Yasuo Tomishige/The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty Images
Monday, August 9, 2021
Friday, August 6, 2021
Yoshito Matsushige
His home was located at Midori-cho, 1.7 miles from ground zero (hypocenter) of the explosion. This was just outside of the 1.5 mile radius of total destruction created by the atomic blast effects. Miraculously, Matsushige was not seriously injured by the explosion and was given one of the most famous photographic opportunities in human history.
With one camera and two rolls of film (24 possible exposures) he tried to get his newspaper office but flames blocked his way.Matsushige returned to the Miyuki Bridge. He tried to take photographs of the terrible carnage he witnessed at the bridge but could not press the shutter button. After struggling at that location for over thirty minutes, he finally took his first photographs.
During the next ten hours Matsushige was only able to click the shutter seven times because the sights were so atrocious and heart-breaking to witness. In addition, he was afraid the burned and battered people would be enraged if someone took their pictures. Matsushige could not develop the film right away but eventually did so after twenty days, in the open, at night, using a radioactive stream to rinse the photographs. Only five of the seven photographs were developable.
A few weeks after the atomic bombing, the American military confiscated all of the post-bombing newspaper photographs and/or newsreel footage but failed to confiscate many of the negatives. As a result, photographs from the Hiroshima atomic bombing were not published until the United States occupation of Japan ended in April 1952.
The magazine Asahi Gurafu initially published Matsushige’s photographs in a special edition on August 6, 1952. This edition was titled: “First Exposè of A-Bomb Damage”. This special edition sold out so quickly that four additional printings were run replacing the original color cover with a black and white one. The total circulation of this special edition was approximately 700,000. The following month, Life Magazine published two of the five Matsushige’s photographs in the September 29, 1952 edition of the magazine in an article titled: “When Atom Bomb Struck – Uncensored”.
Matsushige's photos can be see HERE.
His accounting of that day is HERE.
Portrait of Yoshito Matsushige:
You must take a stand, speak out and resist. (Psalm 115)
From Fr. John Dear:
This week, as we remember the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 76 years ago, the Doomsday Clock of “The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” stands at 100 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s ever been to nuclear war since August 6th, 1945. We are closer to nuclear war right now than we have ever been. Some 14,000 nuclear weapons stand ready to go. Weapons have proliferated, many nations, possibly other terrorist groups, have them, and conflicts around the planet, particularly between India and Pakistan, hold us teetering on the brink of another Hiroshima holocaust.
For forty years, I’ve been speaking out and protesting nuclear weapons. For nearly twenty years now, my friends and I have a led an annual Hiroshima day vigil outside the Los Alamos, New Mexico Nuclear Weapons Labs, birthplace of the bomb. And yet, the Biden Administration has carried on the legacy of the Trump Administration by pouring billions of dollars down the drain of the nuclear industry hellhole, and this sinful waste of money has been met, in this time of divisive alienation, with widespread silence and complicity.
Yes, there are signs of hope—such as the great global organizing of the Nobel Peace Prize winning group, “The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons” (www.icanw.org), the Plowshares disarmament movement, and Pope Francis’ extraordinary recent statements condemning every aspect of the development and maintenance of these weapons of mass destruction.
But I wonder why, in the face of our global crises—from environmental destruction, and catastrophic climate change, to the COVID pandemic, to extreme poverty and deepening racism—why so few seem to speak out against this unspeakable, existential threat which we continue to inflict upon ourselves and the whole planet.
Lately, I’ve been thinking back to my friends and teachers, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the legendary peace activists, and founders of the Plowshares disarmament movement. As I kid, I regularly attended their weekend retreats, and witnessed them open their Bibles and read from the Hebrew scriptures about idolatry. I rarely understood what they were talking about. They would talk for hours about the consequences of our idolatry through our quiet support of nuclear weapons and ever-worsening loss of our humanity. As I get older and our predicament worsens, alas, it all makes sense.
I well remember, for instance, spending a quiet afternoon thirty-five years ago listening to Daniel Berrigan read Psalm 115. I expected sweet reflections on the spiritual life of peace. Instead, I heard sharp denunciations and condemnations of the idols of war. To this day, I’ve never heard anybody else say such things.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.
They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see.
They have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell.
They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk,
and no sound rises from their throats.
