Feast of the Epiphany

“Today the Magi find, crying in the manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky. 

Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars. 

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. 

As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.”

- St. Peter Chrysologus

He asked for nothing for himself

Talk about radical. Talk about prophetic and holy. I don't know if, in my lifetime, I have encountered a person quite as clear as Peter Maurin. So clear that he is somewhat hidden.

Even now, he's known mostly through Dorothy Day. Not directly.

This is the 70th anniversary of his death and NCR has an article.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/environment/peter-maurins-farm-rooted-vision-gains-ground-among-catholic-workers

"He asked nothing for himself, so he got nothing," Dorothy Day wrote in Loaves and Fishes of Peter Maurin.

Day once said that Maurin's dedication to voluntary poverty was so extreme that perhaps the only possession he really valued was his mind. (He eventually surrendered that as well, experiencing an apparent stroke that made him lose his ability to think clearly several years before his death.) When Maurin died May 15, 1949, he was buried in a donated grave, wearing a donated suit.

Like Jean Vanier, he found his way as a lay man.

The Wisdom of Tenderness

“In this communion, we discover the deepest part of our being: the need to be loved and to have someone who trusts and appreciates us and who cares least of all about our capacity to work or to be clever and interesting.”

the silent call of the earth

 Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh

The philosopher Martin Heidegger saw the painting on exhibition in Amsterdam in 1930 and later wrote about it:

"From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrate the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field." - Martin Heidegger

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." - Vincent Van Gogh

living your love

The Guatamalan-Maya Center

Writing with George …

Welcome Annaise, how can I help? We’re here to serve you. Bienvenida Eulalia, what a beautiful name you have. Welcome Rosa Mayra, thank you for bringing your gentle children. Oneida! Good to see you again. I hope everything is going well. Hello Juana, does your family live near to the volcano? Are they all right? Carmen! Is your family in Cali still dancing, still doing the samba? Nohemy! A surprise to see you. Dare I ask about your family in Guerrero? I remember the murders. How are your sisters surviving? Odelina from Honduras… Is your brother surviving the violence at school? Can he study? Alma, when I hear your name I think of the beauty of your soul. Welcome Mariela, welcome again. It’s always a joy to see you. Nicolasa, every time we meet I feel like your brother with my Nicholas name. Amany from Egypt, you frightened me at first with your stern presence, but you always soften. Your children must love your softness dearly. Bienvenida Viviana. You strike me as living vitally. You capture the bright life of your name. Gudelia, good woman, good mother, marked by goodness. Delmi, Karina, Francisca, Kellyn, Mariela, your names, once so foreign to me I couldn’t imagine you, now open a world not only for me, but for my neighbors as well. I can harvest your names for them. I can harvest your truth for them. Most of you bring the heart of Maya joining the heart of the earth to the heart of the sky, teaching the urgency of love. We live in these perilous times when the government deports or threatens to deport your husbands, but you go on caring for the place of your heart, the place of your children, the place of their hearts. You have seen all around you murder and the threat of murder. You know the precariousness of life. But no matter you go on living your trust, living your love, teaching us the profound depths of your poverty.

I will not compare you with anyone. But I must say you have found a place, a heart place which others, if they would only open themselves to discover, would cherish. They would follow with all their heart. And this is what you have taught me if I could only learn: lead with my heart, lead with my heart, lead with my heart.

- from an email by Fr. Frank O'Laughlin

The Guatamalan Maya Center

a great mystery of poverty and darkness and strength

 Sculpture by Jaime Andrade, Photo by Thomas Merton

Elsewhere on this blog I have a story about this artist and sculpture and very poor scan. -

"all that is most abject, forgotten, despised and put aside"

Yesterday I found this much better photo of the sculpture.

The photo is of a statue of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus which was photographed atop a tree stump with a tree in the background at Gethsemani Abbey. Merton took the photo, which is now at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville.

Jaime Andrade, an artist from Quito, Ecuador created the sculpture in mahogany.

In 1958 Merton commissioned Andrade to do a statue of the Virgin Mary and child Jesus in dark wood for the novitiate library. "A statue," as he explains, "that would tell the truth about God being 'born' Incarnate in the Indians of the Andes. Christ poor and despised among the disinherited of the earth." (Merton, A Search for Solitude, p. 177.)

Merton describes its imagery as "precisely that of Louis M[assignon]" Merton interpreted the mother as an indigenous Andean who reflected "a great mystery of poverty and darkness and strength" and the child as "the Resurrection to be born from the despised peoples of Mexico and the Andes" who holds a "mystical bit of fruit" that represented salvation. She represents "all that is most abject, forgotten, despised, and put aside."

