Doorways to Faith

At First Things today, George Weigel offers a meditation on the witness of converts to the Catholic faith.  Weigel catalogs an impressive litany of converts and their various intellectual contributions to the Church and culture at large.  Despite their diverse backgrounds, Weigel says these Christians were ultimately drawn to Catholicism's "symphony of truth:"

You don’t have to be an intellectual to appreciate this “symphony of truth,” however. For Catholicism is, first of all, an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6). And to meet that person is to meet the truth that makes all the other truths of our lives make sense. Indeed, the embrace of Catholic truth in full, as lives like Blessed John Henry Newman’s demonstrate, opens one up to the broadest possible range of intellectual encounters.

Viewed from outside, Catholicism can seem closed and unwelcoming. As Evelyn Waugh noted, though, it all seems so much more spacious and open from the inside. The Gothic, with its soaring vaults and buttresses and its luminous stained glass, is not a classic Catholic architectural form by accident. The full beauty of the light, however, washes over you when you come in.

I appreciate Weigel's reflections, but as a convert myself (and having talked with scores of converts over the years; we have a way of finding each other and reveling in our shared experience), I think the journey to the Church is often complicated.  I personally converted to Catholicism as a 30-year-old former Baptist-turned-Quaker-turned-Buddhist. In the beginning, I was, like Thomas Merton (whom Weigel mentions), drawn to the aesthetic dimensions of Catholic worship. I fell in love with liturgy and incense and the mystery of it all. Later, I became convinced of the intellectual, moral, and religious truth of Catholic teaching. And of late, I am finally arriving at the ultimate purpose of the Catholic faith experience: a direct, personal relationship with Jesus as Lord and Redeemer.

I guess my point is, each of these historical converts Weigel describes exemplified one of many doorways into the Catholic Church, doors all of us might pass through at some point in our faith formation.

The Holy Name

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus

"Kyrie Jesu Christe, Elaison...Learn it in Russian, learn it in Greek.  Say it.  Pep up your spiritual life with the Jesus Prayer in the various languages.  It's a fine prayer."
--Thomas Merton

I was happy to see this feast day on the calendar, as I've recently taken an interest in the "Jesus Prayer" that provides such an important foundation to spirituality in the Orthodox Church.  In particular, I've been reading Merton & Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart, and practicing the simple, repetitive prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on my a sinner."  The prayer can modified and simplified even further. A friend meditatively prays, "Jesus" on his in-breath and "Mercy" on the outbreath.  Following Merton's advice, lately I've started praying the short version in Greek, "Kyrie Jesu Christe, Elaison."

"Hesychasm" means "stillness," representing the grace of inner calm and peace that often flows into the heart of one who perpetually invokes the name of Jesus.  This prayer is based on the notion that the name of the Lord, when called upon in faith, has the potential through grace to unleash enormous power in into the world both visible and invisible.  Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware explains:

The invocation of the divine Name possesses a sacramental character, serving as an efficacious sign of His invisible presence and action.  For the believing Christian today, as in apostolic times, the Name of Jesus is power.

While we typically associated the Jesus prayer with the Eastern Christian tradition, devotion to the Name has a long-standing importance in the Christian West as well.  Abbot Elias Dietz of the Abbey of Gethsemani reminded monks of St. Bernard's thoughts on the holy name during his chapter talk last weekend:

"O blessed name, oil poured out without limit. From heaven it pours down on Judea and from there over all the earth, so that round the whole world the Church proclaims: “Your name is oil poured out.” And what an outpouring? It not only bathes the heavens and the earth, it even bedews the underworld, so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee in the name of Jesus. . ." (CS 15.4; CF 4:108)

As he goes on to say, the name of Jesus is both precious and cheap: precious for the depth of mystery and wealth of mercy it contains, cheap, because it is so accessible to us, even when we are at our weakest and worst:

