At the end of New Seeds, Merton closes with a thought I find particularly wise, peaceful, and therefore comforting. It is, at the same time, greatly challenging. This is the first part of it, and I plan to offer the second part (which I find to be quite lovely) next week, with a couple of additional comments.

The presence of God in His world as its Creator depends on no one but Him. His presence in the world as Man depends, in some measure, upon men. Not that we can do anything to change the mystery of the Incarnation in itself: but we are able to decide whether we ourselves, and that portion of the world which is ours, shall become aware of His presence, consecrated by it, and transfigured in its light.

We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real and which lives by a shadowy autonomy for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. It is this inner self that is taken up into the mystery of Christ, by His Love, by the Holy Spirit, so that in secret we live "in Christ." — New Seeds, chapter 39

we all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house. — New Seeds, chapter 9

It is useless and even laughable to base political thought on the faint hope of a purely contingent and subjective moral illumination in the hearts of the world's leaders. But outside of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only permissible to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necessary to pray for it. We can and must believe not so much that the mysterious light of God can "convert" the ones who are mostly responsible for the world's peace, but at least that they may, in spite of their obstinacy and their prejudices, be guarded against fatal error. — New Seeds, chapter 16

If I am to be "holy" I must [be] something that I do not understand, something mysterious and hidden, something apparently self-contradictory; for God, in Christ, "emptied Himself." He became a man, and dwelt among sinners. He was considered a sinner. He was put to death as a blasphemer, as one who at least implicitly denied God, as one who revolted against the holiness of God. Indeed, the great question in the trial and condemnation of Christ was precisely the denial of God and the denial of His holiness. So God Himself was put to death on a cross because He did not measure up to man's conception of His Holiness. … He was not holy enough, He was not holy in the right way, He was not holy in the way they had been led to expect. Therefore he was not God at all. […But] in reality this manifestation was the complete denial and rejection of all human ideas of holiness and perfection. — New Seeds, chapter 8

Every one of us forms an idea of Christ that is limited and incomplete. It is cut according to our own measure. We tend to create for ourselves a Christ in our own image, a projection of our own aspirations, desires and ideals. We find in Him what we want to find. We make Him not only the incarnation of God but also the incarnation of the things we and our society and our part of society happen to live for.

Therefore, although it is true that perfection consists in imitating Christ and reproducing Him in our own lives, it is not enough merely to imitate the Christ we have in our imaginations.

[…] Therefore if you want to have in your heart the affections and dispositions that were those of Christ on earth, consult not your own imagination but faith. Enter into the darkness of interior renunciation, strip your soul of images and let Christ form Himself in you by His Cross. — New Seeds, chapter 21

Here are some observations from Thomas, which I borrow in the moment to comment on the upcoming election, with no more nor less cynicism directed at either candidate:

A revolution is supposed to be a change that turns everything completely around. But the ideology of political revolution will never change anything except appearances. There will be violence, and power will pass from one party to another, but when the smoke clears and the bodies of all the dead men are underground, the situation will be essentially the same as it was before: there will be a minority of strong men in power exploiting all the others for their own ends. There will be the same greed and cruelty and lust and ambition and avarice and hypocrisy as before. — New Seeds, chapter 20

Geez. I've missed two in a row now?

They aren't going away; I'm just busy/distracted/tired. Here's hoping for next week.

Go, Thomas! Go!

The biggest paradox about the Church is that she is at the same time essentially traditional and essentially revolutionary. But that is not as much of a paradox as it seems, because Christian tradition, unlike all others, is a living and perpetual revolution.

Human traditions all tend toward stagnation and decay. They try to perpetuate things that cannot be perpetuated. They cling to objects and values which time destroys without mercy. They are bound up with a contingent material order of things—customs, fashions, styles and attitudes—which inevitably change and give way to something else.

The presence of a strong element of human conservatism in the Church should not obscure the fact that Christian tradition, supernatural in its source, is something absolutely opposed to human traditionalism. —New Seeds, chapter 20

What about the men who run about the countryside painting signs that say "Jesus saves" and "prepare to meet God!" Have you ever seen one of them? I have not, but I often try to imagine them, and I wonder what goes on in their minds. Strangely, their signs do not make me think of Jesus, but of them. Or perhaps it is "their Jesus" who gets in the way and makes all thought of Jesus impossible. They wish to force their Jesus upon us, and He is perhaps only a projection of themselves. They seem to be at times threatening the world with judgment and at other times promising it mercy. But are they asking simply to be loved and recognized and valued, for themselves? In any case, their Jesus is quite different from mine. But because their concept is different, should I reject it in horror, with distaste? If I do, perhaps I reject something in my own self that I no longer recognize to be there. And in any case, if I can tolerate their Jesus then I can accept and love them. Or I can at least conceive of doing so. Let not their Jesus be a barrier between us, or they will be a barrier between us and Jesus. — New Seeds, chapter 15

Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone. — New Seeds, chapter 30

One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact, they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of "perfection" to his own life. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books.