"I want to say how deeply moved I am at this idea of Louis Massignons's that salvation is coming from the most afflicted and despised. This, of course, is the only idea that makes any sense in our time." (from a letter to Jacques Maritain, 17 Aug 1960)

In seeing the Mother and Child statue take place, Merton suggested that the child hold something - a branch, fruit, or root, something indigenous to South America. Definitely not corn "because of its association with bad art". 
 
A Life for Art : The Jaime Andrade Ecuadorian Collection

Merton's correspondence with Jaime Andrade 

Tom Stone photogrpahy

 Robert Lax - photo by Tom Stone

Tom Stone (born July 12, 1971) is an American humanitarian photography. His work depicts the discrepancy between the American dream and the American reality, clearly captured through the telling faces of those living on the fringes of society. He is most widely known for his documentary photography of outsider, displaced and homeless populations in California.

• On Poverty

I think there’s a decided middle spectrum of humanity where circumstance, luck, and small choices conspire to vastly differing fates. We’re all imperfect, and most of us are only a shadow of who we’d hoped we’d be.

To my thinking, the original human trauma is our separation. We are too close not to need each other; and too far to trust each other.

I count it as a measure of our ignorance, the depth of poverty in the world. It’s a glaring marker to how far we have not come.

The younger you are the more you are affected by the sight of poverty and homelessness. Pay attention to how children react to folks on the street. I try to be disturbed by the same things that disturb kids.

• On Photography

The photo is a memento of the interaction.

A cloudy reflection is sometimes better than none.

 from Wikipedia 

Tom Stone Gallery

My Love Of What I Own May Be Killing Somebody Somewhere

"Therefore, if I don't pretend, like other people, to understand the war, I do know this much: that the knowledge of what is going on only makes it seem desperately important to be voluntarily poor, to get rid of all possessions this instant. I am scared, sometimes, to own anything, even a name, let alone coin, or share in the oil, the munitions, the airplane factories. I am scared to take a proprietary interest in anything, for fear that my love of what I own may be killing somebody somewhere."

--Thomas Merton, from a diary entry during WWII reflecting upon the connections between possessions and complicity in violence worldwide

HT: Experimental Theology

Unspeakable Loneliness

"It is loneliness that cannot be shared, which is “unspeakable” because it is experienced in a way that is so private and humiliating that, were you to speak of it, you would further damage an already over-fragile sense of self that has been made so fragile by the loneliness itself. 

"You experience this kind of loneliness whenever you are alone in something in a way that you cannot share with anyone else because the loneliness itself feels like a private sickness, like a thing of shame, which makes you so vulnerable that any attempt to share it with someone would only make things worse and be a further humiliation. 

"You experience this especially in rejection, betrayal, abuse, powerlessness, and the feelings you have when you doubt your own attractiveness, intelligence, goodness, strength, and emotional stability. Not only are you then alone and outside of something or someone you want, but you are left with a wound, a humiliation, a sense of not measuring-up, an insecurity, and a shame, that is only deepened should you talk of it. 

"You experience this, “unspeakable loneliness” where your relationships become one-sided, where you get walked-on, walked-away from, get dumped, suffer abuse, get bullied on the playground, are the one who is never asked out, get chosen last, are too weak to defend yourself, where your body and feelings aren’t right, where you aren’t bright enough, aren’t attractive enough. 

"There is a solution to “unspeakable loneliness”: it needs to be spoken, to be shared, to be made public. To speak the unspeakable is a risk, an anguish, an irony, but, when the unspeakable is spoken, what once felt shamefully private and sick can become a badge of courage and a distinguishing mark of healthy citizenship insidethe human condition." 

- Ron Rolheiser OMI

(boy, can I relate to this.)

"all that is most abject, forgotten, despised and put aside" (UPDATED)

Jaime Andrade was an Ecuadorian sculptor and engraver from Quito, Ecuador. Themes for his work seem to be inspired by socially conscious themes the land and sky in Ecuador, the largely poor, indigenous populations- the Andes and the tropical coastal area, as well as the Inca heritage. He uses the natural properties and colors of stone and metal to create sculptural collages and play on light and texture.

Jaime Andrade Moscoso El Arbol 21" high. The sculpture was part of the IBM collection and was exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1940.