Their makers shall be like them, and all who trust in them. (Psalm 115:4-8)
The idols of this world are dead, the psalmist wrote long ago, as are those who worship them. That means, Dan explained, you can’t live in peace and the fullness of life if you spend your years quietly supporting the culture’s idols of death. You must take a stand, speak out and resist.
What is the antidote to idolatry? The Berrigans testified to their faith in the living God of peace, but they insisted that such faith can only grow within the boundaries of nonviolence. Belief in the God of peace, in a culture as sick as ours requires publicly renouncing belief in the culture’s false gods of war and all other instruments of death, according to Psalm 115.
---
Other louie postings on Nagasaki & Hiroshima are here:
Flash of Light, Wall of Fire (2020)
Nagasaki (2018)
Stillness
From Jim Forest's biography, “Living With Wisdom”:
Sitting on a cedar log under a tree in February 1952, gazing out at light blue hills in the distance, Merton saw his true self as a kind of sea creature dwelling in a water cavern which knows of the world of dry land only by faint rumor. When he got free of plans and projects — the first level of the sea with its troubled surface — then he lived in the second level, in the deep waters out of reach of storms, where there was “peace, peace, peace.... We pray therein, slightly waving among the fish.... Words, as I think, do not spring from this second level. They are only meant to drown there. The question of socialization does not concern these waters. They are nobody’s property.... No questions whatever perturb their holy botany. Neutral territory. No man’s sea. I think God meant me to write about this second level.”
Still deeper down Merton was aware of a third level,
>> swimming in the rich darkness which is no longer thick like water but pure, like air. Starlight, and you do not know where it is coming from. Moonlight is in this prayer, stillness, waiting for the Redeemer.... Everything is charged with intelligence, though all is night. There is no speculation here. There is vigilance... Everything is spirit. Here God is adored, His coming is recognized, He is received as soon as He is expected and because He is expected He is received, but He has passed by sooner than He arrived, He was gone before He came. He returned forever. He never yet passed by and already He had disappeared for all eternity. He is and He is not. Everything and Nothing. Not light not dark, not high not low, not this side not that side. Forever and forever. In the wind of His passing the angels cry, “The Holy One is gone.” Therefore I lie dead in the air of their wings.... It is a strange awakening to find the sky inside you and beneath you and above you and all around you so that your spirit is one with the sky, and all is positive night.”
– Thomas Merton
Sign of Jonas, pp 138-9
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Hagar's Prayer
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| Clear Vision Inspired by Genesis 21:8-21 By Lauren Wright Pittman |
Hagar's Prayer*
by Trisha Arlin
Blessed One-ness, Breathing Existence,
I once was Sarah:Rich,Loved,Able to laugh at everything,Even God,Especially God.I had a place, a home, a mission.
But now I'm Hagar:Broke,Alone,About to cry at everything,Even God.Especially God.Wandering, in the desert, hungry.
This is my fault.I should have seen this comingI should have protected myself,I refused to accurately assess my situation.Oh, the fantasies I had of love and success.
No! This is Sarah's fault,She, with her connectionsAnd her covenantAnd no room for anyone else.Oh, the promises she made when she needed me.
No, this is Abraham's fault!He pretends to have no agencyBut he's the one with the money and the power,He's the one who talks to God (or so he says).Oh, the bullshit he slings about destiny.
All I have now is a cat named IshmaelAnd he expects to be fedAnd watered.Meow Meow, he's starving.I can't look at him,Oh, I can't watch him die.All I can do is pray.
Blessed One-nessBreathing Existence,Send me a social workerOr food stampsOr a lotto ticketOr friendsOr a magical flowing spring of plenty that pours out from the rocks.
Or something.Amen.
*Originally Printed in Journal of Feminist Studies In Religion: #35, 1
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
celebrate the burden
Celebrate then, the burden.
Friday, March 5, 2021
Jesus Lama
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| Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, 1968. Courtesy of John Howard Griffin. |
In the last couple of days I've come across some things that have given me a slightly different feel for Merton. A little more insight into who Merton was, how he was, as a person living in the world. When I dream of Merton, he always has aspects of a very friendly and somewhat rambunctious dog. And though Merton is not easy to pin down, I think I'm on the right track ...