"Hidden as in a vase, in this name of Jesus, you, my soul, possess a salutary remedy against which no spiritual illness will be proof. Carry it always close to your heart, always in your hand, and so ensure that all your affections, all your actions, are directed to Jesus. . . . The name of Jesus furnishes the power to correct your evil actions, to supply what is wanting to imperfect ones; in this name your affections find a guard against corruption, or if corrupted, a power that will make them whole again." (SC 15.7: CF 4:111)

The name of Christ is so accessible to us that we are free to use it in reference to ourselves:

"Made a sharer in the name, I share too in its inheritance. For I am a Christian, Christ’s own brother. If I am what I say, I am the heir of God, co-heir with Christ." (CS 15.4).

This is heavy - and beautiful -- stuff.  In my own prayer practice, I have often invoked the Jesus Prayer in times of panic and despair, or when I could not muster any other words.  But as I practice this prayer on a more regular basis - driving the car, walking to the office, waiting in line at the grocery - times of ordinary life, it becomes more like breathing.  And while I may not yet perceive Christ's presence with the clarity of St. Bernard, I feel a measure of hesychia - of stillness - that is his grace.

Kyrie Jesu Christe, Elaison!

From Here to Eternity

Memorial Feast of St. Leo the Great

"Our great dignity is tested by death--I mean our freedom.  When the 'parting of the ways' comes--to set one's foot gladly on the way that leads out of this world.  This is a great gift to ourselves, not to death but to life.  For he who knows how to die not only lives longer in this life (if it matters) but lives eternally because of his freedom...So he who faces death can be happy in this life and in the next, and he who does not face it has no happiness in either."--Thomas Merton

Last night I had the pleasure of celebrating Vespers with the Orthodox Christian Fellowship at Western Kentucky University at WKU's spare but lovely Chandler Memorial Chapel.  Father Michael Nasser, pastor of the local Holy Apostles Orthodox Mission, presided with guest BishopThomas of the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest.  The prayers were ethereal and hauntingly beautiful and I was awed by the great common stream of liturgical prayer and faith shared by all Christians, especially Catholic and Orthodox. 

After the service, Bishop Thomas gave a brief talk on "An Ancient Faith in the Modern World."  He emphasized that Christianity is not meant to be a lifestyle and belief system that seeks to accomodate changing times.  Rather, Bishop Thomas stressed that Christianity is essentially a path that begins in the present moment but culminates in eternity.  It is only from this perspective - that we are children of God created to give praise and worship (as we did at Vespers) - that anything makes sense.  And from this perspective, not much of the modern world makes sense.

The modern world, Bishop Thomas noted, suggests that this present moment is all that exists and all that matters.  And if this is true, then nothing matters.

Which is not to say that, from the Christian perspective, that the present moment is meaningless.  To the contrary, it is in this present moment that we must begin our encounter with God.  As Jesus reminds us in today's Gospel:

"The kingdom of of God cannot be observed,
and no one will announce, 'Look, here it is,' or 'There it is.'
For behold, the kingdom of God is among you" (Luke 17:21)

He is referring, of course, to Himself, but also to His eternal presence among those who trust in Him.  We encounter the kingdom here in the modern world, but faith and discipleship prepares us for a world far beyond this one.

Holy One, bless us this day with a vision of eternity and faith courageous enough to set our eyes firmly on our destiny.  Amen.

Make Me a Door

"But the souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace."
--Wisdom 3:1-3

The readings this month offer a bridge between All Saints/All Souls and Advent, calling us daily to remember both those who have died and also to be mindful of our own mortality and the preciousness of the present moment.  We are called to open ourselves to the reality of the Kingdom, which breaks into our lives unexpectedly and with transformative consequences.

The below poem by Tim Myers, which won Honorable Mention in the 2010 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, is as beautiful an expression of faith as I've ever seen.  I aspire to live my life in such a way that I might own these words, both in the present moment and at the time of my own passing.

