectly that short line expresses what I feel. And I sense that across the borders separating nations, across political parties, across the many belief-systems to which we cling, this is the prayer -- both quiet and shouted -- that the world's people are praying.
I feel the daily struggle within my own self to hope for and work within some movement, some uprising of people who would honor the dignity of other humans, even those different from my own tribe . . . who would value the planet which is our home more than the monetary gain we can scratch from it . . . who would put the well-being of the whole above self-interest or political gain.
And I know the temptation of looking to some political party or mass movement to gain a return to sanity. Daily, it seems, I have fallen into that trap, scanning news stories looking for some sign that better days are ahead . . . looking for hints from candidates and political parties, initiatives coming from the private sector, something or anything that would be a glimmer of light and would bring some level of sanity to a world gone mad . . . in short, hoping for some change to come by some worldly means.
At least momentarily, this psalm-prayer drew me back to reality. Trust in a political party or in a significant movement or in some legal action is really no trust at all, or at least is not a trust that can bring authentic joy and peace.
In my lifetime, I've watched evangelical and fundamentalist Christians embrace right-wing conservative politicians, parties, and policies, hoping the embrace would lead to systemic change in social/cultural mores. I've also watched moderate and mainline Christians embrace left-wing liberal politicians, parties, and policies, hoping for a systemic re-balance of some of those same social/cultural mores. In effect, Christians from across the spectrum have sought to bring their own brand of Christianity to the public realm by means of political systems. In short, they have trusted organizations, parties, and political appointments, rather than the One who is the Center of life, using cultural systems to bring about spiritual ends.
Most moments, I'm not immune from placing trust in some human institution. Because the desire "that we might see better times" is so deeply rooted within the human psyche, we'll use most any instrument at our disposal to make our notion of "better times" come to pass. In my more grounded moments, though, when I've allowed my roots to run deep and silent into the One who is beyond ideas, programs, and get-better schemes, I recognize that trust in any god that is not GOD goes by the name "idolatry." A political system or economic reality does not have the power to bring about the deep sense of God-connection which is the center of human experience. External systems, ultimately, are insufficient.
At the same time, movements, protests, and altered political landscapes are necessary in order to overturn, or at least speak to, systemic injustices, to right the wrongs which have been ignored. Thus, active engagement in the social and cultural arena may be one of the ways the contemplative person enters the world . . . . in order to serve and act from a core that is being altered by prayer and ongoing attentiveness to the Divine. Deep connection with God, after all, DOES make a difference in who we are with God, self, others, and the world.
So in the moment, some kind of involvement is called for, some kind of stepping into the world's fray. Because the contemplative cannot ignore symptoms or manifestations of societal ills, which have very real consequences for human beings who are in trouble or difficulty . . . wandering refugees, those unjustly incarcerated, abused women and children, immigrants herded across miles, and those on the lower rungs of society who are trapped beneath massive systems of oppression. Those needs are real and the contemplative cannot ignore them.
The engaged contemplative, then, does not withdraw from the world-gone-mad, but rather engages that world from a different center. He/she sees underneath the actual events, the difficulty of situations, the injustices that seem to prevail . . . and as Merton said in a previous post, the contemplative sees the real direction in which events are moving . . . sees the genuine facts in the movements that are characteristic of our times. The contemplative sees the world through a God-shaped lens, and thus is invited to engage the world from an enlarged, more expansive, more loving and merciful center. So the contemplative does not withdraw, but engages with different vision.
Movements and political parties are not the ultimate answer for the contemplative, for movements, parties, and policies can never completely speak to the complexities of the human experience, the human desire for meaning and wholeness. The contemplative, from his or her interior life, seeks a way to step into the world's pain in a way that makes a real difference, in a way that offers mercy to all, in a way that leads to healing and wholeness for the entire human family.
Back to the psalm-prayer . . . which in the end, advocates trust in God's mercy, a connection rooted in God's heart that feeds, nourishes, and sustains . . . and thus keeps a person held in peace, shalom, wholeness, and well-being, no matter what is happening in the world.
I lie down in peace
at once I fall asleep
for you, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
For context, I'll begin with a psalm-prayer:
Offer sacrifices in the right spirit,
and place your trust the Lord.
Many are saying, “Oh, that we might see better times!”
Let your face smile on us, Lord.
You have given me greater joy
than in seasons of abundant harvests of grain and new wine.
I lie down in peace and fall asleep at once,
for only you, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
(Ps. 4:5 - 8)
If the nightly news and up-to-the-minute news feeds via smartphone are your barometer for the world's sanity, then the entire planet is going mad. Each day seems crazier than the last, and each tomorrow promises something even more outlandish that hasn't yet been imagined.
"Oh, that we might see better times!" I read that in Psalm 4 a few days ago and just stopped in my tracks. How perfectly that short line expresses what I feel. And I sense that across the borders separating nations, across political parties, across the many belief-systems to which we cling, this is the prayer -- both quiet and shouted -- that the world's people are praying.
I feel the daily struggle within my own self to hope for and work within some movement, some uprising of people who would honor the dignity of other humans, even those different from my own tribe . . . who would value the planet which is our home more than the monetary gain we can scratch from it . . . who would put the well-being of the whole above self-interest or political gain.
And I know the temptation of looking to some political party or mass movement to gain a return to sanity. Daily, it seems, I have fallen into that trap, scanning news stories looking for some sign that better days are ahead . . . looking for hints from candidates and political parties, initiatives coming from the private sector, something or anything that would be a glimmer of light and would bring some level of sanity to a world gone mad . . . in short, hoping for some change to come by some worldly means.
At least momentarily, this psalm-prayer drew me back to reality. Trust in a political party or in a significant movement or in some legal action is really no trust at all, or at least is not a trust that can bring authentic joy and peace.
In my lifetime, I've watched evangelical and fundamentalist Christians embrace right-wing conservative politicians, parties, and policies, hoping the embrace would lead to systemic change in social/cultural mores. I've also watched moderate and mainline Christians embrace left-wing liberal politicians, parties, and policies, hoping for a systemic re-balance of some of those same social/cultural mores. In effect, Christians from across the spectrum have sought to bring their own brand of Christianity to the public realm by means of political systems. In short, they have trusted organizations, parties, and political appointments, rather than the One who is the Center of life, using cultural systems to bring about spiritual ends.
Most moments, I'm not immune from placing trust in some human institution. Because the desire "that we might see better times" is so deeply rooted within the human psyche, we'll use most any instrument at our disposal to make our notion of "better times" come to pass. In my more grounded moments, though, when I've allowed my roots to run deep and silent into the One who is beyond ideas, programs, and get-better schemes, I recognize that trust in any god that is not GOD goes by the name "idolatry." A political system or economic reality does not have the power to bring about the deep sense of God-connection which is the center of human experience. External systems, ultimately, are insufficient.
At the same time, movements, protests, and altered political landscapes are necessary in order to overturn, or at least speak to, systemic injustices, to right the wrongs which have been ignored. Thus, active engagement in the social and cultural arena may be one of the ways the contemplative person enters the world . . . . in order to serve and act from a core that is being altered by prayer and ongoing attentiveness to the Divine. Deep connection with God, after all, DOES make a difference in who we are with God, self, others, and the world.
So in the moment, some kind of involvement is called for, some kind of stepping into the world's fray. Because the contemplative cannot ignore symptoms or manifestations of societal ills, which have very real consequences for human beings who are in trouble or difficulty . . . wandering refugees, those unjustly incarcerated, abused women and children, immigrants herded across miles, and those on the lower rungs of society who are trapped beneath massive systems of oppression. Those needs are real and the contemplative cannot ignore them.
The engaged contemplative, then, does not withdraw from the world-gone-mad, but rather engages that world from a different center. He/she sees underneath the actual events, the difficulty of situations, the injustices that seem to prevail . . . and as Merton said in a previous post, the contemplative sees the real direction in which events are moving . . . sees the genuine facts in the movements that are characteristic of our times. The contemplative sees the world through a God-shaped lens, and thus is invited to engage the world from an enlarged, more expansive, more loving and merciful center. So the contemplative does not withdraw, but engages with different vision.
Movements and political parties are not the ultimate answer for the contemplative, for movements, parties, and policies can never completely speak to the complexities of the human experience, the human desire for meaning and wholeness. The contemplative, from his or her interior life, seeks a way to step into the world's pain in a way that makes a real difference, in a way that offers mercy to all, in a way that leads to healing and wholeness for the entire human family.
Back to the psalm-prayer . . . which in the end, advocates trust in God's mercy, a connection rooted in God's heart that feeds, nourishes, and sustains . . . and thus keeps a person held in peace, shalom, wholeness, and well-being, no matter what is happening in the world.
