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| "Jerusalem" by Thomas Merton |
"Spiritual practice is the antithesis of the “means to an end” thinking that characterizes our usual secular point of view. The radical benefit of meditation as a spiritual practice is that it offers a way to step off the treadmill of asking questions like How am I doing? Am I there yet? Am I getting better or worse? It is an alternative to a world in which everything is a technique that can be done well or badly."
Barry and Bob Rosenbaum, editors of What’s Wrong With Mindfulness, are interviewed by Sam Mowe about their book's major themes.
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| Venus Transit by Carlos Gotay |
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| King Minos, Thomas Merton art |
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| Thomas Merton's edited copy of his Seeds of Contemplation book, photo by Jim Forest from an exhibit at Columbia University in 2015 |
The energy in the universe is not in the planets, nor in the atomic particles, but very surprisingly in the relationship between them. It’s not in the cells of organisms but in the way the cells feed and give feedback to one another through semi-permeable membranes. The energy is not in any precise definition or in the partly arbitrary names of the three persons of the Trinity as much as in the relationship between the Three! This is where all the power for infinite renewal is at work:
The loving relationship between them.
The infinite love between them.
The dance itself.
In other words, it is an entirely relational universe. If, at any time, we try to stop this flow moving through us, with us, and in us, we fall into the true state of sin—and it is truly a state more than a momentary behavior. It is telling that the first destabilization of the foundational structure of the atom (in New Mexico in July 1945) created the atomic bomb. With supreme irony, the test site is still called “Trinity” as Robert Oppenheimer first named it.
The divine flow either flows both in and out, or it is not flowing at all. The “trap doors” at either end must be kept open in order to both receive and let go, which is the work of all true spirituality. The Law of Flow is simple, and Jesus states it in many formulations such as “Happy are the merciful; they shall have mercy shown to them” (Matthew 5:7). Or as we cleverly put it “What goes around comes around.” We are conduits.- Richard Rohr O.F.M. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 55-56, 71-72
Ben Shahi's portrait [of Hammarskjöld inhabits a different world. It is not tied to time, its themes are suffering and resistance. Drawing on his direct familiarity with Hammarskjöld and on characteristic photographs, particularly of Hammarskjöld cradling his chin as he listened to Nikita Khrushchev in the General Assembly, Shahn chose to create what he called "a portrait about, rather than of a man." He wrote to Carl Nordenfalk about his vision for the painting at a time when Swedish critics were saying, correctly, that the portrait was not a good likeness. "I did not like the notion of a conventional portrait", he wrote.
"That seemed to me a commonplace. I wanted to express Hammarskjöld's loneliness and isolation, his need actually, for such remoteness in space that he might be able to carry through, as he did, the powerful resolution to be just. His unaffiliated kind of justice, it seems to me, held the world together through many crises that might have deteriorated into world conflicts. I have a truly profound feeling for this man, and I hope it will be felt in the painting. I must mention, too, the threat that hung over him as it hung over the world, and does still."
The calligraphy on the table in front of the figure of Hammarskjöld records his words in reply to Khrushchev's demand for his resignation -- "I shall remain at my post ... " The chaotic swirl above and behind, with the sorrowful face of a prophet just visible in it, reflects the nuclear catastrophe that Hammarskjöld had given his all to prevent. The face of Hammarskjöld is darkly thoughtful, compositionally and emotionally midway between the firm courage of the written text and the chaos behind him. In this harsh context, the compressed image of sky and bridge on the right (the bridge combines features of two East River crossings) gives a welcome suggestion of movement and, as Shahn wrote, some small promise of spaciousness. This is a difficult work. It isn't easily likable. But as Nordenfalk wrote, "It will have something to tell future generations about what our life was like ..."
Dag Hammarskjold, the second secretary general of the United Nations, represented a coming together of the active and the contemplative. He recognized that public office is not about anxiously conserving status or winning arguments. He was sharply aware of the shadows in his own motivation, and confronted them patiently and remorselessly in his private writing. He expected others to share his own careful self-reflection, and used the platform of the office of secretary general to prompt this sort of questioning. And he kept his own spiritual discipline alive in the most demanding circumstances, while maintaining strict public discretion: he did not need to flaunt his religious commitment to win public applause.Rowan Williams — Formerly the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, now chancellor of the University of South Wales.
This is the picture of an adult politician in a not very adult world. One could say that he expected too much of professional politicians and all those whose job it was to defend local interests. But he offered a perspective without which all politics is empty. His work and words declare that it is possible to see the world with what could best be called creative detachment, and without self-pity.
Contemplating Hammarskjold’s life, I am left with two uncomfortable thoughts. The first is that this is what I should have been trying to realize in my own ventures into public life, and how profoundly I didn’t manage it. The second: a truly terrifying amount of public rhetoric assumes that we are both incapable and frightened of this level of honesty of seeing, speaking and feeling. Yet in private, most of us are capable of seeing at least something of this, and acting on it. Why is our public language so corrupt and corrupting?
“Neither rustic nor urbane, Eastern nor Western, perhaps can be called expressions of Zen Catholicism”. (from a notebook in the TMC collection)