Myself as Tree: A Prayer

Adonai,
give me life then kill me if you must,

only let it be
that like a tree I live, a planted thing,
knowing the ground deep and deeper,
drinking up world through roots I send down,
water drawn from soil and darkness --

let the season-round ring by ring increase me--

when sun comes, let my leaves flutter
each with its own small luster --
let autumn-release fling my numberless seeds
outward on winds
as shifting and sure as Hope --

and when my sap fails at last,
come Thou, Axman.
lay me down, fell me hard
(I'll murmur Your name all the while),

stand over me gripping the ax of Death
and split me with Your hands
(the right I call Making, the left Unmaking),

let the blade bite, let it jump into
my drying white interior,
oh Unspeakable, shape me, plane me --

make me a Door.

To be a Saint

Solemnity of All Saints

Today is probably my favorite day in the entire Christian calendar.  Truth be told, I relish it even more than Easter and Christmas, though these are no doubt more important solemnities, but those holidays have become so overwhelmed by commercial and social dimensions, I really have to work at observing them as holy days.  Not so with All Saints, snuck in, as it were, after the secular festivities of Halloween (which wouldn't even have a name without the "Hallowed" ones of All Saints).

Today is when we savor the communal nature of the Christian faith in all its glory.  Today we recognize that the historical icons of Christianity - Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, Thomas More, Theresa of Calcutta, and a host of others, including the seemingly ordinary saints who have gone before us, including friends and family who have died, are as real and alive to us right now in the awesome family of Christ as when they walked the earth in flesh.  They pray for us, intercede for us, "cheer us on" (as my pastor put it today), as vigorously and enthusiastically as our closest family and friends in the faith do here in this world, even moreso.

And they invite us to holiness, and to join them in the shimmering light of God, promising a destiny of eternal life.  But they also invite us to follow them into sainthood, starting right now.

My favorite take on this comes from Thomas Merton, writing in his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, about a conversation with his friend Robert Lax, not long after Merton had been baptized:

I forget what we were arguing about, but in the end Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:
"What do you want to be anyway?" Lax asked.
I could not say, "I want to be Thomas Merton, the well-known writer of all those book reviews in the back pages of the Times Book Review"...so I put it on a spiritual plane.
"I don't know; I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic."
"What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?"
The explanation I gave was lame enough, and expressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had thought about it.
Lax did not accept it.
"What you should say"--he told me--"What you should say is that you want to be a saint."
A saint!  The thought struck me as a little weird.  I said:
"How do you expect me to become a saint?"
"By wanting to," Lax said simply.
"I can't be a saint," I said.  "I can't be saint."  And my mind darkened with a confusion of realities and unrealities: the knowledge of my own sins, and the false humility that makes men say they cannot do the things they must do, cannot reach the level they must reach: the cowardice that says, "I am satisfied to save my soul, to keep out of mortal sin," but which means, by those words, "I do not want to give up my sins and attachments."
But Lax said: "No.  All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be a saint.  Don't you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you consent to let Him do it?  All you have to do is desire it."
A long time ago St. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing--and it is something that is obvious to anyone who has ever understood the Gospels.  After Lax was gone, I thought about it, and it became obvious to me.
The next day I told Mark Van Doren:
"Lax is going around saying all that a man needs to be a saint is to want to be one."
"Of course," said Mark.
All these people were much better Christians than I.  They understood God better than I.  What was I doing?  Why was I so slow, so mixed up, still, so uncertain in my directions and so insecure?

Of course, with God's grace Merton found his way, and became one of the greatest uncanonized saints of the 20th century, laying down the same challenge to us that his friend Lax laid down to him.  It's not just possible, it is God's promise.  And our destiny.

Holy One, make me holy.  I am yours.

Saints of all ages, past, present, and future, pray for us.  Amen.