Sometimes his case is so bad that no monastery will keep him. He has to be dismissed, sent back to the world like Benedict Joseph Labre, who wanted to be a Trappist and a Carthusian and succeeded in neither. He finally ended up as a tramp. He died in some street in Rome.

And yet the only canonized saint, venerated by the whole Church, who has lived either as a Cistercian or a Carthusian since the Middle Ages is St. Benedict Jospeh Labre. — New Seeds, chapter 14

And so it takes heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man, or the artist, that God intended you to be.

You will be made to feel that your honesty is only pride. This is a serious temptation because you can never be sure whether you are being true to your true self or only building up a defense for the false personality that is the creature of your own appetite for esteem.

But the greatest humility can be learned from the anguish of keeping your balance in such a position: of continuing to be yourself without getting tough about it and without asserting your false self against the false selves of other people. —New Seeds, chapter 14

Wow. A whole week slipped by me somehow. Back to Merton Mondays…

[The truly humble man] is able to see quite clearly that what is useful to him may be useless for somebody else, and what helps others to be saints might ruin him. That is why humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and a common sense without which there is no sane morality.

It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone… —New Seeds, chapter 14

Of course Merton understood that we find ourselves and we find God in the lives and love of other people, but he also took great pains to point out that while we are doing so, the working out of our salvation is a mystery which occurs in our internal lives, between each individual and God. In my estimate, what is so very important in Merton's presentations is his understanding that this occurs only when we are each free to be our self as God created us. This freedom must be allowed by others, certainly, but also by ourselves. Both are difficult, and their necessity cannot be overestimated.

This is, at the very least, one of the core weaknesses in mainstream Christianity; that in the name of being holy we spend our lives trying to be something we were never intended to be—while in truth each precludes the other.

To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or nonconformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leave the rest aside. — New Seeds, chapter 14

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure…

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed—but hate these things in yourself, not in another. — New Seeds, chapter 16

A portion of one of my favorite Merton passages. The photo is from my trip to the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Merton lived and wrote.

[There] is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

But although this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult. In fact, if I am left to myself it will be utterly impossible. For although I can know something of God's existence and nature by my own reason, there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.

That is something that no man can ever do alone.

Nor can all the men and all the created things in the universe help him in his work.

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone. — New Seeds, chapter 5.

There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men. — New Seeds, chapter 10

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you—try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself! —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men.

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Some people think it is enough to have one virtue, like kindness or broadmindedness or charity, and let everything else go. But if you are unselfish in one way and selfish in twenty-five other ways your virtue will not do you much good. In fact, it will probably turn out to be nothing more than a twenty-sixth variety of the same selfishness, disguised as virtue.

Therefore do not think that because you seem to have some good quality, all the evil in you can be excused or forgotten on that account alone. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

This post has an underlying complication, which to my mind is a rather large one, that I will try to address in a later post; one that I started this past week but have yet to finish.

In the vivid darkness of God within us there sometimes come deep movements of love that deliver us entirely, for a moment, from our old burden of selfishness, and number us among those little children of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.

And when God allows us to fall back into our own confusion of desires and judgments and temptations, we carry a scar over the place where that joy exulted for moment in our hearts.

The scar burns us. The sore wound aches within us, and we remember that we have fallen back into what we are not, and are not yet allowed to remain where God would have us belong. We long for the place He has destined for us and weep with desire for the time when this pure poverty will catch us and hold us in its liberty and never let us go, when we will never fall back from the Paradise of the simple and the little children into the forum of prudence where the wise of this world go up and down in sorrow and set their traps for a happiness that cannot exist. —New Seeds, chapter 31

There are moments in God, beautiful, mind-numbing moments, where the Love of God is glimpsed and all of life becomes crystal clear in its profound simplicity. To the human mind God is full of paradoxes, and the profound nature of that simplicity is one of them. It's an absolutely glorious thing. But true, the moment never lasts, and only the scar remains. And those scars, over time, remind us of God's Love while we are in our normal everyday living. We remember, though we cannot feel at the moment, that it answers everything. We hold onto enough of our memory of those moments that our view of life is forver changed. Even though we fall back to our weakened states of self-absorption, we never forget that Love rules all, and that we are on this earth to be part of that Love.

