choosing to love the world - 3

The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist. It is not a firm and absolute objective structure which has to be accepted on its own inexorable terms. The world has in fact no terms of its own. It dictates no terms to [us]. We and our world interpenetrate. If anything, the world exists for us, and we exist for ourselves. It is only in assuming full responsibility for our world, for our lives and for ourselves that we can be said to live really for God.

[CWA, 169]

choosing to love the world - 2

If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in [my age’s] living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother and sister, to make the world better, more free, more just, more livable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic “rejection of the world” and “contempt for the world” is in fact not a choice but an evasion of choice. The person, who pretends that he can turn his back on Auschwitz or Viet Nam and acts as if they were not there, is simply bluffing.

(Contemplation in a World of Action: pp. 164-165)

choosing to love the world - 1

[Note: The next few entries are selected quotes that reflect Merton's world-engaging spirituality. Whereas an older school of monastic observance warned monks to abandon “the world” as decisively as one flees a sinking ship, Merton’s monastic life remained affiliated to the world he never left behind when he became a monk. Thanks to Jonathan Montaldo for directing me toward these quotes.]

That I should have been born in 1915, that I should be the contemporary of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Viet Nam and the Watts riots, are things about which I was not first consulted. Yet they are also events in which, whether I like it or not, I am deeply and personally involved. The “world” is not just a physical space traversed by jet planes and full of people running in all directions. It is a complex of responsibilities and options made out of the love, the hates, the fears, the joys, the hopes, the greed, the cruelty, the kindness, the faith, the trust, the suspicion of all. In the last analysis, if there is war because nobody trusts anybody, this is in part because I myself am defensive, suspicious, untrusting, and intent on making other people conform themselves to my particular brand of death wish.

[Contemplation in a World of Action: 161]

novice master - audio/videos

Gabrielle at Contemplative Haven has links to 4 You-tube audio/videos of Merton's talks to the novices. I used to have a lot of Merton's talks on cassettes and I would listen to them in the car. It's really nice to hear him again. Gabrielle introduces these talks with some good remarks from Monica Furlong, author of "Merton, a Biography". Thank you, Gabrielle.

a monk among monks (and other comments from matthew kelty)

I appreciate the writings from those who knew Merton that enlighten my way of knowing Merton.

I especially like the Lax passage about how Merton walked: “he did walk with joy. he walked explosively: bang bang bang. as though fireworks, small & they too, joyful, went off every time his heel hit the ground.” [see “a certainty of tread”]

Matthew Kelty was a novice under Merton, and also has some things to say about how Merton walked:

“You could tell Father Louis by his walk. He had a rather rapid walk, but not altogether measured and orderly. For one thing, his feet were spread out fan-fashion, and there was something off in his gait. But it was a vigorous walk, except when he was reading, as he often was …” (from an essay, “The Man” by Matthew Kelty, included in the book Thomas Merton – Monk, p. 19)

Fr. Kelty has some other things to say about Merton that I like:

“If you stopped to talk to him for a moment, and he was glad enough when you did, he was always wide-awake and intent, looking closely at you with bright and eager eyes, for he had a plain and even common face, his eyes were rich in life, never far from merriment. His voice was quiet and his laugh gentle, but deep and like a chuckle. He had a way of sensing when something was done and would end the matter there. This was a real characteristic. He loathed dragging things out beyond their measure …”(p. 20)

“His place in the community was a monk among monks. No one made anything of him. He neither expected special handling nor got it. This does not mean that he adopted some sort of humble manner by which he managed to hide his own importance. On the contrary, he was very much himself, very alive and very real. When you met him, spoke with him, had dealings with him, you never felt you were dealing with something artificial: quite the opposite. He was nothing if not real. And part of that reality was his simplicity, his being himself. He said what he thought and he did what he thought should be done, and that was all there was to it … He never made a big thing of his writings, and once they came out he never read them again …he saw his whole life as a calling from God and one he was bound to answer faithfully. (p. 27)

“It was perhaps at his death, and the funeral and burial following, that the true dimensions of Gethsemani’s relations with Father Louis became manifest. It is rare for a monastic funeral to have such an impact as his had. It is not that in the death of other monks we were less concerned with love, for there is genuine love here, but the intensity of this particular experience escaped no one. And it was as the man himself, a combination of contradictions. For it was very sad and grief-ridden, but at the same time something brim-filled with joy and a kind of rapture. I have never in my life assisted at such a joyous funeral; it was more of a wedding celebration! And yet the anguish of knowing that he was no longer with us was a great weight on the heart. All in all, it was a community experience of great love, a testimony to the great mystery of love among us in the power of Christ, a love hidden in some way, yet there, as the great inner reality, the core of our life together. The comings and goings, the brightness and the dullness, the stupid and the silly as well as the brilliant and the accomplished – the whole fabric of the life of day to day was laid bare, and there for all to see was this glorious presence of love behind it all, beneath it all. It was evident that the man loved us. And it was evident that we loved him. And this love is the evidence of the presence of Christ.

“… he was a kind of dividing spirit, a sign spoken against, a sort of question demanding an answer. Thus, he raised issues, and there was no way out but to reply one way or other. In this he was unsettling, disturbing, not comfortable to live with. Put in other words, there was a kind of truth about him that got under your skin, into your heart. He belonged to nobody, free as a bird. He could not be categorized, labeled, pigeonholed. And he had vision … (p. 34)

solitude - dancing in the water of life

This week's reflection, from The Merton Institute. I find these words of Merton to be very affirming and life-giving, and want to add them to this collection.

I come into solitude to die and love. I come here to be created by the Spirit in Christ.

I am called here to grow. "Death" is a critical point of growth, or transition to a new mode of being; to a maturity and fruitfulness that I do not know (they are in Christ and in His Kingdom). The child in the womb does not know what will come after birth. He must be born in order to live. I am here to face death as my birth.

This solitude-a refuge under His wings, a place to hide myself in His Name, therefore, a sanctuary where the grace of Baptism remains a conscious, living, active reality valid not only for me but for the whole Church. Here, planted as a seed in the cosmos, I will be a Christ seed, and bring fruit for other men. Death and rising in Christ.

Thomas Merton. Dancing in the Water of Life. Journals, Volume 5. Robert E. Daggy, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 333-334.

Thought to Remember:

I need to be "confirmed" in my vocation by the Spirit... This ordains me to be the person I am and to have the particular place and function I have, to be myself in the sense of choosing to tend toward what God wants me to be, and to orient my whole life to being the person He loves.

Dancing in the Water of Life: 334

pollonnaruwa - gal vihara

Buddhas in Pollonnaruwa, Ceylon

Photograph by Thomas Merton

Thirty-nine years ago today – December 1, 1968 – Merton visited the Pollonnaruwa, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka. Within this city are a group of 4 giant Buddha Statues known as the “Gal Vihara” temple. It was here that Merton had an astounding insight. [also described in this blog here.]

Somewhat worried that he had spoiled the experience by trying to speak of it to acquaintances, he does not write about it in great descriptive detail until 4 days later (December 4th – pp. 322-324 “The Other Side of the Mountain”).

The place is remote, quiet, uncrowded:

“I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything – without refutation – without establishing some other argument …

“Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. … The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no “mystery”. All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life is charged with dharmakaya – everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. ….

"I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguises. This is Asia in its purity, not covered over with garbage, Asian or European or American, and it is clear, pure, complete. It says everything; it needs nothing. And because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to discover it.”