I lie down in peace
at once I fall asleep
for you, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Active Contemplation: On Being Contemplative (part 2)
In the previous post, I offered Thomas Merton's thoughts on being contemplative. [If you did not read that post from June 5, you might start there before reading on in this space.] In the larger context of that essay, Merton is describing kinds of contemplation. The words I quoted in that essay refer to what is known as active contemplation, that is, contemplation that a person intends and which is initiated by some exercise, practice, or prayer method on the human side. Centering Prayer and Christian meditation are exercises of active contemplation, for example. The human role in active contemplation is important, in setting our intention, making space for the practice, and actively engaging in a practice that disposes us of union with God. (Classically, active contemplation is held side by side with infused contemplation, in which God acts in God's own way and in God's own time upon the person, apart from the human initiative.)
For Merton, the intent of active contemplation is to see what is real, genuine, true, or authentic. He writes about the "deliberate and sustained effort to detect the will of God in events and to bring one's whole self into harmony with that will." So the contemplative question in a personal event, a national situation, or a world event asks, "What is God's will in this thing happening?" "What is God doing in this situation?"
Contemplative practice (active contemplation) allows a person, over time, to see beneath the surface of events, to detect the current underneath the obvious, to discern the spirit or animating presence that undergirds a circumstance. This kind of contemplative stance, then, does not lead to knee-jerk responses to what lies on the surface, but rather seeks out the deeper meanings, the ways in which God is woven throughout the fabric of events in subtle, almost unseen ways.
The contemplative, for example, might discern that what looks chaotic and divisive on the surface of things, actually is necessary for the dismantling of unjust and oppressive systems. In other words, with a different lens from which to see, the contemplative observes the world from a very different perspective, noticing what is actually happening in a situation rather than what merely appears to be happening.
Merton says, "Active contemplation is centered on the discovery of God's will, that is to say the identification of the real direction which events are taking, especially in our own life." (italics mine)
And again, contemplation "remains in living contact with that which is genuinely true in any traditional movement." (italics mine)
And then, "the contemplative today might be expected to have an intuitive grasp of, and even sympathy for, what is most genuine in the characteristic movements of our time . . ." (italics mine)
This "intuition" for the "real" or the "genuine direction" in events and happenings does not come quickly from our contemplation. It grows slowly over time, as we faithfully, regularly give ourselves to contemplative practice, to silent listening, to interior prayer. And further, it generally comes only when it has been tested over time with what has actually played out in life. In short, what is "real" or "genuine" may not appear for a very long time.
In contemplative prayer, there is a slow, gradual cleansing of my own biases, my own motivations, many of which are unknown to me, at least consciously. Those biases and motivations which have provided the lenses through which I see God, self, others, and the world are slowly revealed through interior prayer. Slowly those biases and motivations are re-formed -- often many, many times -- as God shapes and re-shapes my life, making me the person I was created to be.
Typically, this slow, gradual cleansing of my interior includes seeing God, self, others, and the world in more expansive ways. In my experience, I have never seen someone truly given to active contemplation, who over time saw God, self, others, and the world more narrowly. The movement is most always toward inclusion, not exclusion . . . toward a wider vision of the world, not a more limited vision . . . toward more creativity and expressiveness, not more legalism . . . toward a more expansive view of God and human-kind, not a more limiting view of God and humanity . . . toward a more global perspective, not a more tribal outlook.
Gradually personal biases are more readily noticed. A person active in their contemplative practice is more likely than before to see an issue or an event from the perspective of "the other", more able to consider a circumstance from the vantage point of someone outside their own tribe or affiliation.
Because active contemplation drops us beneath the layers of thoughts and ideas that fill our minds, and into a pure, naked silence with God, there also grows in the contemplative a posture of less judgment. Judgment usually comes as a result of mental commentaries and the predisposed ideas about God, self, other, and the world that live inside us. To drop beneath thoughts and ideas into the pure silence of contemplation, we are connecting with God apart from thoughts, concepts, and verbalizations; thus, there is little space for judgments. Judgment is always connected to a thought or a commentary about life or about "the other", and is rooted in our deeply ingrained ways of seeing life. Apart from thoughts, those judgments have nothing to latch onto. Active contemplation gives us methods for dropping deeper than thought and idea to that place where judgment falls away.
In the excerpt, Merton also says that the contemplative is "able to live within himself/herself."
"She learns to be at home in her own thoughts."
"She becomes to a greater and greater degree independent of exterior supports."
What are exterior supports? They are the opinions, beliefs, ideas, and thoughts of others . . . books, podcasts, newsfeeds, movies, conversations, and more . . . anything outside ourselves from which we gather information. (This blog, I must admit, is an "exterior support"!!) Indeed, each of us relies to some extent on what others think, what others share with us of their own learning or perspective. But our reliance on others can lead us to adopt a structure or belief system that is not truly our own, but rather is an assemblage of what we have picked up from others . . . I am this part Richard Rohr and that part Thomas Keating; this belief comes from Ignatius of Loyola and that insight from Teresa of Avila. We may be stirred or inspired by what someone else thinks or writes or says, but the contemplative asks, "Is that mine?"
Or, "What part of this idea is mine to live out?"
"Does that thought speak to my unique spiritual path?"
"How does that idea inform my own union with God?"
"What is God's invitation in those words for me?"
Those are the kinds of questions carried into our spiritual reflection, our journaling, our creative exploration . . . for these, too, are contemplative practices.
Merton calls it "spiritual creativeness":
*thinking one's own thoughts;
*reaching one's own conclusions;
*looking at one's own life and directing it in accordance with his/her own "inner truth, discovered in meditation and under the eyes of God."
I recognize that some people cannot take this much freedom. Fundamentalism and much conservatism is bound in a narrowly prescribed, dogmatic formula of do's and don'ts, so that a person never has to come to grips with his/her own inner truth. One never has to think one's own thoughts or reach one's own conclusions. He/she believes only what the group believes, what the denomination, the association, the party, the nation, the tribe believes. Once the "true word" or the "party line" is set forth, all personal (and inner freedom) is forfeited for the sake of the so-called "truth".
So we become a mass of men and women who are automatons, thinking only what Fox News or CNN tell us to think . . . only what "being patriotic" tells us to believe . . . only what "being Baptist" or "Pentecostal" or "United Methodist" tells us to think.
According to Merton, being contemplative connects us to God in such a radical way that this Divine union transcends all these other movements and allegiances.
For Merton, the intent of active contemplation is to see what is real, genuine, true, or authentic. He writes about the "deliberate and sustained effort to detect the will of God in events and to bring one's whole self into harmony with that will." So the contemplative question in a personal event, a national situation, or a world event asks, "What is God's will in this thing happening?" "What is God doing in this situation?"
Contemplative practice (active contemplation) allows a person, over time, to see beneath the surface of events, to detect the current underneath the obvious, to discern the spirit or animating presence that undergirds a circumstance. This kind of contemplative stance, then, does not lead to knee-jerk responses to what lies on the surface, but rather seeks out the deeper meanings, the ways in which God is woven throughout the fabric of events in subtle, almost unseen ways.
The contemplative, for example, might discern that what looks chaotic and divisive on the surface of things, actually is necessary for the dismantling of unjust and oppressive systems. In other words, with a different lens from which to see, the contemplative observes the world from a very different perspective, noticing what is actually happening in a situation rather than what merely appears to be happening.
Merton says, "Active contemplation is centered on the discovery of God's will, that is to say the identification of the real direction which events are taking, especially in our own life." (italics mine)
And again, contemplation "remains in living contact with that which is genuinely true in any traditional movement." (italics mine)
And then, "the contemplative today might be expected to have an intuitive grasp of, and even sympathy for, what is most genuine in the characteristic movements of our time . . ." (italics mine)
This "intuition" for the "real" or the "genuine direction" in events and happenings does not come quickly from our contemplation. It grows slowly over time, as we faithfully, regularly give ourselves to contemplative practice, to silent listening, to interior prayer. And further, it generally comes only when it has been tested over time with what has actually played out in life. In short, what is "real" or "genuine" may not appear for a very long time.
In contemplative prayer, there is a slow, gradual cleansing of my own biases, my own motivations, many of which are unknown to me, at least consciously. Those biases and motivations which have provided the lenses through which I see God, self, others, and the world are slowly revealed through interior prayer. Slowly those biases and motivations are re-formed -- often many, many times -- as God shapes and re-shapes my life, making me the person I was created to be.
Typically, this slow, gradual cleansing of my interior includes seeing God, self, others, and the world in more expansive ways. In my experience, I have never seen someone truly given to active contemplation, who over time saw God, self, others, and the world more narrowly. The movement is most always toward inclusion, not exclusion . . . toward a wider vision of the world, not a more limited vision . . . toward more creativity and expressiveness, not more legalism . . . toward a more expansive view of God and human-kind, not a more limiting view of God and humanity . . . toward a more global perspective, not a more tribal outlook.