The souvenirs brought back to our house this weekend include a book of poetry and a poster from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. I was greatly touched that my wife and daughter would pick these two gifts for me. I like to think that, perhaps, they say something of what I try to stand for in life; that even though I am weak and frail and full of selfishness, I carry the scars and do not forget their pain. The poster is of a very famous quote by Martin Niemoller, a quote which exists in many variations:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . and by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Niemoller is a very controversial figure because in the 1930's he held anti-Semitic views. To be clear, I know almost nothing of Niemoller's life, but it remains that this quote (or rather, versions of it) appear on walls at both the U.S. and New England Holocaust Memorials. For good or for bad, Niemoller has become somewhat of a hero in relation to the Holocaust. It may be that Niemoller serves as a perfect example of his poem. He didn't speak up for those who were "different" from him, and in the end the system caught up with him—a lesson we should take to heart, I think. Do not believe that we stand alone, cherished and special, while others fall by the wayside. Hatred, fear and insanity are rarely satisfied in erasing only one or two "different" classes of people. Once a single class is done and gone, those who hate have nothing left to do, no one left to hate, until they can invent the next class that is not quite enough like them, and so must be eliminated. The poster I was given notes that the Nazi party created colored symbols to denote each class of people they needed to eliminate in order to cleanse society. Among them were the communists, the socialists, the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the emigrants. Should this list give us pause? I think so. I think a list, period, should give us pause.

In those moments where one touches the Love of God, when one glimpses briefly through the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, one learns that God's love is about a Oneness; about a Love that gathers us one to another in God and makes us all one in God's presence. To divide humans into groups, factions and classes is the antithesis of Loving them. A Christianity which divides and casts out, therefore and quite clearly, is really not much of a Christianity. Yet, to say so is to cause division, and here is where I will work on the complication—another day.

But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. — My Argument With the Gestapo

I knew May would be a crazy month for my family. Once I finished up class this semester, we were off to Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada for a whirlwind trip to see a couple of friends' kids graduate; one with an engineering degree and one with a medical degree. And now this week, for the first time in my life I have each of my kids in a different part of the country simultaneously. So, I find it hard to sleep. Not that I'm overwrought with worry; it's just a parent thing. My mind won't settle in a solid sleep. I wake up every hour seeing one of their faces, as if there's something I've forgotten to do for them, some way to care for them. Maybe as a parent of young kids you get so used to constantly doing things with and for them, your mind can't stop feeling like it should be doing so.

I seriously need to find some time to collect my thoughts after the past few weeks, and this week should, in theory, help. With a little time to myself, there should be room for some serious garbage collection in my head. I relish times to do just that. And I've been trying this morning. One of the things that never fails to amaze me about such collection is that to a person like me, it always becomes more clear that the things of this life are unclear. What I mean by this is that I'm not a person who likes to slice, dice, divide, label, name and categorize life. I tend to be an integrator. And so, when I say things become more unclear, I don't mean that they are getting separated further and that I can't fit them together or find a place for them. Rather, I mean that life becomes more integrated, and all the things begin to blend together. Human life is very grey to me, but not because there is a lack of sharpness and meaning to it. It is simply that all things are connected, and they are connected to such an extent that even the connections cannot be well identified. This may be one of the reasons I admire mystical religion so much; it deals in the realm where "There is what is. What is, is." (Parenthetically, this is why I believe one of the truly great passages in the Bible is when God sends Moses to lead his people. God declares to Moses, "I am who I am. Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.'" I'm not making a claim about the Moses Story, but I am making a claim about the Bible Story. It's a brilliant presentation. Who is God? God is That Which Is. God is That Which Exists. What else is God supposed to say to explain to a human who/what God is?)

That's a bit of background to a hundred things going through my mind this morning. I missed last Monday's Merton quote; I was driving. All day. All night. Into the next morning. And this week I've deviated from New Seeds to go back farther into Merton's life, before he entered the monastery. It seems proper to me to take something from his novel My Argument With the Gestapo (which admittedly wasn't grand enough as a novel to be published until the Merton name would sell it). It seems fitting because it's Memorial Day, my oldest daughter happens to be at Arlington National Cemetery today, and, well, because everything is grey and related. But there's no way I can sit here today and type it all up for a post. This is the problem with seeing all of life as integrated; how do you talk about its little pieces? To give it my best shot for the day, I'll start with an anecdote.