In 1958 Merton commissioned Andrade to do a statue of the Virgin Mary and child Jesus in dark wood for the novitiate library. "A statue," as he explains, "that would tell the truth about God being 'born' Incarnate in the Indians of the Andes. Christ poor and despised among the disinherited of the earth." (Merton, A Search for Solitude, p. 177.)

Merton describes its imagery as "precisely that of Louis M[assignon]" Merton interpreted the mother as an indigenous Andean who reflected "a great mystery of poverty and darkness and strength" and the child as "the Resurrection to be born from the despised peoples of Mexico and the Andes" who holds a "mystical bit of fruit" that represented salvation. She represents "all that is most abject, forgotten, despised, and put aside."

"I want to say how deeply moved I am at this idea of Louis Massignons's that salvation is coming from the most afflicted and despised. This, of course, is the only idea that makes any sense in our time." (from a letter to Jacques Maritain, 17 Aug 1960)

This is a very poor scan of a not great reproduction of the Merton commissioned statue at Gethsemani. Merton took the picture, the original photograph is now at Bellarmine University in Louisville.  In seeing the Mother and Child statue take place, Merton suggested that the child hold something - a branch, fruit, or root, something indigenous to South America. Definitely not corn "because of its association with bad art". 

Dorothy Day died 32 years ago today, UPDATED

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the Cross, then we truly say, 'Now I have begun'"

-- Dorothy Day
Loaves and Fishes, p 210 (the last chapter, titled "Our Day")

 Dorothy Day funeral, photo by Jim Forest

Photo of Cardinal Terence Cooke outside the Nativity Catholic Church before Dorothy's funeral Mass.  Paul Moore, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, is beside him.

From Robert Ellsburg: "I don't know whether Cardinal Cooke wanted to hold the funeral at St. Patrick's. I know he offered to celebrate the funeral mass [at Nativity Church on 2nd Avenue, close to the Catholic Worker] but wanted to change the time because of a prior commitment. This would have interfered with the schedule for the soup line and Tamar [Dorothy's daughter] among others didn't want to do that. Cooke did graciously offer to come down and bless her casket at the entrance to the church. … I don't know whether Cooke greeted everyone who arrived. I thought he left after the blessing of the casket. Some people have said they believe he stuck his head in the side door of the church during the service. I didn't see this, but it is possible. He later celebrated a memorial mass for Dorothy at the cathedral."

HT: Jim Forest

the crucified people

Fr. Jon Sobrino S.J.

Jon Sobrino is a the sole Jesuit priest at the University of Central America to survive the 1989 massacre that killed 6 of his Jesuit brothers, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. He is a liberation theologian and was notified by the Vatican in 2007 that his writing may be “erroneous or dangerous or may cause harm to the faithful”.

In his book, No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays (Orbis Books), he writes poignantly about his Jesuit brother Ignacio Ellacuria, the theologian and university president killed with the others in 1989:

"When Ellacuria 'took hold of the reality' of the Third World, he grasped it in an important way as a 'crucified people' … Ellacuria said that the crucified people are one of the main features of our time, not merely something factual that we may consider, but something central that must be considered, without which we do not have a full grasp of reality,"

city of the sun

In 1992, with a small Pax Christi group, I visited City Soleil in Port-au-Prince Haiti.  It was late in the afternoon, and I remember the high "energy" - tension, noise - that I felt as we walked down the narrow passageways, crammed with people and smells.  We were so barraged by people begging from us that we had to hold onto each other.  Something tells me that this is how it was during the actual Crucifixion of Christ: this intensity, violence, despair and suffering.

I often wonder if I could survive for one day (or night) in this place, and what of the people who live their whole lives there, never knowing any where else.  My brothers and sisters.  Knowing this place is some kind of blessing and grace that touches the soul.

You can read more about the documentary film Mud Pies and Kites on Gerry Straub's blog here.

mud pies and kites (compassion)

holy stillness

HT: Jim Forest

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Photo of Catherine de Hueck Doherty by Merton, 1941

Merton first met Catherine de Hueck Doherty when she spoke at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, N.Y., in 1941. He had heard about her work in Friendship House (FH) when he lived in New York City, but he had never met her. On that very evening after hearing her talk, he was inspired to ask if he could come to Harlem. Catherine said yes. (How many others had said they wanted to come and never did!) He spent “[two] weeks of evenings,” as he put it, at Friendship House in Harlem. He met Catherine again later that same year at St. Bonaventure when she came for another talk.