Gradually personal biases are more readily noticed. A person active in their contemplative practice is more likely than before to see an issue or an event from the perspective of "the other", more able to consider a circumstance from the vantage point of someone outside their own tribe or affiliation.
Because active contemplation drops us beneath the layers of thoughts and ideas that fill our minds, and into a pure, naked silence with God, there also grows in the contemplative a posture of less judgment. Judgment usually comes as a result of mental commentaries and the predisposed ideas about God, self, other, and the world that live inside us. To drop beneath thoughts and ideas into the pure silence of contemplation, we are connecting with God apart from thoughts, concepts, and verbalizations; thus, there is little space for judgments. Judgment is always connected to a thought or a commentary about life or about "the other", and is rooted in our deeply ingrained ways of seeing life. Apart from thoughts, those judgments have nothing to latch onto. Active contemplation gives us methods for dropping deeper than thought and idea to that place where judgment falls away.
In the excerpt, Merton also says that the contemplative is "able to live within himself/herself."
"She learns to be at home in her own thoughts."
"She becomes to a greater and greater degree independent of exterior supports."
What are exterior supports? They are the opinions, beliefs, ideas, and thoughts of others . . . books, podcasts, newsfeeds, movies, conversations, and more . . . anything outside ourselves from which we gather information. (This blog, I must admit, is an "exterior support"!!) Indeed, each of us relies to some extent on what others think, what others share with us of their own learning or perspective. But our reliance on others can lead us to adopt a structure or belief system that is not truly our own, but rather is an assemblage of what we have picked up from others . . . I am this part Richard Rohr and that part Thomas Keating; this belief comes from Ignatius of Loyola and that insight from Teresa of Avila. We may be stirred or inspired by what someone else thinks or writes or says, but the contemplative asks, "Is that mine?"
Or, "What part of this idea is mine to live out?"
"Does that thought speak to my unique spiritual path?"
"How does that idea inform my own union with God?"
"What is God's invitation in those words for me?"
Those are the kinds of questions carried into our spiritual reflection, our journaling, our creative exploration . . . for these, too, are contemplative practices.
Merton calls it "spiritual creativeness":
*thinking one's own thoughts;
*reaching one's own conclusions;
*looking at one's own life and directing it in accordance with his/her own "inner truth, discovered in meditation and under the eyes of God."
I recognize that some people cannot take this much freedom. Fundamentalism and much conservatism is bound in a narrowly prescribed, dogmatic formula of do's and don'ts, so that a person never has to come to grips with his/her own inner truth. One never has to think one's own thoughts or reach one's own conclusions. He/she believes only what the group believes, what the denomination, the association, the party, the nation, the tribe believes. Once the "true word" or the "party line" is set forth, all personal (and inner freedom) is forfeited for the sake of the so-called "truth".
So we become a mass of men and women who are automatons, thinking only what Fox News or CNN tell us to think . . . only what "being patriotic" tells us to believe . . . only what "being Baptist" or "Pentecostal" or "United Methodist" tells us to think.
According to Merton, being contemplative connects us to God in such a radical way that this Divine union transcends all these other movements and allegiances.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
On Being "Contemplative"
In the mid-1990's, I was a Baptist pastor searching for my soul, trying to discover a more grounded, spiritual path for moving through mid-life. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about prayer. Perhaps more importantly, I was experimenting with what I read, trying out the different methods and approaches suggested by Richard Foster and Madame Jeanne Guyon, by Eugene Peterson and Thomas Kelly. I explored liturgical prayer, quiet prayer, charismatic prayer, contemplative prayer, and more. The exploration itself was energizing and somewhat dangerous, especially for a Baptist pastor.
At one point, a friend shared with me some notes he had taken at a "School of Prayer" hosted by his congregation. The "School" was led by Bill Clemmons, a retired Southern Baptist seminary professor. I was drawn to the notes -- and eventually to the person -- first because he was a like-minded Baptist who dared to talk about and write about prayer, but then because within his notes were glimpses of what I had experienced in my own experimentation. I read and re-read those notes, gleaning from them all I could from lifting words off the page.
At some point, I decided I wanted more Bill Clemmons in my life. I got his contact information from my friend and called him in Memphis. One phone call led to another, and soon I found myself being guided by a wise Baptist saint, unlike any other Baptist I had known to that point. At some point, I casually asked if he would be interested in coming to my Baptist congregation on the east side of Houston to offer his School of Prayer. I didn't expect that he would actually do that, and I wasn't prepared for his "Yes!" I had not selected potential dates for the School, nor run the idea past the church leadership, which I would learn over time was not a wise practice. Nevertheless, his answer was "Yes!" and we set in motion plans for him to come to Houston for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday edition of his School of Prayer.
I don't remember a lot of details about that weekend. As with most relationships that turn out to be significant for any of us, my connection with Bill over a long stretch of years shaped me much more than this single encounter. However, the one detail I DO remember from the weekend took place Saturday in the early afternoon. Bill made it clear that whenever he traveled to Houston, he packed plenty of antacids, because he wanted to eat the best Mexican food possible. The antacids meant that he knew his stomach would pay a price, but still he wanted to eat good Mexican food. So after he led the Saturday morning session, I took Bill -- along with my children Sarah and Bradley -- to the Original Ninfa's on Navigation on the East Side of town. We ate outstanding Mexican food. Bill loved it. We talked about Mexican food. Bill engaged with my two children. He and I talked about our experiences of prayer.
And there, over Mama Ninfa's enchiladas, Bill asked me, "How long have you been a contemplative?"
I had never been asked that question before. And I don't think, up to that moment, I thought of myself as a "contemplative." I was exploring the landscape of prayer, and I had explored some contemplative forms of prayer. But never in my wildest imagination had I considered myself a contemplative.
I have no idea what prompted Bill to ask. I never asked him in all the subsequent years of our friendship. And I don't remember how I answered him.
I will say, though, that within 5 years of those Ninfa's enchiladas, the word "contemplative" was one of the key words I began using to describe my desired way of being in the world, the way I wanted to see the world, the way I wanted to relate to God, self, others, and the created world.
Bill Clemmons helped expose me to others who would help give expression to what it means to be contemplative in the world. Among those Bill commended to me was Thomas Merton. Merton articulated as well as anyone the meaning and importance of being contemplative. Merton was convinced that a contemplative stance toward life, centered in God and active in the world, could change the world in which we live.
I'll share some of Merton's ideas here [from The Inner Experience: Kinds of Contemplation (IV), selected and edited by Patrick Hart from articles reprinted in Cistercian Studies Quarterly Review 18 (1983), pp. 290ff], then in another post try to give some flesh to what it means to be contemplative in the contemporary milieu.
In active contemplation, there is a deliberate and sustained effort to detect the will of God in events and to bring one's whole self into harmony with that will. . . . Active contemplation is centered on the discovery of God's will, that is to say the identification of the real direction which events are taking, especially in our own life. . . .
The contemplative mind is, in fact, not normally ultra-conservative; but neither is it necessarily radical. It transcends both these extremes in order to remain in living contact with that which is genuinely true in any traditional movement. Hence I would say in parentheses that the contemplative mind today will not normally be associated too firmly or too definitively with any "movement" whether political, religious, liturgical, artistic, philosophical or what have you. The contemplative stays clear of movements, not because they confuse him, but simply because he does not need them and can go farther by himself than he can in their formalized and often fanatical ranks.
Nevertheless active contemplation should be to a great extent in contact with the logos of its age. Which means in simple fact that the contemplative today might be expected to have an intuitive grasp of, and even sympathy for, what is most genuine in the characteristic movements of our time -- Marxism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, eirenism [aimed at making peace; reconciling various denominational traditions (jw)]. They may even at times present a serious temptation for him. But if he is a genuine contemplative he will be able to resist temptation because his contemplation itself will instinctively avoid becoming enmeshed in conceptual systems. I say if he is a genuine contemplative, meaning, "if he is sufficiently initiated into the meaning and value of a spiritual life to prefer its simplicity to all the complexities and pretenses of these intellectual fads and campaigns".
In active contemplation, a man becomes able to live within himself. He learns to be at home with his own thoughts. He becomes to a greater and greater degree independent of exterior supports. His mind is pacified not by passive dependence on things outside himself -- diversions, entertainments, conversations, business -- but by its own constructive activity. That is to say that he derives inner satisfaction from spiritual creativeness: thinking his own thoughts, reaching his own conclusions, looking at his own life and directing it in accordance with his own inner truth, discovered in meditation and under the eyes of God. He derives strength not from what he gets out of things and people, but from giving himself to life and to others. He discovers the secret of life in the creative energy of love -- not love as a sentiment or sensual indulgence, but as a profound and self-oblative expression of freedom.