Some years ago, I was hiking with a friend of mine, one of the finest human beings I've ever met. Although we differ in some of our views, we share a deep and abiding faith in God. He's a good friend, the kind of friend that gives friendship its meaning. I can talk to him about anything. Most of all he's one of those folks who would give his life and likely his soul for me, and most likely for you, too. I bet he'd make one hell of a soldier, and in fact he was in the first gulf war. So round and round, somehow on this hike we got into a conversation and I ended up saying something, and he's the only person I've said it to who seems to have really gotten it. Which means, he'd already realized it, and was simply agreeing with me once I said it. In so many words, I was talking about faith in God, and about how it is faith that justifies our actions, and that even that faith comes from God, and that nothing is our own. And I said that I've known pacifists and I've known warriors, and in each case I think some were "wrong" and some were "right." That what it came down to was the humility and honesty of their faith—or the lack of each— before God that made them right or wrong. "It's not what side you choose, but why and in what spirit. It's not the decision one makes, but the faith behind it," I said. He stopped walking and turned to look at me. He cocked his head, smiled, and nodded. "And it's the same faith in either case," he said, his tone of voice sharing with me the wonder of faith.

It's a hard thing to accept. People who are strongly aligned to action view such a statement as heretical, as situation ethics, as absolutely dangerous. "Well then, I guess you're saying we can all do just whatever we want, and God don't mind as long as we do it for Him!" No, that's not it. It's about the nature of faith, of God, and of Man together. Either you get it, or your don't. That's all the explanation for which I have time today.

But why this matters today is that I believe in peace. I believe war is born of evil. I believe that, as Merton once wrote, it is the suspension of morality. It should always be avoided whenever possible. I know a number of people who would not kill a thug who was killing their own kid, and I admire some of their theology and all of their conviction. Their greatest fear, I venture, is that in the heat of some moment, they would kill to protect another. They would argue, I think, that one cannot say he values life if he is willing to take a life. Fair enough. I admire that. A lot. But I think one of my greatest fears is that I would fail to kill to protect another. You see, it is also fair enough to say that you cannot claim to value life if you will allow it to be taken by the vicious. There are no easy answers, but my claim is that the two views cannot be fully separated, nor need they be: there is room in God for both. It is evil that people die in wars. Evil. But does that make those who do the deed evil? Not always. I imagine my little girl at Arlington today. She is in the midst of some three hundred thousand people who gave their lives in battle; a great many who did so in the same faith that makes me pray for peace. I will say nothing negative in their presence, for she can be there today because they each believed enough to give her a tomorrow. To them and their faith I owe too great a debt. It is Memorial Day. It is a day for them, for their families, for their loved ones. And it is also a day for my daughter, for me, and for you. We are not separate. We are what is.

Almost didn't make Monday for Thomas this week…

Only the will of God is indefectible. Every other freedom can fail and defeat itself by a false choice. All true freedom comes to us as a supernatural gift of God, as a participation in His own essential Freedom by the Love He infuses into our souls, uniting them with Him first in perfect consent, then in a transforming union of wills.

The other freedom, the so-called freedom of our nature, which is indifference with respect to good and evil choices, is nothing more than a capacity, a potentiality waiting to be fulfilled by the grace, the will and the supernatural love of God. — New Seeds, chapter 27

People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all.

They can only conceive one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men. They do not know that reality is to be sought not in division but in unity, for we are "members one of another."

The man who lives in division is not a person but only an "individual."

I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something. And I am all the more something because you are nothing. And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me; at times this even helps me to forget the other men who have what I have not and who have taken what I was too slow to take and who have seized what was beyond my reach, who are praised as I cannot be praised and who live on my death. — New Seeds, Chapter 7

In response to passages like this one and many others in Merton's work, I am left to simply raise a hand feebly and mumble, "Wow. Guilty." One of the things I find most interesting about being confronted with a presentation like the one above is that these kinds of subjects remain true and convicting and applicable no matter how much I may learn, grow and mature. No matter how far I may come, I never arrive. That's one of the great fascinations of a spiritual journey; it is never complete. You never arrive. You just keep climbing the ladder, and some days the rungs appear unsettlingly familiar to those you grasped long ago. The levels and flavors of things to overcome change, but the basic weaknesses within you remain the same: selfishness, pride, ego, stupidity, etc. They simply become more crafty and insidious. The enemy who lies within us is a very dynamic one; a chameleon who hides in the shadows of our souls, changing colors and forms as we ourselves grow and change. I am my own most formidable spiritual enemy, and sometimes I am astounded by how clever my foe can be. But I digress.

I picked this particular Merton quote in response to thoughts which go through my head whenever I receive an email with a certain basic slant, and I wrote the above paragraph because there are two edges to the sword of those thoughts. There is the side which wants to point the authors of said emails directly to Merton and admonish them in some way, and there is the side which re-reads the quote and pauses, mutters something about hypocrisy, and whispers to me to be content to remove the plank from my own eye. Having recognized my needs born of my own weaknesses, having reminded myself of them, I simply offer a few thoughts directed at all of us; myself at the head of the line.