Lord of My Life

"All the faithful should listen to the word as it is announced in the liturgy or in Bible services and respond according to their ability.  In this way, for the whole Church, Lent will not be merely a season simply of a few formalized penitential practice, half-understood and undertaken without interest, but a time of metanoia, the turning of all minds and hearts to God in preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery in which some will for the first time receive the light of Christ, others will be restored to the communion of the faithful, and all will renew their baptismal consecration of their lives in God, in Christ."

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

I feel the great stirring within me, the anticipation and expectation of Easter.  The liturgical calendar and the scripture readings and rites that accompany it have succeeded in bringing something to life within me.  Lent has revealed many dark corners within me that are in need of redemption, but not without the abiding promise of deliverance.  The light of Easter is about to break, and I have never been more aware of my need and desire to surrender completely and wholly to the Lord of my life.

I am not sure I have ever felt quite like this.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not hearing angels' voices or experiencing special charisms.  Rather, I just have this deep sense of calling and confirmation within me.  "The Lord GOD has given me a well-trained tongue," the Scripture says today, "that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them."  

Perhaps there are many ways to speak to the weary.  I'm not sure what my way is, but I am pretty confident I will be led there if I remain open.

Homecoming

"In building a community of pardon that is the temple of God, we have to recognize that no one is complete, self-sufficient, perfectly holy in himself.  No one can rest in his own individual virtues and interior life.  No man lives for himself alone.  To live for oneself alone is to die.  We grow and flourish in our own lives insofar as we live for others and through others.  What we ourselves lack, God has given them.  They must complete us where we are deficient.  Hence we must always remain open to one another so that we can always share with each other."

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

I am happily at home again after a month-long visit to Norway.  As many friends know, I approached the journey with some reluctance, fretful about the loss of my routines, the lack of time for quiet reflection, etc.  I even began to think of the trip as a kind of Lenten experience, a penance of sorts, a surrender of the ordinary and familiar.  

And it was.  But it was also a Lenten experience in the holiest sense, in that through surrender I experienced a great renewal and regeneration.  I cannot convey how wonderful my journey was, how thought-provoking, heart-warming and life-changing.  There were the actual experiences of being in a beautiful place and doing strange and unusual things, but more importantly was the intimate encounter with the people who opened their homes to us, shared their lives, and introduced us into their ways of thinking and living while eagerly desiring to learn from us too.

My routines were disrupted indeed, but I now can see what deep ruts had begun to define my life and way of thinking about work, about myself, about my world.  The break from routine gave me new insights into how closed I have become in subtle ways, and a renewed desire for deepening my friendships and making new ones, for traveling and experiencing new places, and above all for nurturing my need to listen deeply to the needs and opinions of others.  I am a man of deep passions and strong views, and that can be a gift.  But it can also be a heavy burden when it blinds me to the wisdom of others.  And so I now carry a strong yearning for more openness, deeper listening, and above all a heart of peace, compassion and understanding for others.

I have been so richly blessed in my life.  The opportunity to visit Norway was just one of many examples of the riches that I have received.  I have deserved none of them, and I find myself bewildered and humbled by this graciousness.  Why me?  I don't know the answer to this, but I do know how I must respond.  To the best of my ability, I must use the great beauty and goodness of my life to serve others, to share with others, to lift others up so that they too might know some degree of beauty, goodness, and joy.

I don't know how to do that, and I am a deeply broken man, not a prophet or saint.  But just as surely as I have been given these special experiences, I will believe that the One who Provides will also lead me to where I can do some good, if I remain open, quiet, humble, and willing to listen and be lead.

I am home, and yet the journey is just beginning.

Mercy Now

"The purpose of Lent is not only expiation, but above all a preparation to rejoice in God's love.  And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of His mercy--a gift we receive insofar as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room as mercy."

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

This passage from Merton calls to mind a fantastic song, "Mercy Now," by Mary Gauthier.  It's a beautiful prayer for grace and mercy on us all for the big messes we make in our lives, in our families, in our workplaces, and in the world.  The song is also a call for us to have mercy on each other, and on ourselves.