At one point, a friend shared with me some notes he had taken at a "School of Prayer" hosted by his congregation. The "School" was led by Bill Clemmons, a retired Southern Baptist seminary professor. I was drawn to the notes -- and eventually to the person -- first because he was a like-minded Baptist who dared to talk about and write about prayer, but then because within his notes were glimpses of what I had experienced in my own experimentation. I read and re-read those notes, gleaning from them all I could from lifting words off the page.
At some point, I decided I wanted more Bill Clemmons in my life. I got his contact information from my friend and called him in Memphis. One phone call led to another, and soon I found myself being guided by a wise Baptist saint, unlike any other Baptist I had known to that point. At some point, I casually asked if he would be interested in coming to my Baptist congregation on the east side of Houston to offer his School of Prayer. I didn't expect that he would actually do that, and I wasn't prepared for his "Yes!" I had not selected potential dates for the School, nor run the idea past the church leadership, which I would learn over time was not a wise practice. Nevertheless, his answer was "Yes!" and we set in motion plans for him to come to Houston for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday edition of his School of Prayer.
I don't remember a lot of details about that weekend. As with most relationships that turn out to be significant for any of us, my connection with Bill over a long stretch of years shaped me much more than this single encounter. However, the one detail I DO remember from the weekend took place Saturday in the early afternoon. Bill made it clear that whenever he traveled to Houston, he packed plenty of antacids, because he wanted to eat the best Mexican food possible. The antacids meant that he knew his stomach would pay a price, but still he wanted to eat good Mexican food. So after he led the Saturday morning session, I took Bill -- along with my children Sarah and Bradley -- to the Original Ninfa's on Navigation on the East Side of town. We ate outstanding Mexican food. Bill loved it. We talked about Mexican food. Bill engaged with my two children. He and I talked about our experiences of prayer.
And there, over Mama Ninfa's enchiladas, Bill asked me, "How long have you been a contemplative?"
I had never been asked that question before. And I don't think, up to that moment, I thought of myself as a "contemplative." I was exploring the landscape of prayer, and I had explored some contemplative forms of prayer. But never in my wildest imagination had I considered myself a contemplative.
I have no idea what prompted Bill to ask. I never asked him in all the subsequent years of our friendship. And I don't remember how I answered him.
I will say, though, that within 5 years of those Ninfa's enchiladas, the word "contemplative" was one of the key words I began using to describe my desired way of being in the world, the way I wanted to see the world, the way I wanted to relate to God, self, others, and the created world.
Bill Clemmons helped expose me to others who would help give expression to what it means to be contemplative in the world. Among those Bill commended to me was Thomas Merton. Merton articulated as well as anyone the meaning and importance of being contemplative. Merton was convinced that a contemplative stance toward life, centered in God and active in the world, could change the world in which we live.
I'll share some of Merton's ideas here [from The Inner Experience: Kinds of Contemplation (IV), selected and edited by Patrick Hart from articles reprinted in Cistercian Studies Quarterly Review 18 (1983), pp. 290ff], then in another post try to give some flesh to what it means to be contemplative in the contemporary milieu.
In active contemplation, there is a deliberate and sustained effort to detect the will of God in events and to bring one's whole self into harmony with that will. . . . Active contemplation is centered on the discovery of God's will, that is to say the identification of the real direction which events are taking, especially in our own life. . . .
The contemplative mind is, in fact, not normally ultra-conservative; but neither is it necessarily radical. It transcends both these extremes in order to remain in living contact with that which is genuinely true in any traditional movement. Hence I would say in parentheses that the contemplative mind today will not normally be associated too firmly or too definitively with any "movement" whether political, religious, liturgical, artistic, philosophical or what have you. The contemplative stays clear of movements, not because they confuse him, but simply because he does not need them and can go farther by himself than he can in their formalized and often fanatical ranks.
Nevertheless active contemplation should be to a great extent in contact with the logos of its age. Which means in simple fact that the contemplative today might be expected to have an intuitive grasp of, and even sympathy for, what is most genuine in the characteristic movements of our time -- Marxism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, eirenism [aimed at making peace; reconciling various denominational traditions (jw)]. They may even at times present a serious temptation for him. But if he is a genuine contemplative he will be able to resist temptation because his contemplation itself will instinctively avoid becoming enmeshed in conceptual systems. I say if he is a genuine contemplative, meaning, "if he is sufficiently initiated into the meaning and value of a spiritual life to prefer its simplicity to all the complexities and pretenses of these intellectual fads and campaigns".
In active contemplation, a man becomes able to live within himself. He learns to be at home with his own thoughts. He becomes to a greater and greater degree independent of exterior supports. His mind is pacified not by passive dependence on things outside himself -- diversions, entertainments, conversations, business -- but by its own constructive activity. That is to say that he derives inner satisfaction from spiritual creativeness: thinking his own thoughts, reaching his own conclusions, looking at his own life and directing it in accordance with his own inner truth, discovered in meditation and under the eyes of God. He derives strength not from what he gets out of things and people, but from giving himself to life and to others. He discovers the secret of life in the creative energy of love -- not love as a sentiment or sensual indulgence, but as a profound and self-oblative expression of freedom.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Julian of Norwich for Today . . . uh, I mean, "for Yesterday"
The second most famous resident of Norwich (my friend Peter) reminded me that yesterday was the Feast Day of the most famous resident of Norwich, the 14th century saint known as Julian of Norwich. She continues to be an important voice in Christian spirituality and mysticism for many reasons. I'll mention only two of them here, then include an excerpt from the "revelations" or "showings" she received from God on May 8, 1373.
First, Julian was a woman -- in a world dominated by men -- who dared to claim that she had received a vision from God . . . and even more remarkably, dared to write about her vision in a time when women did not make such claims about God nor have the freedom to write about them. From a contemporary perspective, even as women continue to struggle for equality in the world and workplace, it is difficult to overstate how radical was Julian's courage in the 14th century.
Second, as Julian reported the revelation she received, she drew a picture of a God very different from the images of God that dominated her time. Rather than portraying God as a harsh ogre who was intent on punishing people for sin, a God who was angry with humans, full of vindictive spite, Julian reported her encounter with a God who was all love. God is "our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us" with a tender love that will never desert us. (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
Julian's well-known vision of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of her hand, illustrated her sense of God's always-everywhere love: "What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God." (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
She also noted that God was as much "Mother" as "Father", and that all the attributes of a loving, nurturing mother are found in God . . . again, a brave and radical notion for her time (and still difficult for many modern persons to accept!).
Jesus Christ is our true Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which endlessly follows.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest. . . .
And so Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature. All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and safe forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own goodness proper to him.
I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love. . . .
The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously . . . .
(Julian of Norwich: Showings, in Classics of Western Spirituality, pp. 295 – 298)
Finally, Thomas Merton shared his sense of the importance of Julian leaning into her own experience of God, rather than leaning into someone else's God-experience:
Julian of Norwich is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian. She is really that. For she reasons from her experience of the substantial center of the great Christian mystery of Redemption. She gives her experience and her deductions, clearly, separating the two. And the experience is of course nothing merely subjective. It is the objective mystery of Christ as apprehended by her, with the mind and formation of a fourteenth century English woman.
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, pp. 274 – 275)
First, Julian was a woman -- in a world dominated by men -- who dared to claim that she had received a vision from God . . . and even more remarkably, dared to write about her vision in a time when women did not make such claims about God nor have the freedom to write about them. From a contemporary perspective, even as women continue to struggle for equality in the world and workplace, it is difficult to overstate how radical was Julian's courage in the 14th century.
Second, as Julian reported the revelation she received, she drew a picture of a God very different from the images of God that dominated her time. Rather than portraying God as a harsh ogre who was intent on punishing people for sin, a God who was angry with humans, full of vindictive spite, Julian reported her encounter with a God who was all love. God is "our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us" with a tender love that will never desert us. (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
Julian's well-known vision of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of her hand, illustrated her sense of God's always-everywhere love: "What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God." (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
She also noted that God was as much "Mother" as "Father", and that all the attributes of a loving, nurturing mother are found in God . . . again, a brave and radical notion for her time (and still difficult for many modern persons to accept!).
Jesus Christ is our true Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which endlessly follows.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest. . . .
And so Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature. All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and safe forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own goodness proper to him.
I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love. . . .
The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously . . . .
(Julian of Norwich: Showings, in Classics of Western Spirituality, pp. 295 – 298)
Finally, Thomas Merton shared his sense of the importance of Julian leaning into her own experience of God, rather than leaning into someone else's God-experience:
Julian of Norwich is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian. She is really that. For she reasons from her experience of the substantial center of the great Christian mystery of Redemption. She gives her experience and her deductions, clearly, separating the two. And the experience is of course nothing merely subjective. It is the objective mystery of Christ as apprehended by her, with the mind and formation of a fourteenth century English woman.
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, pp. 274 – 275)
Friday, December 18, 2015
For Those Weary of Planning for and Talking about Christmas
"I'm tired of planning for and talking about Christmas. I just want some space to sit with it, apart from the many self-imposed distractions and tugs that scatter my attention."
I said these words last week to some friends as we talked about our experience of Advent and Christmas. I've been planning Advent and Christmas services since early November. I've been talking about Christmas, both in writing and in speech for almost that long. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of talking about the concept and planning for the experience. It feels blasphemous that I should want something to be ended before it has even arrived -- especially something so "holy" as Christmas. Yet, that is the honest truth about my interior state.
And I feel this way not only about the planning that is part of my daily work. My personal planning for Christmas is nearly shot, also. Day after day I'm haunted by inner voices that whisper, "But what are you going to buy so-and-so? . . . and what about a gift for what's-her-name? . . ." Shadowy voices rumble around within me, voices of compulsion and drivenness. Some years my gift-giving is divinely inspired -- the year I gave my golfing friends Titleist golf balls inscribed with, "MEDITATE THIS, THOMAS MERTON!" -- but not so this year. It's been a grinding chore. I'm about to give in, now one week before Christmas, go to Amazon.com, and hit the "BUY!" button: "Squatty Potties for everyone!!" I'd have them in hand for distribution by December 22.
One of my friends, to whom I vented about my weariness over Christmas talk and planning, asked a helpful clarifying question: "If you were able just to sit with the season, what would you find?"
I don't know what I'd find. I believe there would be much less compulsion and drivenness crowding the soul-space. Maybe there would be simple openness, even emptiness. As it is, I sit each morning in my mauve rocker with the worn armrests, reading Advent and Christmas texts, waiting for something to come at me . . . waiting to hear . . . waiting to catch a glimpse. Little seems to move toward me. It's mostly just sitting in a space in which precious little seems to be going on . . . except the compulsiveness, the self-guilt over my sad gift-giving, and the weariness that accompanies those voices.
In fact, I feels something like a kind of "virgin" through the season, as the Virgin Mary entered her own experience in emptiness and simple openness. (I have more thoughts on the "virginity" to which the season invites us . . . I may share them in this space in a few days.)
To be sure, I look at my calendar and see services, events, gatherings, where I am compelled to have something to say about Christmas . . . and I will gladly step into those places . . . after all, I'd hate to waste all this great planning and strategizing of the last two months.
But mostly, I'm longing for no thinking, no words, no strategizing, no talking about. Instead, simply a sitting-in. A being-with.
And IF you find a Squatty Potty under your Christmas tree . . .
I said these words last week to some friends as we talked about our experience of Advent and Christmas. I've been planning Advent and Christmas services since early November. I've been talking about Christmas, both in writing and in speech for almost that long. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of talking about the concept and planning for the experience. It feels blasphemous that I should want something to be ended before it has even arrived -- especially something so "holy" as Christmas. Yet, that is the honest truth about my interior state.
And I feel this way not only about the planning that is part of my daily work. My personal planning for Christmas is nearly shot, also. Day after day I'm haunted by inner voices that whisper, "But what are you going to buy so-and-so? . . . and what about a gift for what's-her-name? . . ." Shadowy voices rumble around within me, voices of compulsion and drivenness. Some years my gift-giving is divinely inspired -- the year I gave my golfing friends Titleist golf balls inscribed with, "MEDITATE THIS, THOMAS MERTON!" -- but not so this year. It's been a grinding chore. I'm about to give in, now one week before Christmas, go to Amazon.com, and hit the "BUY!" button: "Squatty Potties for everyone!!" I'd have them in hand for distribution by December 22.
One of my friends, to whom I vented about my weariness over Christmas talk and planning, asked a helpful clarifying question: "If you were able just to sit with the season, what would you find?"
I don't know what I'd find. I believe there would be much less compulsion and drivenness crowding the soul-space. Maybe there would be simple openness, even emptiness. As it is, I sit each morning in my mauve rocker with the worn armrests, reading Advent and Christmas texts, waiting for something to come at me . . . waiting to hear . . . waiting to catch a glimpse. Little seems to move toward me. It's mostly just sitting in a space in which precious little seems to be going on . . . except the compulsiveness, the self-guilt over my sad gift-giving, and the weariness that accompanies those voices.
In fact, I feels something like a kind of "virgin" through the season, as the Virgin Mary entered her own experience in emptiness and simple openness. (I have more thoughts on the "virginity" to which the season invites us . . . I may share them in this space in a few days.)
To be sure, I look at my calendar and see services, events, gatherings, where I am compelled to have something to say about Christmas . . . and I will gladly step into those places . . . after all, I'd hate to waste all this great planning and strategizing of the last two months.
But mostly, I'm longing for no thinking, no words, no strategizing, no talking about. Instead, simply a sitting-in. A being-with.
And IF you find a Squatty Potty under your Christmas tree . . .
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Humility Is More Important Than Zeal
In a journal entry from December 1961, Thomas Merton wrote simply: “Humility is more important than zeal.” The Trappist monk had been speaking into social issues that were important to him, and had been investing a lot of time and energy in writing articles that might have some sway on the cultural landscape.
In short, there was a whole lot of Merton invested in these issues and causes. One magazine editor wrote him a letter, explaining that they would publish one of his opinion pieces in their magazine, but to be assured that the piece would cause a firestorm. And in some ways, Merton was ready to engage the fight from his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the Kentucky hills.
But then, this line: “Humility is more important than zeal.” More on Merton in a moment.
My religious background taught me that zeal was very important, that what really mattered was a person’s “fervor for the Lord.” There was even an expression for those who seemed most zealous: they were “on fire for the Lord!”
But in that tradition we talked little – none, that I actually can remember – about humility. We never talked about out-of-check ego. We never talked about the dangers of power run amuck.
What ended up happening, at least from my observation, is that those who were most zealous, those who pressed and pressed and pressed “for God” ended up burning out – myself included, for a season – and dropping out . . . sometimes bitter than they had “done so much for God” but without seeing the results they wanted . . . or resentful that while they had “given their all for God,” God didn’t seem to reward them as they expected. Some gave up the Church. Some gave up God. Others plugged on through the burn-out, convinced that the lack of reward for their zeal was connected to some sin within them that God would not tolerate nor honor. It’s a difficult, recurring cycle that lives within many of us.
I’m not in Merton’s head, but from what he writes, I think he had the sense that zeal really came down to his own efforts, dependent upon his own energy to bring about the ends for which he labored. Humility, on the other hand, kept him grounded in both his strengths and his weaknesses . . . in both his light and his shadow . . . in both his gifts and his brokenness. Humility took him out of the driver’s seat, so he didn’t have to manage the issues and manipulate the outcomes. He could do whatever was his to do, and leave the end to God.
The issues for me are different from Merton’s issues, but I want to affirm along with him that humility is more important than zeal. Zeal is about our human energy, our own desire to move things. Humility is rooted in truth . . . the truth about ourselves and the truth about our world.
I carry with me his words this week: “Humility is more important than zeal.”
In short, there was a whole lot of Merton invested in these issues and causes. One magazine editor wrote him a letter, explaining that they would publish one of his opinion pieces in their magazine, but to be assured that the piece would cause a firestorm. And in some ways, Merton was ready to engage the fight from his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the Kentucky hills.
But then, this line: “Humility is more important than zeal.” More on Merton in a moment.
My religious background taught me that zeal was very important, that what really mattered was a person’s “fervor for the Lord.” There was even an expression for those who seemed most zealous: they were “on fire for the Lord!”
But in that tradition we talked little – none, that I actually can remember – about humility. We never talked about out-of-check ego. We never talked about the dangers of power run amuck.
What ended up happening, at least from my observation, is that those who were most zealous, those who pressed and pressed and pressed “for God” ended up burning out – myself included, for a season – and dropping out . . . sometimes bitter than they had “done so much for God” but without seeing the results they wanted . . . or resentful that while they had “given their all for God,” God didn’t seem to reward them as they expected. Some gave up the Church. Some gave up God. Others plugged on through the burn-out, convinced that the lack of reward for their zeal was connected to some sin within them that God would not tolerate nor honor. It’s a difficult, recurring cycle that lives within many of us.