The latest email wasn't that bad; it had a certain charming simplicity to it, and I think what it did more than anything was to cause me to remember other emails I have received and I have personally found to be offensive. It probably isn't fair, I admit, but I fall prey to the human propensity to lump things into buckets. "Oh, yeah, this idea/claim/gripe belongs in the <whatever subject> bucket, along with all the rest." And of course this is a bad idea, because there are never enough buckets to fairly differentiate everything, so things get unreasonably categorized. This is, by the way, one of the core issues in religion, politics and the like. People each have only a few buckets in their minds, and the ideas of others get thrown into one of those buckets of muck based upon one small point. [e.g., "You're pro-choice? So, then, you go in the liberal bucket! This means, to name a few things, that you are (necessarily by bucket-muck-association) a democratic, tree-hugging, anti-war, anti-gun, unpatriotic, gay-loving, pro-abortion, welfare-state, hybrid-driving, loose-living, immoral, anti-American, etc., etc." or, to be fair: "You're pro-life? So, then, you go in the conservative bucket! This means, to name a few things, that you are (necessarily by bucket-muck association) a republican, land-raping, pro-war, NRA-brainwashed, imperialistic, homophobic, misogynistic, rich-get-richer, gas-guzzler-driving, prudish, hypocritical, nationalistic, etc., etc.]. This is foolishness, but it's about the best a lot of us seem to be able to do. For a long time I've been trying to create and manage more and more buckets in my thinking, so I reduce this problem, but of late I'm coming to the conclusion that buckets are simply a bad idea. Throw away the buckets. Throw away the categorizing that improperly associates one idea with another. Let each thing stand on its own, as a discrete item. Analyze it as it stands. Understand, one, that ideas can be held in a practically infinite set of combinations and understand, two, that the buckets are fictions anyway. This is the most maddening thing of all, and I don't know why more people don't realize it: there aren't buckets that encapsulate what we believe they do. It's all a bunch of make-believe, which has been allowed (encouraged, even) to evolve so that one, we don't have to think hard about anything and, two, so politicians, pundits and related media types can manipulate us and get a rise out of us without having to work hard to earn their millions and/or achieve their maniacal power. (Deep breath). But, again, I digress.

So, where was I going with this? I'm not sure it matters because I seem to have derailed myself, but the email I received recently had a basic point, which was that the author has a job wherein he or she has to undergo random urine tests as a condition of employment. Author's point being, how come people who are getting welfare checks don't have to take urine tests and prove themselves drug free in order to get their checks? This is kind of a charming idea, and I admire its simplicity. I also like the fact that the author stated that he or she doesn't mind for some of his or her check to go toward helping people who are down on their luck and are trying to get back on their feet. The author just doesn't want a part of his or her paycheck going to people who don't try to get back up, and instead choose to sit around doing drugs. Fair enough. I can see that.

But admittedly, there's a bucket in my head that is doing a little jig and raising all kinds of tinny clatter over in a corner. Now, I'm not saying the recent email belongs in this bucket, and in fact I'm not placing it into this bucket. I'm just saying it's close enough to make the bucket dance. The bucket holds emails about things like getting rid of politicians who vote for social security to be paid to aliens (which, by the way, seems to be reasonable under law since aliens pay social security), and the bucket holds news stories about things like people being irate over how some Katrina victims spent their federal aid money. The Katrina thing always puzzled me because, for example, there were complaints about money being spent on booze and tattoos. But I doubt the complainers would raise a stink if the spenders spent money they themselves
earned on booze and tattoos, so it couldn't have been a simple moral issue concerning the evils of alcohol, skin and ink. And I have to think that at least some of the complainers don't see anything wrong with spending their own money on their own martini lunches and a cocktail or two after work, nor their plastic surgery and designer clothes which are part of their concept of self-identity, so it couldn't have been simply that "their" money was being used for these types of things. It must have been something else, and if I throw in the alien thing, what I'm left to conclude, in the plainest thinking, is that people don't want their money to go to people who don't meet their standards of what it means to be a properly behaving, properly reasoning, properly American person; whatever the heck "properly" means. The thing is, the alarm that goes off in my head when I receive emails or read news about this type of thing is that they are about some kind of division created by and between people, about what's defined to be "proper" or "right" or what-have-you, and I worry because—although it is unavoidable and even necessary that we each draw our own lines in the sand in order to have meaningful direction in our life—once division starts, it is very hard to stop.

