The Time of No Room

 

"The Time of the End is the Time of No Room"

from Raids on the Unspeakable

~Thomas Merton 

We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end.  The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quality, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration...

As the end approaches, there is no room for nature.  The cities crowd it off the face of the Earth.

As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet.  There is no room for solitude.  There is no room for thought.  There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state.

In the time of the ultimate end, there is no room for man.

Into this world, this demented inn,

in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all,

Christ has come uninvited.

But because He cannot be at home in it,

because He is out of place in it,

His place is with those others for whom there is no room,

His place is with those who do not belong,

who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak,

those who are discredited,

who are denied the status of persons,

who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,

Christ is present in the world.

He is mysteriously present

in those for whom there seems to be nothing

but the world at its worst. . . .

It is in these that He hides Himself,

for whom there is no room.