I’m not in Merton’s head, but from what he writes, I think he had the sense that zeal really came down to his own efforts, dependent upon his own energy to bring about the ends for which he labored. Humility, on the other hand, kept him grounded in both his strengths and his weaknesses . . . in both his light and his shadow . . . in both his gifts and his brokenness. Humility took him out of the driver’s seat, so he didn’t have to manage the issues and manipulate the outcomes. He could do whatever was his to do, and leave the end to God.
The issues for me are different from Merton’s issues, but I want to affirm along with him that humility is more important than zeal. Zeal is about our human energy, our own desire to move things. Humility is rooted in truth . . . the truth about ourselves and the truth about our world.
I carry with me his words this week: “Humility is more important than zeal.”
Sunday, July 1, 2012
More Seeing the Interior: What Makes Us Human?
Matthew 8:5 - 13
When Jesus was going into the town of Capernaum, an army officer came up to him and said, “Lord, my servant is at home in such terrible pain that he can’t even move.”
“I will go and heal him,” Jesus replied.
But the officer said, “Lord, I’m not good enough for you to come into my house. Just give the order, and my servant will get well. I have officers who give orders to me, and I have soldiers who take orders from me. I can say to one of them, ‘Go!’ and he goes. I can say to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes. I can say to my servant, ‘Do this!’ and he will do it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was so surprised that he turned and said to the crowd following him, “I tell you that in all of Israel I’ve never found anyone with this much faith! Many people will come from everywhere to enjoy the feast in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the ones who should have been in the kingdom will be thrown out into the dark. They will cry and grit their teeth in pain.”
Then Jesus said to the officer, “You may go home now. Your faith has made it happen.”
Right then his servant was healed.
Like all of us, this man had countless identities, several of which are named in this narrative.
He was a Roman, that is, he represented the Empire. And the Roman Empire was the occupying entity. It represented, for many Jews and Christians, the empire that existed counter to what they thought was "God's Empire." In some ways, the very designation "Roman" suggested "pagan" or "godless."
He was a centurion, a soldier, an officer in the military. As the story unfolds, he is a person of power, both under the authority of others, and with his own authority. By his identification with the military, perhaps the story infers that he is also a person of violence.
He was a Gentile, that is, a non-Jew. He lived and existed outside the Jewish Law and, in popular thought anyway, outside the covenant God had cut with the chosen people. In that sense, he was a foreigner, an outsider.
He was a slave owner. He had servants underneath him. He owned and controlled other people, more than his military command.
These are some of the outer labels by which this man could be identified. By these labels, he would have been embraced by some and shunned by others.
But Jesus did not deal with him at the level of these roles and exterior identities. Sacred Space, the Irish Jesuit prayer guide, says about Jesus' relationship to this man, "Jesus' life and prayer showed him that the narrow definitions of race, gender, and holiness were false."
Those narrow definitions never say everything about us that could be said. They make small. They limit. They stereotype. They box us in on the basis of one or two labels. They invite human judgments based on a very narrow field of evidence.
For example, in casual conversations -- on airplanes, in waiting rooms, etc. -- if possible I usually resist saying to another person that I am a minister. Because as soon as I say that word, the tenor of the conversation changes. It becomes more superficial. Among some there is embarrassment. Among others, a desire to hide or to apologize for their lives. And in many situations, the word "minister" has completely shut down the conversation.
And I, for my part, find myself spending too much time trying to break out of the stereotype, trying to defend my role, to be a "different" kind of minister, or white male, or whatever my role is.
In truth, none of us can be reduced to a job title, or a political party, or a sexual orientation . . . none of those categories are large enough, expansive enough to hold the weight of our being.
What is most true about you and me cannot be bounded by these descriptions. What is most true about us transcends. It resists simple labeling. These small identities I carry around do not make me more human. They likely make me less so. They reduce me to function. They make me small, manageable and predictable. They are not reflective of my truest self.
Jesus didn't see this man as a Roman, or as a soldier, or as a Gentile, or as a master. Well, of course he knew these things about the man, and acknowledged them. How could he miss them? But he did not relate to the man out of those categories. He looked inside. He saw the the man's interior, peering into what made this hurting, grieving man most human. And there, Jesus met him.
I believe that's how Jesus sees all of us. He sees to the core. He sees the interior. He sees what makes us human.
Thomas Merton said in New Seeds of Contemplation that these identities we carry around and invest value in are like wrapping ourselves in one long bandage. We begin to believe the wrapping is who we are . . . and Merton said that all too often, because we have invested so much in the bandage, we are hollow people inside.
Jesus sees beneath the exterior to what makes us human. He sees beneath the superficiality to our pain and brokenness and true giftedness. The way he dealt with this man in the Gospel is a type of how he continues to relate to you and me.
When Jesus was going into the town of Capernaum, an army officer came up to him and said, “Lord, my servant is at home in such terrible pain that he can’t even move.”
“I will go and heal him,” Jesus replied.
But the officer said, “Lord, I’m not good enough for you to come into my house. Just give the order, and my servant will get well. I have officers who give orders to me, and I have soldiers who take orders from me. I can say to one of them, ‘Go!’ and he goes. I can say to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes. I can say to my servant, ‘Do this!’ and he will do it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was so surprised that he turned and said to the crowd following him, “I tell you that in all of Israel I’ve never found anyone with this much faith! Many people will come from everywhere to enjoy the feast in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the ones who should have been in the kingdom will be thrown out into the dark. They will cry and grit their teeth in pain.”
Then Jesus said to the officer, “You may go home now. Your faith has made it happen.”
Right then his servant was healed.
Like all of us, this man had countless identities, several of which are named in this narrative.
He was a Roman, that is, he represented the Empire. And the Roman Empire was the occupying entity. It represented, for many Jews and Christians, the empire that existed counter to what they thought was "God's Empire." In some ways, the very designation "Roman" suggested "pagan" or "godless."
He was a centurion, a soldier, an officer in the military. As the story unfolds, he is a person of power, both under the authority of others, and with his own authority. By his identification with the military, perhaps the story infers that he is also a person of violence.
He was a Gentile, that is, a non-Jew. He lived and existed outside the Jewish Law and, in popular thought anyway, outside the covenant God had cut with the chosen people. In that sense, he was a foreigner, an outsider.
He was a slave owner. He had servants underneath him. He owned and controlled other people, more than his military command.
These are some of the outer labels by which this man could be identified. By these labels, he would have been embraced by some and shunned by others.
But Jesus did not deal with him at the level of these roles and exterior identities. Sacred Space, the Irish Jesuit prayer guide, says about Jesus' relationship to this man, "Jesus' life and prayer showed him that the narrow definitions of race, gender, and holiness were false."
Those narrow definitions never say everything about us that could be said. They make small. They limit. They stereotype. They box us in on the basis of one or two labels. They invite human judgments based on a very narrow field of evidence.
For example, in casual conversations -- on airplanes, in waiting rooms, etc. -- if possible I usually resist saying to another person that I am a minister. Because as soon as I say that word, the tenor of the conversation changes. It becomes more superficial. Among some there is embarrassment. Among others, a desire to hide or to apologize for their lives. And in many situations, the word "minister" has completely shut down the conversation.
And I, for my part, find myself spending too much time trying to break out of the stereotype, trying to defend my role, to be a "different" kind of minister, or white male, or whatever my role is.
In truth, none of us can be reduced to a job title, or a political party, or a sexual orientation . . . none of those categories are large enough, expansive enough to hold the weight of our being.
What is most true about you and me cannot be bounded by these descriptions. What is most true about us transcends. It resists simple labeling. These small identities I carry around do not make me more human. They likely make me less so. They reduce me to function. They make me small, manageable and predictable. They are not reflective of my truest self.
Jesus didn't see this man as a Roman, or as a soldier, or as a Gentile, or as a master. Well, of course he knew these things about the man, and acknowledged them. How could he miss them? But he did not relate to the man out of those categories. He looked inside. He saw the the man's interior, peering into what made this hurting, grieving man most human. And there, Jesus met him.
I believe that's how Jesus sees all of us. He sees to the core. He sees the interior. He sees what makes us human.
Thomas Merton said in New Seeds of Contemplation that these identities we carry around and invest value in are like wrapping ourselves in one long bandage. We begin to believe the wrapping is who we are . . . and Merton said that all too often, because we have invested so much in the bandage, we are hollow people inside.
Jesus sees beneath the exterior to what makes us human. He sees beneath the superficiality to our pain and brokenness and true giftedness. The way he dealt with this man in the Gospel is a type of how he continues to relate to you and me.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Amazed at What You Find Within
Thomas Merton followed Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century) in writing about the three Advents of Christ. The first Advent, Bernard said, was the coming of Christ in human form, born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.