Suppose hypothetically that somebody were to decide that since I didn't meet the requirements of their job, or match their moral or political views, that I shouldn't get a handout when I need it. Suppose, in the reverse, I decided the same thing against them. Suppose I tell you that I'd love to help you out of your bind, but I'm not going to because I know you're going to go out and buy a business suit, cologne and a razor, or make-up, a hairstyle and some new shoes so you can "look for a decent job?" Suppose I say that if you were really hurting, you'd forget about how you look, and get a job digging ditches or scooping poop until you could pay to make your own self look pretty? Or maybe I'd tell you that you're getting nothing from me because all you're going to do is go find a job digging ditches or scooping poop, and I'm not going to support somebody who has no self respect nor higher goals. Or maybe I'd tell you that I'd love to help you out, but I know you're just going to go buy hot dogs and bleached white bread for your kids, so I'm saving my generosity for somebody who cares to provide decent food for their family. Suppose some guy or gal said, "Well, ya know, I have a super-top-secret government clearance. I have to get a lie-detector test every month, the feds watch my spending like a hawk, question every big thing I buy, snoop into my sex life, I can't so much as carry a pocket knife to protect myself during the day, and generally I give up my freedom to take care of my family. Do you do that? Nope. So you had a job and you had to pee in a bottle once in a while? Big deal. Why should I help you, when all you had to do was meet the simple expedient of staying off drugs? Tell you what: you get yourself straight and moral with a work ethic like mine, show me that you're willing to lay a little more on the line to be here in America, so that you deserve to get some of my money, and then we'll talk?" Quite frankly, in this line of reasoning, eventually there isn't a single one of us who deserves to get a penny from anyone. Once you make the first cut of division it's really, really easy to start slicing and dicing until the pieces aren't even big enough to see anymore.

I know. I've made an extreme—childish even—play. In cowardly defense I'll say that it's the last week of the semester and I'm totally cranked on caffeine. But the point is, the idea that "we" deserve what others do not is questionable and extreme—childish even—in and of itself. The very concept, the very inkling of it in our brain, is spiritually dangerous. I guess that's my point, and now I actually remember where I was going with all of this. I said I'm working toward having no buckets. That isn't entirely correct. I'm working toward having one bucket. (Anyway, to have one bucket is, effectively, the same thing as having no buckets.) When it all comes down to it, there is just one bucket, with a label on it that says, "FRAGILE: HUMANITY." It holds everything, and we're all in it together. We are all members of one another. Like it or not (and there's plenty not to like), there's no getting out of the bucket. The sooner we figure this out, the better it will be for all of us.

Oh. And one more thing, about the clattering bucket and the emails and the news stories. There's something else that puzzles me. These emails and stories usually end up with something about America (a country which I happen to admire and love, by the way). They say something about how we need to fix the country, or if the country wasn't so screwed up things like this wouldn't happen, or this ain't America no more. I think some of this is true; definitely, we need to fix some things. The role of drugs in the socio-economic matrix, for example, would be a good one. But, at the same time, the folks seem to be saying, at least implicitly, that if you refuse to contribute to a society, then you shouldn't get to be fed by that society. I guess I wonder if they're saying, in short, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." I wonder, because I don't recall this idea being stated in the our Constitution. (Sincerely, if it is, please tell me so I don't remain ignorant.) The idea is, however, in the Soviet Constitution of 1936; it's Lenin's first principle of socialism. So, in which hard working, properly red-blooded American bucket does that belong?

I may be way off base with that last comment, but it seems to me that the great thing about America and Americans is that it and we help people even when people don't deserve it. This may seem like a painful crock of muck to those of us who foot the bill, but I'm willing to accept it. Personally, I'll pick an environment of blind grace and mercy over one of cold hard justice any day of the week. But that's just me—I think Jesus was on to something there.

Thanks for indulging a bit of a rant. Now I need to gather up some sophomoric, embarrassing buckets in my head, and try to throw them out.

. . . now if I can just find my Starbucks mug . . .

 

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes from New Seeds of Contemplation. The day I had read this for the umpteenth time and its truth finally struck me in all its depth and simplicity, my entire life of personal Christian faith changed:

The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no man's sin because he does not know sin. He knows the mercy of God. He knows that his own mission on earth is to bring that mercy to all men. —New Seeds, chapter 4

It never ceases to puzzle (note I don't say amaze) me that most Christians I have shown this quote not only don't get it, they argue with it. Generally, they tend to view it as doctrinally unsound, and their response is along the lines of, "Well, this a very dangerous statement. The Bible clearly teaches us that if we claim we don't sin, we are self-deceived and the truth doesn't live within us." Yep. The reference is from 1 John chapter one. I know. But Merton isn't even talking in the same ballpark as this kind of thinking, and Merton's point, like most of his points, is so pure and clear that it takes only a bit of legalistic contaminant to make it cloudy and obscure. The point is easier to apprehend if it is reduced to this: The saint does not know sin. He knows the mercy of God.