Perhaps the hardest of all is mercy for ourselves.  I find in myself the need for mercy, often in the strangest places.   In a couple of days I'm going to leave for an overseas trip that will last a month.  It's an opportunity of a lifetime, at very little personal expense to myself, an experience that I am sure will grow me personally and professionally.  

And yet, there is a deep resistance within me.  Part of it is being away from my wife, part of it is letting go of many things at work and fretting about how much will be waiting for me when I return, part of it is fear of dealing non-stop with new, unfamiliar people (which I don't mind, but for an introvert, that's work), sleeping in strange beds, eating strange food, having a new routine, having less time to read, pray, write, and just be by myself.

I will be gone most of Lent.  Earlier in the week I was thinking about the Lenten implications of all these disruptions to my routine, and I started to think about my trip as a kind of Lenten journey in itself.  Lent takes us out of our comfort zones, and that's certainly what I'm about to do.  It will lay bare some of my basic fears of not being in control, and paradoxically my fears about both being overwhelmed by contact with others and my fears about being alone (the separation from my wife is weighing heavily on me, though I am sure we'll have nearly daily contact).  

Its not that I'm ungrateful for the opportunity, and I'm not consumed by these fears, but it goes to show how even in the midst of great excitement and new beginnings, there is much within ourselves that needs mercy.  For Lent, I'm going to give up a little bit of control, give myself a break, and try to have a good time in spite of all my hang ups and fears.  I'll blog here as I'm able.  Pray for my journey, and I'll be back soon.

Season of Healing

"We must remember the original meaning of Lent, as the ver sacrum, the Church's "holy spring" in which the catechumens were prepared for their baptism, and public penitents were made ready by penance for their restoration to the sacramental life in common with the rest of the Church. Lent is not a season of punishment so much as one of healing."

-Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

I am just now beginning to feel normal after a four-day bout with a nasty virus that left me unable to eat, unable to go to work, barely able to write or read (only in short bursts--there are certain pleasures I insist on no matter what). I could not just rest quietly, either. I was forced to confront that absolute lack of control we have over even our own bodies when we are ill.

This illness was a small burden compared to those others face, I am sure, but after a few days I began to view it as a kind of pre-Lenten desert experience. It purged and cleansed me physically, and, if I had caught on to the idea sooner, might also have had some purgative spiritual effects as well. Maybe its not too late.

Today I'll start trying to eat again, but I do so with great mindfulness of what I am ingesting and how much. It's not just paranoia over making myself sick. I also have noticed how mindlessly I fill myself with all manner of sugar, caffeine, alcohol, fast food. Not that any of those are inherently bad. What's perhaps worse than the up-down effect it has on my body is how I just consume like a machine with little regard for the effect, or more importantly, the experience of the food, its taste, the company I am with, the pleasure of eating.

I return to work today as well. In just two days away, I have had to surrender control of many things, and I gained a little perspective. Just like eating food again, I approach work today with a little trepidation. Part of it is fear of being reconsumed into the whirlwind of busyness, manipulation, and other fakeness that characterizes so much of work. The other part, though, is a genuine desire to appreciate my work and its effects, to be grateful for the contribution I am making, and especially to more skillfully deal with my co-workers--probably the source of greatest frustration for me. My brief "desert experience" reveals clearly that I cannot transform my workplace, and especially my colleagues. I can't even transform myself. But I can begin to open myself up to being transformed. And that requires quiet, contemplation, listening, self-reflection--skills I've dabbled with during my four day "retreat."

I think that this is how Lent is supposed to work as a season of healing. I had the "grace" to be unwillingly sent on such a journey, but with Lent we get to intentionally create a kind of mini-desert experience for ourselves. By stepping back, withdrawing momentarily from our habitual patterns, our unskillfulness is revealed in all its messy glory. We experience some degree of shame, but also a desire for repentance, and God's unwavering openess to our return. Above all, the desert cleanses our perceptions, helps us see what was there all along, and opens us for real healing.