The third Advent will be the coming of Christ again at the end of the age.
During the season of Advent, we give most of our time to the first Advent, and a little less to the third Advent.
We seem to be slowly recovering the second Advent, which according to Bernard and Merton, is the continual coming of Christ into our lives in our times. This is an ongoing Advent that happens every day within us and in our world. Christ is born into our life-world momently, whether we notice his coming or not.
Thus, Meister Eckhart and others have urged us to prepare a space within our hearts for his birth every day -- not just for one day or one season a year!
Merton put it this way in Seven Storey Mountain: "The soul of a monk is a Bethlehem where Christ comes to be born." And not only monks, but all who give themselves to Jesus in openness and with intention, are invited to open up the stable of the heart, the Bethlehem of the heart to allow Christ's birth within.
I am drawn to meditations and art that help me open up to this birth. It can be hard to trust that God could birth something of value within me . . . yet deep within I believe that is what God does in and with each one of us. Like Mary, we open ourselves to God's work within us and we, too, bear Christ constantly in our lives.
These words, written by Kathleen Norris, helped me believe today that Jesus is being birthed in me.
The job of any preacher, it seems to me, is not to dismiss the Annunciation because it doesn’t appeal to modern prejudices but to remind congregations of why it might still be an important story. I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation. “The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary,” he said, “is to give her a new name: ‘Most favored one.’ It’s a naming ceremony,” he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners. When I brood on the story of the Annunciation, I like to think about what it means to be “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit; I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn’t what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself. I think of James Wright’s little poem “Trouble,” and the wonder of his pregnant mill-town girl. The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself. “Sixteen years, and / all that time, she thought she was nothing / but skin and bones.” . . . Told all her life that she is “nothing,” the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality. A mystery: something holy, with a potential for salvation. The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail. Could it be a form of virgin birth?
[Meditations on Mary: With Essays by Kathleen Norris (New York: Viking Studio, 1999), 30 – 31.]
The third Advent will be the coming of Christ again at the end of the age.
During the season of Advent, we give most of our time to the first Advent, and a little less to the third Advent.
We seem to be slowly recovering the second Advent, which according to Bernard and Merton, is the continual coming of Christ into our lives in our times. This is an ongoing Advent that happens every day within us and in our world. Christ is born into our life-world momently, whether we notice his coming or not.
Thus, Meister Eckhart and others have urged us to prepare a space within our hearts for his birth every day -- not just for one day or one season a year!
Merton put it this way in Seven Storey Mountain: "The soul of a monk is a Bethlehem where Christ comes to be born." And not only monks, but all who give themselves to Jesus in openness and with intention, are invited to open up the stable of the heart, the Bethlehem of the heart to allow Christ's birth within.
I am drawn to meditations and art that help me open up to this birth. It can be hard to trust that God could birth something of value within me . . . yet deep within I believe that is what God does in and with each one of us. Like Mary, we open ourselves to God's work within us and we, too, bear Christ constantly in our lives.
These words, written by Kathleen Norris, helped me believe today that Jesus is being birthed in me.
The job of any preacher, it seems to me, is not to dismiss the Annunciation because it doesn’t appeal to modern prejudices but to remind congregations of why it might still be an important story. I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation. “The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary,” he said, “is to give her a new name: ‘Most favored one.’ It’s a naming ceremony,” he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners. When I brood on the story of the Annunciation, I like to think about what it means to be “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit; I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn’t what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself. I think of James Wright’s little poem “Trouble,” and the wonder of his pregnant mill-town girl. The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself. “Sixteen years, and / all that time, she thought she was nothing / but skin and bones.” . . . Told all her life that she is “nothing,” the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality. A mystery: something holy, with a potential for salvation. The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail. Could it be a form of virgin birth?
[Meditations on Mary: With Essays by Kathleen Norris (New York: Viking Studio, 1999), 30 – 31.]
Friday, December 9, 2011
The Advent Prose -- An Ancient Prayer for the Season
On December 9, 1962, Thomas Merton referred in his journal to a text that was shaping his prayer for peace. The text is called, in Latin, the Rorate Coeli, and is taken from Isaiah. The Latin text is attributed to Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a 4th century author, and has been said or sung for centuries during Advent, mostly in Anglican and Roman Catholic settings.
After seeing the reference in Merton's journal from 49 years ago, I was curious about this ancient text. I found that it is commonly known as The Advent Prose, and in some circles used quite frequently for liturgical prayer in corporate worship during this season.
But it also is helpful as a personal, devotional prayer-tool. As I've stayed with this prayer over the last few days, I've found it compelling, and its imagery has led me to some unexpected places in my own meditation. I'll share The Advent Prose (Rorate Coeli) with you below. You can find more information about it at http://topmostapple.blogspot.com/2011/11/advent-prose-2011.html
The core piece of this section of the prayer is taken from the Latin translation (Vulgate) of Isaiah 45:8, and is a prayer for God to bring forth a Saviour.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Be not very angry, O Lord, neither remember our iniquity for ever:
thy holy cities are a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation:
our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing,
and we all do fade as a leaf:
our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away;
thou hast hid thy face from us:
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen;
that ye may know me and believe me:
I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour:
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, my salvation shall not tarry:
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions:
fear not for I will save thee:
for I am the Lord thy God, the holy one of Israel, thy Redeemer.
After seeing the reference in Merton's journal from 49 years ago, I was curious about this ancient text. I found that it is commonly known as The Advent Prose, and in some circles used quite frequently for liturgical prayer in corporate worship during this season.
But it also is helpful as a personal, devotional prayer-tool. As I've stayed with this prayer over the last few days, I've found it compelling, and its imagery has led me to some unexpected places in my own meditation. I'll share The Advent Prose (Rorate Coeli) with you below. You can find more information about it at http://topmostapple.blogspot.com/2011/11/advent-prose-2011.html
The core piece of this section of the prayer is taken from the Latin translation (Vulgate) of Isaiah 45:8, and is a prayer for God to bring forth a Saviour.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Be not very angry, O Lord, neither remember our iniquity for ever:
thy holy cities are a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation:
our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing,
and we all do fade as a leaf:
our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away;
thou hast hid thy face from us:
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen;
that ye may know me and believe me:
I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour:
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour forth righteousness:
let the earth be fruitful, and bring forth a Saviour.
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, my salvation shall not tarry:
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions:
fear not for I will save thee:
for I am the Lord thy God, the holy one of Israel, thy Redeemer.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Merton's Take on Slobbery
In the two previous posts, I referenced Frederick Buechner's imagery of "slobbery." As far as I know, slobbery was not in Thomas Merton's vocabulary, but he did write a lot about the false self and our basic human egotism that believes all of life orbits around me and my tribe.
These are his words from New Seeds of Contemplation. [Note: He wrote on behalf of male monastics, so his language is not inclusive . . . though his words are intended for everyone.]
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.
This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.
My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love -- outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.
We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves -- the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow in what is called a life of sin.
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.
But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake.
The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.
But whatever is in God is really identical with Him, for His infinite simplicity admits no division and no distinction. Therefore I cannot hope to find myself anywhere except in Him.
Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence.
Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.
But although this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult. In fact, if I am left to myself it will be impossible. For although I can know something of God's existence and nature by my own reason, there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.
That is something that no man can ever do alone.
Nor can all the men and all the created things in the universe help him in this work.
The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone.
[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 34 - 36.]
These are his words from New Seeds of Contemplation. [Note: He wrote on behalf of male monastics, so his language is not inclusive . . . though his words are intended for everyone.]
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.
This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.
My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love -- outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.
We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves -- the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow in what is called a life of sin.
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.
But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake.
The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.
But whatever is in God is really identical with Him, for His infinite simplicity admits no division and no distinction. Therefore I cannot hope to find myself anywhere except in Him.
Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence.
Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.
But although this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult. In fact, if I am left to myself it will be impossible. For although I can know something of God's existence and nature by my own reason, there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.
That is something that no man can ever do alone.
Nor can all the men and all the created things in the universe help him in this work.
The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone.
[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 34 - 36.]
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Merton and the Nerve to Look Honestly
Forty years ago yesterday, Thomas Merton wrote from his Kentucky hermitage about an encounter with another well-known monk. The other monk called him a pessimist, said he was too anxious and too negative. Merton wrote in his journal about the underlying disharmony and mistrust that seemed to lie beneath the surface cordiality and agreement between the two.
As Merton reflected further that day, he started to ponder who he was and what he had written to that point. He began to pull out his books and to analyze how they had been received by peers . . . "so and so is not happy with this one . . . this one would disturb most European monks . . . he thinks this one was a foolish experiment."