In my opinion, Merton's observation here is absolutely, one hundred per cent on target. When God takes hold of us, God desires for Love to be our singular vision, to the exclusion of all else. If we allow God to work in us, over time this desire becomes reality. It has been said that God's Love is a consuming fire. One of the things it consumes is our petty, human propensity to fixate upon and judge the sin of others.

I guess I'm still waiting for us Christians to see another simple thing: in Christian doctrine, there is already a judge and there is already one who makes accusations concerning other men's sins. The former is God, and the latter is Satan. I'm still waiting for us to figure out we are not the former, and that we shouldn't act like the latter. I'm still waiting for us to understand that between the Judge and the Accuser stands a defender, who protects the accused and offers him or her mercy. I'm waiting for us to understand that the defender, one Jesus of Nazareth, is the one we are supposed to emulate. All in all, I guess I'm waiting for us to figure out that as long as we're going to cling to doctrine, we should at least get our roles right.

It seems to me this means, for one thing, that we stop turning up our noses at other people, and simply love them like there's no tomorrow. Until within us God makes this our spiritual nature, we can at least strive to do it by force of well-reasoned volition.

It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men. They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of getting even. — New Seeds, chapter 13

One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is how to mind your own business.

Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

A serious obstacle to recollection is the mania for directing those you have not been appointed to direct, reforming those you have not been asked to reform, correcting those over whom you have no jurisdiction. How can you do these things and keep your mind at rest? Renounce this futile concern with other men's affairs!

Pay as little attention as you can to the faults of other people and none at all to their natural defects and eccentricities.

—New Seeds, chapter 35

Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be His enemies on earth. Suppose they really do hate Him: nevertheless He loves them, and you cannot be united with Him unless you love them too. --- New Seeds, chapter 24

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

If, therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy. — New Seeds, chapter 8

A Catholic poet should be an apostle by being first of all a poet, not try to be a poet by being first of all an apostle. For if he presents himself to people as a poet, he is going to be judged as a poet and if he is not a good one his apostolate will be ridiculed. —New Seeds, chapter 15

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn. — New Seeds, Chapter 15

If somebody told me that I had to live on a deserted island for a year and could take only two books, here are the two I would pick: (1) How to Definitely Survive on this Particular Deserted Island, by a person who actually survived on this particular island, and (2) New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.

I have been reading New Seeds for about twenty years now. Every few months I pick it up and re-read a few chapters, and as the years pass, I always get something new and substantial from my reading. If you're a deeply introspective, spiritual, "God seeking" person, perhaps with a leaning toward contemplative spirituality in the Catholic tradition, New Seeds is, just, simply, a fantastic book. And if you're not, well, you'll find it to be absolutely boring and monumentally pointless.

Lately I've been thinking of a few quick thoughts Merton lists in New Seeds concerning writing. I was going to build a post around them, but decided instead that I would toy with the idea of putting some Merton quotes on this blog. So I'll start with those few on writing, and then get into a variety of others. And if you're one of those people who is going to rush out and buy the book, then good for you. My suggestion is that you skip the first two chapters and read a few of the others. If they get you hooked, then go back to the first two later.

If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy.

If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.

If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.

— New Seeds, Chapter 15

The trick, of course, is to discern the difference between God and your self.

HERE'S AN interesting list of claims to consider:

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published in a magazine.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published in book form.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published in trade form.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published in hardback.

Well, you’re not a real writer. Your book wasn’t published by a real publishing house.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You never sold more than [pick a number] copies.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You’ve never been published by [pick a publisher].

Well, you’re not a real writer. You just write about [pick a subject].

Well, you’re not a real writer. Your [grammar/ plots/ characters/ settings/ logic / argument/ etc.] is/are an embarrassment.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You got lucky and wrote one decent book that got picked up and sold 3 million copies. Big deal. You’re a one-hit wonder.

Well, you’re not a real writer. You are so prolific your work has lost its integrity. You love money more than the art.

Well, you’re not a real writer. My dog can write decent [poetry/ prose/ fiction/ non-fiction/ etc.].

And the list goes on and on.

At some point during this present summer I read something on a blog (a blog from a fairly “successful” writer) that caused me to remember something I had read years ago about writers always bashing other writers because of… well, things like I’ve placed in the list. So the idea behind the list I’ve just put forth is not original. But it is a bit intriguing in a larger sense, and I’d like to talk about a couple of reasons why I think so.