The Country Beyond Words

"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and names. Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier...

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hand to work always in my life. I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen."
--Thomas Merton

The last week or so--really, for weeks now, I have pretty much failed to live out the Cistercian values of silence, solitude, even prayer really. I have been away from home, visiting family, working late, engaged in all manner of activity, both internal and external. I have a big trip coming up in a few weeks, and I'm anxious about that too, and the result has been distraction, exhaustion, frustration.

I sat down to really pray this morning for the first time in days, and my words just came out a kind of wordless croak.

And that seemed perfectly okay with God. So we sat there, together, in the silence. And I was just me, exactly where I am, and God was just God.

Hidden Majesty

"When I consent to the will and the mercy of God as it 'comes' to me in the events of life, appealing to my inner self and awakening my faith, I breath through the superficial exterior appearances that form my routine vision of the world and of my own self, and I find myself in the presence of hidden majesty."
--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Some days I just can't feel it. My heart feels barren, my prayers are flat, almost echoing as if I'm speaking in an empty room, alone. Worse, on days like today, I feel the dark tendrils of doubt, anger, frustration, and despair creeping in from the margins of my mind to cover the innermost regions of my soul.

This was my experience upon waking today. I have no explanation for it, but it followed me throughout the day, impervious to any distractions, even earnest prayer. It abides still.

And yet, I read a passage like this from Merton, and I am bowled over by its truth and beauty, even though it fails to dispel the darkness.

Days like today call me deeper within myself. Call me to silence, to solitude, to self-reflection. If I can abide in this inner space, and not panic at the darkness and doubt, but simply be with it, offering it to God's divine mercy...it doesn't pass, but something stirs within it, beneath it, a benevolent force that reassures me the whispers of despair are to be tolerated, but not heeded. I am not alone. Far, far from it.

Getting Saved

"It is a pity that the beautiful Christian metaphor 'salvation' has come to be so hackneyed and therefore so despised.... The word [in fact] connotes a deep respect for the fundamental metaphysical reality of man. It reflects God's own infinite concern for man...for all that is His own in man, His son. It is not only human nature that is 'saved' by the divine mercy, but above all the human person."
--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Growing up in the Bible Belt, "getting saved" was an essential moment in one's life. For the churched children like myself, it was a rite of passage of great significance, when one accepted Jesus as one's personal Lord and Savior. For the unchurched, the "lost," it could be a life-changing event, and I heard many a testimony as a child from adults who had repented of licentiousness and drunkeness and a variety of other sins that were, frankly, titillating to my young ears, but here were these nice, seemingly ordinary people who had transcended those wicked ways by God's grace.

And sadly, anyone who was not saved was indeed mortally "lost," bound for the eternal flames of hell. And this included any good people who might be Jewish, Muslim, agnostic or otherwise, none of whom actually lived in my small town or whom we had any dealings with. But the lost were everywhere, because it didn't matter if you were a church person, if you had never really surrendered your heart to Jesus, if your name was not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, you were a goner.

I am not trying to make light of these beliefs. The folks I heard these teachings from were by and large good people. But by my late teens, I had begun to see the world in less stark, less black and white terms. I rejected the notion that one had to abide by some theological formula to be "saved," and I began to have a different idea about what, exactly, we were being saved from.

In New Seeds, Merton tries to rescue the concept of salvation by showing how it is indeed more than an intellectual affirmation of a theological formula, but is nevertheless an experience that all us are called to, regardless of our religious labels, station of life, or circumstances.

"The object of salvation is that which is unique, irreplaceable, incommunicable--that which is myself alone. The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent."