The first article is in Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine. "The Jesus Lama: Thomas Merton in the Himalayas". It is an interview with Harold Thomas. Thomas, at the time, was a skinny 27 year old, a Catholic convert, and in India studying Buddhism with the Dalai Lama.
Talbot had met Merton at Gethsemane in 1958, 10 years before and just after his conversion, when Merton told him: "And I have only one thing to say to you: the Church is a very big place. Always remember to go your own way in it.” Talbot remembered that and recounted it to Merton upon meeting him again in Asia. To which Merton replied: “Did I say that? That’s pretty good. And look at where we both are.”
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| Dom Aelred Graham, the Dalai Lama, and Talbott, 1967. |
It turns out that Harold Talbot was in Asia serving as a secretary to Dam Aelred Graham, author of Zen Catholicism. I have long been fascinated with the notion of Zen Catholicism. It is the way that I understand my own Catholicism.
“What is really meant … is continual openness to God, attentiveness, listening, disposability, etc. In the terms of Zen, it is not awareness of but simple awareness.” (Day of a Stranger, p.41, written in 1965)In some notes that Merton prepared for an exhibition of his calligraphic drawings, he writes:
“Neither rustic nor urbane, Eastern nor Western, perhaps can be called expressions of Zen Catholicism”. (from a notebook in the TMC collection)
Talbot is able, in this interview, to explain to me how Merton understood Zen within the context of his Christian tradition and how he "got" the consciousness of dzogchen -- what exactly happened to him at Pollonaruwa. If you're interested in this sort of thing, read the full interview. This is the very best interpretation of Merton's Pollonaruwa experience -- which I never quite understood -- that I have ever read.
At first Merton had no interest in meeting with the Dalai Lama whom he presumed to be the big banana of an organized religion. Talbot persisted. This is how the meeting is recounted in the interview:
Talbott: The Dalai Lama’s robe and Thomas Merton’s white Cistercian habit with the black scapular looked Giottoesque. It was an image of two figures encountering each other who deserved to wear those robes, who were part and parcel of the world represented by those very robes. So that one really had a surfeit of visual inspiration. Both men were very solid. Unornamental, compact, strong, hard beings. Now the Dalai Lama has an external joviality and graciousness which is appropriate to a sovereign. To put you at your ease, to make it possible for beings to be in relation to him, he plays down the radiance, the dignity, the charisma, the persona that the West has developed a romantic myth about, but who in himself has his own distinct presence and radiance. There is no presumption about him. He’s a person who draws a heart-breaking reverence from the people who are devoted to him, and to see him in this room with a man to whom we don’t need to apply adjectives, but if we were, it would be things like mensch, authentic…
Tricycle: Merton?
Talbott: Yes. Mensch—manly, authentic. No gestures. No artifice. No manner. No program, no come-on—just, “Here I am folks”—and folks happened to be the Dalai Lama. And they encountered each other and, appropriately enough, there was utter silence. And then the Dalai Lama challenged him or greeted him by saying, “What do you want?” and he said, “I want to study dzogchen.” I was about to clobber Merton. I couldn’t take it. But I was very glad to be aboard. It was the generosity of Merton that made it possible for me to attend those meetings. He said, “You’re here studying with the Dalai Lama. I want you present.” Whereas it might have been delightful to be alone with just the Dalai Lama and the interpreter. It’s my good karma that I was there. There was so much good humor and so much laughter and so much camaraderie and so much confidence of understanding and so much no need for explanation and build-up and equipping themselves on their parts, you see. They had done their homework.
Tricycle: What did the Dalai Lama ask Merton about Christianity?
Talbott: If I’m not mistaken, it was about how you live the contemplative life in the West and what you do to make it possible in this modern world to live the life of a monk in the West. How do you stave off spiritual annihilation? These conversations were very much Merton equipping himself with the transmission of Buddhism from the Dalai Lama and very much the Dalai Lama equipping himself with the low-down from a reliable guide. This was not a papal legate. This was not someone setting up a conference for the Pope. This was not a front man. This was an embodiment of something which another embodiment—a tulku—who needs to function in the world, was drawing upon as a resource.
Tricycle: Did Merton have a daily meditation practice?
Talbott: I have no idea, but I asked him once, like a very fresh kid, “What is your meditation practice? And what do you think of this stuff?” He said, “My meditation practice is largely walking in the woods in a state of meditative absorption.”