In the next paragraph of his journal, he started to offer his own critique of the books he had written. There were books he stood by, things he wrote that he continued to feel were important. He continued to believe in "a few things I said here . . . a good bit of this book . . . maybe a little of this one." He called other books he had written "foolish" and "a mistake."
By the end of that day's journal entry, you can almost feel Merton wallowing in the pit he has dug for himself. Not only this day, but the journal entries for the next few days suggest his ongoing struggle with who he was, his reason for writing, and the response he expected from his audience. He looked honestly within himself and noticed that which lived in his shadows, what he called his "sick drives."
It's pretty honest stuff, uncommonly raw for someone widely considered the most important spiritual figure of the last century.
I find that his honesty runs counter to our usual notions of piety, in which we image ourselves continually striving "upward and onward," getting better and better, cleaner and purer the farther we go on the path. In these journal entries Merton revealed his shadow, the dark part of his personality that doubted who he was, mistrusted the authenticity of others around him, and questioned the validity of his life's work to that point.
For Merton, at least in these journal accounts, spirituality was not about going "onward and upward" to some state of moral perfection beyond doubt and darkness, but rather plumbing the depths of shadow and despair to notice our inner landscape . . . and then to find God there.
I suppose there are ways of conceptualizing spirituality in which these doubts and questions turn to certainties and assurances. It hasn't tended to worked that way for me, though. I share Merton's darkness, his questioning of self, his inner darkness, the way he doubts his motives for what he has done and written.
Frankly, it's what keeps me from writing more . . . my mistrust of my own motives for writing . . . and the fear that one day, like him, I would say, "What I wrote there was a load of hooey!" or "I don't think I believe that any more."
I don't know that I can clean up my motives or get my belief system straight. I can, however, be more and more aware of those inner structures that tug at me, that direct me, that determine my movements moment by moment.
So Merton sat in this darkness on June 6, 1961. He wrote about it on the porch of his little hermitage in the woods near the Abbey of Gethsemani, perhaps not knowing that one day we would be able to read his words of self-doubt.
Then, the last line in his journal entry for the day:
For my comfort a squirrel just ran across the porch.
[The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999)]
As Merton reflected further that day, he started to ponder who he was and what he had written to that point. He began to pull out his books and to analyze how they had been received by peers . . . "so and so is not happy with this one . . . this one would disturb most European monks . . . he thinks this one was a foolish experiment."
In the next paragraph of his journal, he started to offer his own critique of the books he had written. There were books he stood by, things he wrote that he continued to feel were important. He continued to believe in "a few things I said here . . . a good bit of this book . . . maybe a little of this one." He called other books he had written "foolish" and "a mistake."
By the end of that day's journal entry, you can almost feel Merton wallowing in the pit he has dug for himself. Not only this day, but the journal entries for the next few days suggest his ongoing struggle with who he was, his reason for writing, and the response he expected from his audience. He looked honestly within himself and noticed that which lived in his shadows, what he called his "sick drives."
It's pretty honest stuff, uncommonly raw for someone widely considered the most important spiritual figure of the last century.
I find that his honesty runs counter to our usual notions of piety, in which we image ourselves continually striving "upward and onward," getting better and better, cleaner and purer the farther we go on the path. In these journal entries Merton revealed his shadow, the dark part of his personality that doubted who he was, mistrusted the authenticity of others around him, and questioned the validity of his life's work to that point.
For Merton, at least in these journal accounts, spirituality was not about going "onward and upward" to some state of moral perfection beyond doubt and darkness, but rather plumbing the depths of shadow and despair to notice our inner landscape . . . and then to find God there.
I suppose there are ways of conceptualizing spirituality in which these doubts and questions turn to certainties and assurances. It hasn't tended to worked that way for me, though. I share Merton's darkness, his questioning of self, his inner darkness, the way he doubts his motives for what he has done and written.
Frankly, it's what keeps me from writing more . . . my mistrust of my own motives for writing . . . and the fear that one day, like him, I would say, "What I wrote there was a load of hooey!" or "I don't think I believe that any more."
I don't know that I can clean up my motives or get my belief system straight. I can, however, be more and more aware of those inner structures that tug at me, that direct me, that determine my movements moment by moment.
So Merton sat in this darkness on June 6, 1961. He wrote about it on the porch of his little hermitage in the woods near the Abbey of Gethsemani, perhaps not knowing that one day we would be able to read his words of self-doubt.
Then, the last line in his journal entry for the day:
For my comfort a squirrel just ran across the porch.
[The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999)]
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Birthright
Several years ago I picked up a new volume of Thomas Merton's journals. I have to admit that Merton has not been easy for me. I tried to read him about 15 years ago because he was an important figure in spirituality. I read enough snippets from his books to know that he articulated the spiritual life in a way that was unique and profound.
I knew that I needed to be familiar with him; in those days, however, I didn't always understand Merton. What I was reading seemed like a blur to me.
Years later my experience began to catch up with my head. When I tried Merton again about 12 years ago, I began to understand. He made more sense. I was able to read him not just with my head, but with my heart and life.
So when I picked up this new copy of his journals six or seven years ago, I began to work my way through the daily entries. Still, his daily journal entries can be tedious. Sometimes I have to sift a lot of days in order to find something that connects with me. In this particular book, the going was pretty slow until I came to one particular entry.
I was going through a period of life in which I wondered about my future, what direction my life would go. And I had questions about how I would know which door to walk through into the future. I had some major decisions before me. I read these words in Merton's journal:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us -- by the will of God.
This is my big aim -- to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, p. 125).
Merton's words struck me deeply. I sat with them, meditated on them, tried to open myself to how God might speak to me through them. I knew something important was there, though I didn't immediately know what it was.
So I returned to this journal entry over the next several days, reading it again and again. I wrote it out in my journal. I dissected it. I listened to the words, the phrases, the images that spoke into my life. I needed to hear Merton's wisdom, to live into it, to wrestle with it.
I was about three days into this process when I finally noticed the date on which Merton had written these words. He made this particular journal entry on the day I was born! I was blown away! In Vinita, Oklahoma I was born before dawn. A few hours later in a hermitage in the woods of Kentucky, Thomas Merton put his pencil to paper and wrote these words.
As I read his words time and again that week several years ago, I had the sensation that Merton had written them with me in mind. They felt like Merton's wisdom that I was ordained to carry through my life.
Why am I writing today about an experience I had with Merton several years ago? Last weekend I sat in a large room in Albuquerque, New Mexico listening to Richard Rohr speak. He was eloquent and compelling as always. At one point in his presentation he said he wanted to quote Thomas Merton, saying something about how endless was the wisdom of this contemporary spiritual guide. Then further explanation or reference, these are the words that came from Rohr's mouth:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . .
I'm carrying the words . . . like a birthright.
I knew that I needed to be familiar with him; in those days, however, I didn't always understand Merton. What I was reading seemed like a blur to me.
Years later my experience began to catch up with my head. When I tried Merton again about 12 years ago, I began to understand. He made more sense. I was able to read him not just with my head, but with my heart and life.
So when I picked up this new copy of his journals six or seven years ago, I began to work my way through the daily entries. Still, his daily journal entries can be tedious. Sometimes I have to sift a lot of days in order to find something that connects with me. In this particular book, the going was pretty slow until I came to one particular entry.
I was going through a period of life in which I wondered about my future, what direction my life would go. And I had questions about how I would know which door to walk through into the future. I had some major decisions before me. I read these words in Merton's journal:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us -- by the will of God.
This is my big aim -- to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, p. 125).
Merton's words struck me deeply. I sat with them, meditated on them, tried to open myself to how God might speak to me through them. I knew something important was there, though I didn't immediately know what it was.
So I returned to this journal entry over the next several days, reading it again and again. I wrote it out in my journal. I dissected it. I listened to the words, the phrases, the images that spoke into my life. I needed to hear Merton's wisdom, to live into it, to wrestle with it.
I was about three days into this process when I finally noticed the date on which Merton had written these words. He made this particular journal entry on the day I was born! I was blown away! In Vinita, Oklahoma I was born before dawn. A few hours later in a hermitage in the woods of Kentucky, Thomas Merton put his pencil to paper and wrote these words.
As I read his words time and again that week several years ago, I had the sensation that Merton had written them with me in mind. They felt like Merton's wisdom that I was ordained to carry through my life.
Why am I writing today about an experience I had with Merton several years ago? Last weekend I sat in a large room in Albuquerque, New Mexico listening to Richard Rohr speak. He was eloquent and compelling as always. At one point in his presentation he said he wanted to quote Thomas Merton, saying something about how endless was the wisdom of this contemporary spiritual guide. Then further explanation or reference, these are the words that came from Rohr's mouth:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . .
I'm carrying the words . . . like a birthright.
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