Our normal way of looking at the world is "lost" in the sense that we assume we are an independent reality, cut off from all other people, alone and yet at the center of the universe. Even if we profess religious belief, our tendency is to doubt, to operate as though we are utterly alone. This leaves us with nothing but the mess of our own, self-centered fears and desires. We must give up this false sense of separateness, but to do so means that we give up making our normal sense of "self" the center. God becomes the center, and we have to surrender our whole person to be remade from that new centerpoint. And somehow by giving ourselves up, we find our true self, in all its wholeness.

"The person must be rescued from the individual... The creative and mysterious inner self must be delivered from the wasteful, hedonistic and destructive ego that seeks only to cover itself with disguises."

My forebears' understanding of what it means to "get saved" may have been limited by their own experiences, but that is true of everyone. What they had absolutely right was the understanding that we are all in some way lost, and that only by giving ourselves up completely to God can we discover who we really are.

"To be 'lost' is to be left to the arbitrariness and pretenses of the contingent ego, the smoke-self that must inevitably vanish. To be 'saved' is to return to one's inviolate and eternal reality and to live in God."

Finding My True Self

Chapter Five of New Seeds comes to its climax with Merton's discussion of the "false self." Earlier, Merton described how human beings are called to express their individuality most fully by co-creating their identities and realities with God. But Merton warns that this is not some kind of Nieztschean "will to power" exaltation of the individual with no reference point beyond oneself. Because of the false self, we are perpetually at risk, not of becoming fully what we are meant to be, but of actually distorting our true identities.

"All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real."

The false self is not real. It is the identity that we create for ourselves, and that we spend our entire lives trying to protect and preserve, even as all of life and creation reveals that it is an illusion. The false self is our sense that we exist somehow independently and separately from the rest of creation (and from the Creator), and that this identity is somehow the center of the universe. According to Merton, all sin arises from this distorted sense of self, which leads us to engage in all manner of greed, hatred, delusion and a myriad of other, less obvious but equally insidious forms of self-aggrandizement.

So, how do we create ourselves as a real individual, while negotiating the pitfalls of the false self? I suspect Merton will elaborate on this throughout the rest of the book, but he concludes the chapter by saying that our real identiy is "hidden in the love and mercy of God," and only by surrendering ourselves completely to God can we create, with him, the person we are meant to be:

"Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence. Therefore 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...

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone."

Creating Our Identities

"Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom...To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity."
--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

The fifth chapter of New Seeds continues with Merton explaining that, unlike the tree which automatically expresses its full individuality in God, we get to choose our identity, and not as one chooses which shirt to wear today, but rather as an artist who creates an identity through the work of his hands. It is not only our ability to choose freely which makes us in the "image and likeness of God." It's our ability to create, especially to create ourselves. In this sense, we are co-creators with God of our identities and our very realities. What an awesome power and responsibility. No room here for victims. We are fully in command of what we will become.

Of course, because we also carry around the "false self," we often squander this power and create ourselves very poorly. This is the topic of the remainder of chapter five.

A Tree Like No Other

The fifth chapter of New Seeds strikes me as one of the finest expositions of Christian existentialism. Here Merton focuses on the essence of what it means to be a human, and the unique human experience of discovering oneself and one's purpose and meaning in life, a purpose inextricably linked to God.

"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It "consents," so to speak, to His creative love...No two created beings are exactly alike. And their individuality is no imperfection...This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do."

This passage reminds me of the Islamic concept that all created things besides humans are already "Muslim." That is, they are surrendered to God (for a Muslim is "one who surrenders to God.") I love this idea, that all of creation is already conformed to God's will and purpose and plan, except us humans, of course, though this is also God's ultimate desire for us. A tree is Muslim, then, by being a tree. And not just any tree, according to Merton, but by fulfilling its full capacity as an individual, ordered to God's vision and its place in the universe of created things.

Similarly, we reach the apex of our being, the meaning and purpose of our lives, when we manifest ourselves in our full individuality, co-created with God. I'll write more on this idea tomorrow.