First of all, the list betrays much of our human weakness to do two things: Judge those who don’t rise to our personal standards as being losers, and judge those who rise above our standards as irrelevant, arrogant fanatics who have lost all focus upon the matter. I see this in Christianity all the time: If you aren’t as moral/spiritual/devoted/etc as me, you don’t really love God, and are in danger of going to Hell (good riddance, by the way). And, if you try to live as more moral/spiritual/devoted/etc. than me, well you’re just a holy-rolling Jesus freak who has lost all practical understanding and perspective on being human in today’s world (leave me alone, by the way). The unspoken claim is much simpler: I’m at precisely the perfect place. My standard is the correct one. Anybody who has a different standard is an idiot.

Most of us can see that in principle this isn’t a good way to view life, but we cling to it anyway. We do it with writing, painting, driving, basketball, football, sewing, cooking, jobs and careers, religion, marriage, raising kids, and anything else you can think of. And it’s pretty sad to admit that we each think we are God and measure things just right. From my way of thinking, this must fall somewhere under the list of no-no’s resulting from the idea, “do not judge.”

Second, there’s a line item for the list that would go something like, “If you were a real writer, you’d write every chance you got.” Uh-huh. Well, that’s pretty close to the blog post I read this summer, but I think the better concept is the claim that “you’d make every chance to write.” By this I mean, some writers would say that if you’re not ignoring everything else in life so you can “polish your craft” or “live your art” then you really aren’t a true writer. God pity me, I can see both sides, agreeing and disagreeing with this idea. Don’t think for a minute that I haven’t wrestled with the dichotomy at least once a month for half of my life.

On the one hand, look at somebody like Thomas Merton. If you read enough of his journals, you figure out that he loved to write. In the rare case where he didn’t have anything sublime to put on paper, he’d (yikes!) complain about his superiors, write words about words, or just make lists of things. Merton was a writer. I think the person who writes the blog I keep mentioning is a writer, too. Many entries a day, every day, about just about anything. It’s not drivel, either. It’s decent stuff, mostly with a point. I liken my view in this paragraph to a comment that was made about a journalist who had interviewed a pop star who got famous for singing. The comment was something like, “I’ve interviewed a lot of singers, and every one of them sang during the interviews. It’s like they couldn’t not sing. But not [this one]. She never sang once. I’m not so sure she really is a singer.” Good point. You can’t stop singers from singing. You can’t stop writers from writing. You can’t stop engineers from engineering and you can’t stop mommies from mommy-ing. It’s the way it is. So, if you don’t write much, if you don’t make every opportunity to write, are you a real writer?

On the other hand, the crux is between the ideas of taking chances to write, and making chances. Believe me that I, for one, take every chance I get. But do I make every chance into a chance to write? Do I make every moment a writing moment? No. Not on paper or computer anyway. Why not? Maybe I’m not a real writer. Or maybe it’s something different. You see a house on fire. Do you dial 911, maybe try to help , or do pull out your journal and pen and start writing? If you did the first two, are you a writer? Some would say not, and some would say that if you do the third you may be a writer, but you’re not much of a human being (which, round and round, eventually means you’re not a real writer. See how the list works?)

I’m rambling, which is by the way one of the things that makes me not a real writer. I have a tendency to mix singular and plural personal pronouns, my vocabulary is small, and I am overly verbose. Got it. Thanks. So to stop the ramble for a moment, here’s the point: If writing, like so many other things in life, is a vocation, then it matters. It matters greatly and you had better take it seriously. But shame on you if you forget this: every such vocation is (at best) a secondary vocation that is trumped by our primary Christian vocation to charity, mercy, compassion, spreading the love of God directly to others, and demonstrating the Kingdom. Sure you can do these by writing (and by almost anything else), and if you can, you must; but there are absolute direct ways to which we are all called. Although these ways differ from individual to individual, if you’re a spouse it means your spouse matters more than your writing. If you are a parent it means your children matter more than your writing. It means that sometimes doing the shopping, or landscaping a yard, or fixing a broken toy or simply talking about the day is your first priority; not writing. So, no, you don’t make every moment a writing moment. You make every moment a Love moment, a God moment. And when possible, those Love and God moments are spent alone with your pen—because you’re a writer. In simpler terms: You are a human first. You are a writer second. This is how it has to be, or else you run the risk of being an inhuman writer.

So, pick what it is that God has made you to be. Follow it. Live it. Love it. Pursue it with a fiery passion—right after you first love everybody you can with all the energy you can. To die to one’s self means, paradoxically, to be willing to die to your vocation. Just read the end of Merton’s Seven Story Mountain. He understood, and the battle was his private little Hell.