Tricycle: It sounds like the Dalai Lama was providing a transmission to be carried forth to all of Christendom.
Talbott: The Dalai Lama is saying to him, “I want with my own eyes and ears and speech to assure myself that you have the faith firmly grounded” and—let’s be daring—let’s think that there are certain beings who do not have to come every day and attend Zen or vipassana retreat. This could be a romantic projection but I have to say what I think: Merton had thirty years behind him and when he walked into a room or the cell of a meditator, monk or lama, he was greeted with a recognition. I’ve never seen a Western person received by a lama the way that he was received.
Tricycle: Did the Dalai Lama feel personally responsible that Merton get it right?
Talbott: That’s how I see it. Dzogchen is the primordial state of mind, it’s the enlightened mind, that has never been anything but enlightened. We are living in a world, it is said, which is a product of our own unenlightened experience, our ma rigpa, our ignorance of the true nature of reality, absolute and relative.Dzogchen is the practice of the primordial enlightenment but it is also a view or standpoint towards reality. Its meditation is to sustain and deepen this. That’s a contradiction because dzogchen is the presence of fulfillment, not a process. We already are in primordial—or original—enlightenment in dzogchen. That’s the starting place.
It's all just extraordinary.
Finally,
He [Merton] had reached a point—unrecognizable to me and perhaps to you—where the Judeo-Christian theistic tradition of the Mother Church of Christendom and dzogchen of Nyingmapa Tibetan Buddhism were not in contradiction. Furthermore he had grown up in a Catholic village in France that had so deeply affected him that it had planted a seed which had caused him to enter the Church. He was a man who had spent thirty years in a Cistercian abbey. His training came from the Church. He was a generous man and he was a just man and he acknowledged what he owed to the Church. It was his formation. It was not his cocoon. It was not his prison. It was himself and it was a very good self and he needed to uphold it.
...
Because Merton stood for the contemplative life the way—to make a vulgar and irrelevant analogy—Picasso stands for art. For contemplatives there are illuminated beings, there are hidden yogis, but as far as how ordinary people come into touch with the great spiritual heritage of the West—including the apophatic tradition, the Via Negativa—it’s through the mystical teachings from St. Paul and St. John, St. John’s gospel, Dionysius the Areopagite, the great medieval mystics Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila—and that’s just about it, folks—that’s it for the big league contributions to spirituality at the contemplative level in the West. And every now and then you get somebody who says “Wait a minute, I know the chips are down and the circumstances are against us, but let’s get in there once more and try to stay alive spiritually.” And that’s Merton for twentieth-century Westerners. Despite all of his manliness, Merton was a man of the old moment before the Second World War, a man of enormous personal and cultural refinement. He belonged in a French salon as well as in a forest in Kentucky. There is no question about it. He had the qualities we’re losing. Gaining, gaining other wonderful ones but losing, losing something. Merton had this consummate worldly culture as well as this jewel of spirituality. He was a gift to humanity, with the naivete and the nerve to take the writings of mystics seriously.
...
Merton saw himself as a man who had to purify himself of something that was a very heavy load to carry. But by the time he came to India, whether or not finding dzogchen was central—that’s my organization of significance in his life—it turns out that he had lived his life and this was the Mozart finale and he was in a state of utmost exuberance, engaged, and absorbing, and eating with delectation every moment of every experience and every person that passed. He tipped Sikh taxi drivers like a Proustian millionaire. He was on a roll, on a toot, on a holiday from school. He was a grand seigneur, a great lord of the spiritual life. He radiated a sense of “This is an adventure, here I am folks,” and he woke people up and illuminated them and enchanted them and gave them a tremendous happiness and a good laugh. But also there was always a communication from him that he was a representative of the religious life whether he was wearing a windbreaker or a habit. The Indian people greeted him as a pilgrim, a seeker, and that was the basis on which he was met by everybody and congratulated valiantly whether they recognized his public identity or not. People knew his spiritual quality. People in planes knew it. There was no question about it. Merton was not an object of scrutiny, he was an event.
Just extraordinary.
How glad I am that I discovered Merton's writings early in my life and that he has been my guide all the way through. This is a terrific interview, Harold Talbot. Thank you for your invaluable insights.
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Kelly Latimore Icon "You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as aw...