The Christmas Summons

"Sunrise is an event that calls forth solemn music in the very depths of a man's nature, as if one's whole being had to attune itself to the cosmos and praise God for the new day, praise Him in the name of all creatures that ever were or ever will be. I look at the rising sun and feel that now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors have seen, in the Stone Age and even before it, praising God before me. Whether or not they praised Him then, for themselves, they must praise Him now in me. When the sun rises each one of us is summoned by the living and the dead to praise God."
--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Many blessings to all on this sunny Christmas Day!

Merton on ABC

ABC's Nightline recently featured a three-part interview with the Merton Institute's Jonathan Montaldo and Morgan Atkinson, producer of the documentary Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton. Includes lots of great photos of Merton and Gethsemani, and good introductory discussion on Merton's life and work.

Let Your Life Speak

"A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual straight-jacket. They come from his direct docility to the light of truth and to the will of God. Hence a saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love of God than the observations of someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an artibrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so feeble that they make you think there is something the mattter with religion."
--New Seeds of Contemplation

I must confess that I have a judgmental prejudice against people who make an outward show of religion. This is a flaw in me, and I am also vulnerbable to the charge of hypocrisy, given that I write a blog about spirituality. I am acutely aware of this vulnerability, and hope that I write for good reasons, and certainly not because there is some special holiness about me (as those who know me well can attest otherwise).

My point is that I shouldn't feel such glee at reading Merton's words, because I have my own set of flaws, but I can't help but appreciate his point. I live in the so-called "Bible Belt," where trite, bumpersticker theology abounds. I have no doubt that the outward show of religion notwithstanding, folks around here have no corner on the holiness market compared to places where religious expression is a more private matter.

I always felt that the Quakers had the best overall advice for saintliness: "Let your lives speak." And leave it at that.

The Reason for the Season

"Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another 'thing' and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see."

--New Seeds of Contemplation

Today my pastor--one of the best homilists anywhere--noted the now-annual hysteria of people who freak out this time of year because we need to put "Christ" back in Christmas. As if we are a totally pagan nation with no religious reference point for this grantedly commercialized holiday. My pastor went on to say something very striking and profound: "Jesus is not the reason for the season," he said. "We are."

His point was that God intervenes in the experience of human life to redeem and transform it. Christmas is not about God in the clouds or God who transcends the messiness of human experience. On the contrary, Christmas is about the God who descends into our very lives, who meets and encounters us in the very human world of our jobs, our families, and the mundane, boring, broken, and yes, commercialized, securalized, and religiously pluralized world that we live in. God comes for us, in God's mercy and grace and love, so that this messy life of ours might be redeemed. We are the reason for the season.

Merton's point seems to be a similar one. As contemplatives, we do not detach from "things" so that we can know God. We detach from our false, alienated self so that we can encounter God in the things of this life.

The Writer's Silence

Today is the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death. I have tried to slow down a bit today, observe a little more silence and quiet, in his honor.

Frederick Smock, writing in last Sunday's Courier-Journal, reflected on a constant theme of Merton's life and one which presented a paradox for such a prolific poet/writer as Merton:

Life is a journey toward silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not just the lack of
distractions.

As a writer (or sorts) myself, this wisdom gives me pause. I do babble on sometimes, and to what end? This was a koan Merton lived with all his life. I think what he concluded in the end was that he had to write because he was a writer, it was the way he made meaning of his life and
experience, it was ultimately the way God made him.

A contemplative writer faces the special challenge of responding to this gift/compulsion of writing in a way that is selfless and authentic. Can we be still enough, silent enough, to allow words to arise from a place deeper than the external self that writes for all manner of selfish reasons? Can we listen to the Word itself, and let our own tiny words rise up out of that infinite Source. Our words are always incomplete and partial, but if we rest in silence, we may perhaps offer up something that reflects the enormity and magnitude of the Word Beyond Words.

I think maybe this was and is Merton's prayer for himself, and for us.