The following passage is from Seven Story Mountain, where Merton is reflecting on his first encounter with Catherine:

“The Baroness was born a Russian. She had been a young girl at the time of the October Revolution. She had seen half of her family shot, she had seen priests fall under the bullets of the Reds, and she had escaped from Russia the way it is done in the movies, but with all the misery and hardship which the movies do not show, and none of the glamour which is their specialty.

“The experiences she had gone through, instead of destroying her faith, intensified and deepened it until the Holy Ghost planted fortitude in the midst of her soul like an unshakable rock. I never saw anyone so calm, so certain, so peaceful in her absolute confidence in God.

“Catherine de Hueck is a person in every way big: and the bigness is not merely physical: it comes from the Holy Ghost dwelling constantly within her, and moving her in all that she does." - Seven Story Mountain, pp. 342-343

homeless

Photo by Thomas Merton

From Gerry Straub's blog:

In 2000, I spent the first week of Advent alone in Thomas Merton’s hermitage on the grounds of Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. How I was given that chance is a long story, which I shall not burden you with. But here is a little something I wrote exactly ten years ago today.

Wednesday, December 6, 2000 – 10:40am, Merton’s Hermitage. After breakfast, I sat quietly in front of the fireplace. The house was really cold and I had not started the furnace, thinking I would wait until later this afternoon. After meditating for about 20 minutes, a picture flashed across my mind: the interior of an abandoned building in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, where squatters had set fire to the staircase to keep warm during a bitter cold night. I had been in the building – and many more like it – while making the documentary on the St. Francis Inn. One day, Fr. Francis Pompei, OFM found a young man in the abandoned building. He was bundled up against the cold night. His name was Efrem and he had been homeless for about a month. He said, “It’s rough.” A towering example of an understatement. Sitting alone in Merton’s hermitage – living in “rough” conditions – I’m reminded of the plight of the poor who live in far, far worse conditions because of injustice and not out of seeking a “spiritual” experience. We cannot walk toward God and turn our backs on our suffering brothers and sisters at the same time. If you are reading these words in the comfort of a home, put the book down and go show God’s mercy and love to someone who does not have a home. Get up. Do it now. To forget the poor is to forget God.

“It is the hour for prayer; if you hear the poor calling you, mortify yourself and leave God for God, although you must do everything you can not to omit your prayer, for that is what keeps you united to God; and as long as this union lasts you have nothing to fear.”
-St. Vincent de Paul

in front of the television (Gerry Straub)

Photo by Gerry Straub

Gerrry Straub is a documentary filmmaker and writer who uses his talents to “celebrate the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan concern for the poor, social justice, peace, non-violence, prayer and the integrity of creation.”

His is one of the blogs that I subscribe to. Every day he offers a reflection or quote, each with a unique insight, that help me navigate my way through life. There is a Mertonesque quality to today’s:

In Front of the Television

"Spend one week watching TV, thoughtfully observing what is being presented, and you will see how we have evolved into a culture of violence, how we have sunk into a sea of hopelessness, how quick and easy gratification, no matter how fleeting its pleasure, has become acceptable, how gratuitous sex and explicit nudity has become commonplace, how infidelity is a strictly private affair, how any relationship is disposable, how politicians offer expedient solutions to difficult problems and how preachers of all faiths offer shallow answers to deep questions. One week in front of the television will illustrate how far our society has drifted from the innate dignity God endows to every human being."
- Gerry Straub

poverty

In winter the stripped landscape of Nelson county looks terribly poor. The houses of our neighbors between here and Bardstown are pretty miserable. We [Trappists] are the ones who are supposed to be poor. Well, I am thinking of the people in a shanty next to the Brandeis plant, on Brook Street, Louisville. We had to wait there while Reverend Father was getting some tractor parts. The woman who lives in this place was standing out in front of it, shivering in some kind of rag, while a suspicious looking, anonymous truck unloaded some bootleg coal in her yard. I wondered if she had been warm yet this winter. ...The world is terrible, people are falling to pieces and starving to death and freezing and going to hell with despair, and here I sit with a silver spoon in my mouth and write books and everybody sends me fan mail telling me how wonderful I am for giving up so much. And what, I'd like to ask them, have I given up anyway except headaches and responsibilities?

-- Thomas Merton
Entering the Silence, Journals Volume 1
Jonathan Montaldo, editor
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997, p 264

Birthday of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement

November 8, 1897 - November 29, 1980

November 8:It's the birthday of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, friend and mentor of Thomas Merton (see: The Dorothy Day Connection).

She was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1897.

"People say, 'What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?' They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes."