O great God, Father of all things

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A Multi-Wavelength View of Radio Galaxy Hercules A. Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy's cutting-edge tools, the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, and the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. Some two billion light-years away, the yellowish elliptical galaxy in the center of the image appears quite ordinary as seen by Hubble in visible wavelengths of light. The galaxy is roughly 1,000 times more massive than the Milky Way and harbors a 2.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole that is 1,000 times more massive than the black hole in the Milky Way. But the innocuous-looking galaxy, also known as 3C 348, has long been known as the brightest radio-emitting object in the constellation Hercules. Emitting nearly a billion times more power in radio wavelengths than our Sun, the galaxy is one of the brightest extragalactic radio sources in the entire sky. The VLA radio data reveal enormous, optically invisible jets that, at one-and-a-half million light-years wide, dwarf the visible galaxy from which they emerge. The jets are very-high-energy plasma beams, subatomic particles and magnetic fields shot at nearly the speed of light from the vicinity of the black hole. The outer portions of both jets show unusual ring-like structures suggesting a history of multiple outbursts from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The innermost parts of the jets are not visible because of the extreme velocity of the material, which causes relativistic effects that beam the light away from us. Far from the galaxy, the jets become unstable and break up into the rings and wisps. (NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O'Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the 
Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

O great God, Father of all things, Whose infinite light is 
darkness to me, Whose immensity is to me as the void. 
You have called me forth out of Yourself because You love
me in Yourself, and I am a transient expression of Your
inexhaustible and eternal reality.

If I could not know You, I would be lost in this darkness,
I would fall away from You into this void, if You
did not hold me to Yourself in the Heart of Your only
begotten Son.

-Thomas Merton,  Thoughts in Solitude, p. 71

Merton's last words

Mary Luke Tobin, SL, and Thomas Merton, OCSO, probably early 1960s at Loretto Motherhouse.

Sister Mary Luke Tobin "got" Merton.

As Mother Superior of the Sisters of Loretto, whose motherhouse was just a few miles from Gethsemani, "Luke" and Merton first met in October of 1960.   Merton had brought his friend, Dan Walsh, over to Loretto to arrange a series of classes by Dan for the sisters.  Merton and Sr. Luke connected with each other immediately.  Merton considered Sr. Luke his intellectual equal, a woman who was spiritually in sympathy with his vocation, and a fellow worker for peace and social justice.

Merton and Luke met with each other several times, both privately and during conferences, over the next few years.  After his death, Sr. Luke fostered Merton's legacy at her Merton Center in Denver.

If there is a feast day for Father Louie, December 10th is it. This is the day, in 1941, that he arrived at the Abby of Our Lady of Gethsemane to begin his life as a Trappist monk. Twenty seven years later, on this day, he died in Bangkok Thailand while participating in a monastic conference.

This year I would like to share Sr. Luke's telling of Merton's last words.  The passage is transcribed from a talk that she gave.  I believe that it gives a great deal of insight into the person of Merton from someone who knew and understood him.

I want to conclude by telling you about Merton's last words.  Merton gave a talk in Bangkok, a final contribution, and he talked quite a bit about alienation, the separation of ourselves, tearing ourselves into parts: that which somebody else tells us we are, and that which we know ourselves to be as a center where God is present.  Now if we choose from that center, as Merton continually instructed his novices, then we are choosing according to a unified sense of self.  If we choose from what other people tell us we are or tell us we should do, or tell us anything else that we should do, or have or whatever, we have broken ourselves into two.  That's alienation.  And that's what Merton talked bout so much in his last days, that alienated self, brought all the way over to what others say we should be rather than choosing from one's center.  That is what I think was the great message of prayer and everything else that Merton taught.  At the end of it he asked for the blessing of God for himself and for all these others that are there.

 In the very last of his life, he gave this final talk in Bangkok.  I went to the place in Bangkok, and I visited the room where he gave the final talk, and I visited the little bungalow where he died.  I remember then what I heard about his last words.  Merton, as you know, gave his talk, and then sat down and said. "We are going to have the questions tonight.  Now I will disappear."  Many people repeat that as a prophecy.  I think Merton meant he'd leave.  And we'll have the questions tonight.

 So then he went from there to the lunchroom and had the lunch they had prepared, and then he walked over to his room accompanied by a French monk who talked to him as they walked along to Merton's room and said to him, "Well, thank you for the talk you gave this morning.  Everybody didn't exactly appreciate it, though.  We had some question."  And I thought to myself, "Yes, this is the way it always is.  Yes, I know they said some good things BUT."  There's always that little part, and Merton was experiencing that there.  Actually, it was a nun that said that, but usually I don't say that because we have a bad enough press as it is, so I don't usually set up the nun as the one who said that.  Anyone could have.  She happened to say it, and what she said was repeated to Merton: "I thought he would talk more about converting people to Christianity.  I thought that's what he was going to be talking about."  She enlarged on that.  This is a pagan area where we are working, and we're missionaries, and it's a pagan area, and here he's talking about something else and alienation, whatever.  But I thought he'd talk about bringing people to Christ.

 Merton, when he heard that, instead of getting upset the way many of us would get upset, said simply, "Well, I don't think that is what we are asked to do today.  All the preaching we get on television telling us who God is -- honestly, you wonder what the word 'God' is to mean in all of that."  Merton has it better.  "today I don't think it is what we are asked to do.  I think today it's more important for us to so let God live in us that others may feel God and come to believe in God because they feel how God lives in us."  These were Merton's last words that we know anything about and were said right before Francois de Grunne took him to his room where he tragically died, tragically for us, in any case.  Certainly he had completed what was his journey.  In other words, so let God live in us, so allow God to be the center where we make our decisions, where we live our lives, so let God live in us that others may find God by seeing how God lives in us, by somehow grasping how God lives in us.  Better than any long television explanation of who God is.  A beautiful last message, and I'd like to leave that with you as we conclude the talk on prayer because prayer, that presence of God, that reality of God, which each of us possesses, is our good fortune, "All love's luck."  We have achieved it.  Thank you very much.  -- Sr. Mary Luke Tobin SL

Thomas Merton, Dan Walsh, Luke, and Rose Alma Schuler, SL, probably spring 1968.

Below are some posts where Merton's death is discussed in this blog. It is an eclectic collection, as is this entire blog.

December 10th (December 10, 2009)

The Funeral of Thomas Merton - a white celebration (December 17, 2008)

the monk / poet's journey toward silence (December 10, 2008)

a monk among monks (January 19, 2008)

the Daniel Berrigan connection, part 4 (July 15, 2007)

photo of a dream, finding your way (March 4, 2007)

When Prophecy Had A Voice (December 10, 2006)

the death of Thomas Merton (December 10, 2006)

kanchenjunga (December 9, 2006)

on photographing kanchenjunga (December 9, 2006) 

Out of the silence Light is spoken

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 NGC 1999, a dust filled bright nebula surrounding a vast hole of empty space in the constellation Orion. Hubble Heritage astronomers, in collaboration with scientists in Texas and Ireland, used Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to obtain this color image. (NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI)

We do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness.
He speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in 
which His light is one fulness and one Wisdom. 
...

Perhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is 
the unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia.  Perhaps 
she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost.  And perhaps she is in infinite light 
unmanifest, not even wanting to be known as Light.

This I do not know.  Out of the silence Light is 
spoken.  We do not have it or see it until it is spoken.

-Thomas Merton, "Hagia Sophia", Collected Poems, p. 366-367

these are worlds of themselves, their names do not identify them

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 The newest candidate for Most Distant Galaxy Yet Known. This newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, is very young and only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way. The object is observed 420 million years after the big bang, when the universe was 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. The inset shows a close-up of the young dwarf galaxy. This is the latest discovery from a large program that uses massive clusters of galaxies as natural zoom lenses to reveal distant galaxies in the early universe. Called the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH), the program allows astronomers to use the gravity of massive galaxy clusters to magnify distant galaxies behind them, an effect called gravitational lensing. In this Hubble observation, astronomers used the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015 as the giant cosmic telescope. The bright yellow galaxies near the center of the image are cluster members. The cluster's gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making its image appear approximately eight times brighter than it otherwise would. (NASA, ESA, M. Postman and D. Coe (STScI), and the CLASH Team) 

On the last day of a rough but fortunate voyage,
near the farthest end of the known world,
I found my way to the shores of sentient mountain...

There is another kind of justice than the justice of number,
which can neither forgive nor be forgiven.
There is another kind of mercy than the mercy of Law
which knows no absolution.

There is a justice of newborn worlds which cannot
be counted.
There is a mercy of individual things that spring into
being without reason.
They are just without reason, and their mercy is without
explanation.

They have received rewards beyond description
because they themselves refuse to be described.
They are virtuous in the sight of God
because their names do not identify them.

Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint
and an outlaw.
Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the 
command of man
is powerful in the sight of God.
Every star that man has not counted
is a world of sanity and perfection.
Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory.

These are worlds of themselves.
No man can use or destroy them.
Theirs is the life that moves without being seen and cannot
be understood.

It is useless to look for what is everywhere.
It is hopeless to hope for what cannot be
gained because you already have it.

-Thomas Merton,  "Atlas and the Fat Man", Collected Poems, pp. 690-691

born in our own souls, quietly as the breath of our being

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

This object, known as Messier 54, could be just another globular cluster, but this dense and faint group of stars was in fact the first globular cluster found that lies outside our own galaxy. Discovered by the famous astronomer Charles Messier in 1778, Messier 54 belongs to a satellite of the Milky Way called the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. Messier had no idea of the significance of his discovery at the time, and it wasn't until over two centuries later, in 1994, that astronomers found Messier 54 to be part of the miniature galaxy and not our own. Current estimates indicate that the Sagittarius dwarf, and hence the cluster, is situated almost 90,000 light-years away -- more than three times as far from the center of our galaxy than the Solar System. Ironically, even though this globular cluster is now understood to lie outside the Milky Way, it will actually become part of it in the future. The strong gravitational pull of our galaxy is slowly engulfing the Sagittarius dwarf, which will eventually merge with the Milky Way creating one much larger galaxy.

But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence
than in the answer to a question.
Eternity is in the present.
Eternity is in the palm of the hand.
Eternity is a seed of fire,
whose sudden roots beak barriers
that keep my heart from being an abyss.

The things of Time are in connivance with eternity.
The shadows serve You.
The beasts sing to You before they pass away.
The solid hills shall vanish like a worn-out garment.
All things change, and die and disappear.

Questions arrive, assume their actuality, and also disappear.
In this hour I shall cease to ask them,
and silence shall be my answer.
The world that Your love created,
and that my mind is always misinterpreting,
shall cease to interfere with our voices.

With You there is no dialogue
unless You choose a mountain and circle it with cloud
and print Your words in fire upon the mind of Moses.
What was delivered to Moses on tablets of stone,
as the fruit of lightning and thunder,
is now more thoroughly born in our own souls
as quietly as the breath of our own being.

The hand lies open.  The heart is dumb.
The soul that held my substance together,
like a hard gem in the hollow of my own power,
will one day give in.

Although I see the stars, I no longer pretend to know them.
One by one I shall forget the names of individual things.

-Thomas Merton, "Fire Watch", Sign of Jonas

... which is night, which is starlight, which is silence ...

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

The full beauty of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), seen in a detailed view from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), showing a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky -- that's why it appears bright along its outer edge. Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun's mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible.

(NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and she saw that, in containing Him, she contained the world besides.

The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and the end of all things came before her in her deepest heart.

And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm Mary slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence.

And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence.

-- Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1951, p 317)

take me out among the stars

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

Resembling comets streaking across the sky, these four speedy stars are plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas, creating brilliant arrowhead structures and trailing tails of glowing gas. The stars in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope images are among 14 young runaway stars spotted by the Advanced Camera for Surveys between October 2005 and July 2006. 

All things stir by night,
waking or sleeping,
conscious of the nearness of their ruin.

Only man makes himself illuminations he conceives to be 
solid and eternal.

But while we ask our question and come to our decisions,
God blows our decisions out, the roofs of our houses cave
in upon us,
the tall towers are undermined by ants, the walls crack and
cave in,
and the holiest buildings burn to ashes
while the watchman is composing a theory of duration.

Now is the time to meet You, God, where the night is 
wonderful,
where the forest opens out under the moon 
and the living things sing terribly that only the present is
eternal
and that all things having a past and a future are doomed to
pass away!

I ask these useless question,
I do not wait for an answer, because I have begun to realize
You never answer when I expect.

And now my whole being breathes the wind
and my hand is on the door through which I see the
heavens.

The door swings out upon a vast sea of darkness and of 
prayer.
Will it come like this, the moment of my death?
Will You open a door upon the great forest
and set my feet upon a ladder under the moon,
and take me out among the stars? 

-Thomas Merton, "Fire Watch", The Sign of Jonas, pp. 349-362