Searching for Words

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circumstances, decisions, Kathleen Deignan, necessity, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

Today feels like a turning toward necessity. How to describe that, I’m really not certain. The meaning feels just below or above the the surface of things so rather than trust my own words, I turn to Thomas Merton because his prose often pushes me deeper or higher. In the “Friday, Day” section of A Book of Hours I find the following:

Wrestling quietly with the circumstances of my life. There is an attitude to be taken, there are decisions to be made. There is a radical refusal demanded of me somewhere and I do not know where it begins and ends and how to approach it.

God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and mystical generation.

(Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours. Kathleen Deignan, p.171-172)

Quotable Quotes

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poverty, prayer, seek, silence, Sisters of St. Joseph, solitude, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

There are a lot of people who have chosen a specific quote that expresses something important to them, something that they want to say to all the people with whom they share e-mail. I’m always interested to read these brief messages that conclude their e-mails to see if I think they fit the person behind the quote. Last week one of my Sisters of St. Joseph treated me to a quote of Thomas Merton that was characteristic of him but one I had never heard before. I might have claimed it for myself if I were called to choose it from the many great lines that run through my brain on any given day. I don’t know if I could ever settle on one choice to the exclusion of all others but this one is certainly a contender.

Do you have a favorite? This one came from Sister Linda Neil, CSJ, and I could say I value its message more and more each day. Thanks to Lin!

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer, where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

A “Merton Moment”

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creation, morning, presence, silence, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

We had tornado warnings last evening but only got torrential rains that seem to have washed away layers of distress and moved us finally into a glorious taste of spring. I thank God for windows this morning! The first blast of beauty that met me was the flowering cherry tree in the west corner that was glorious seen from above (the second floor). Downstairs there was a congregation of colorful birds on the newly washed deck – more variety than we have ever had! In addition to the ever-present yellow of the finches we have a second appearance of Baltimore orioles and, for the first time, a contingent of rose-breasted grosbeaks. They all know where the party is and it is a delight to watch them as they find breakfast, dancing and singing this early in the day to give me courage.

I sit here in the sun, feeling the gentleness of the breeze and imaging Thomas Merton on the tiny porch of his hermitage on mornings just like this one. The leaves on the trees still sparkle with the remnants of the rain as I turn to his words for a way to express praise of this wonderland of creation.

The most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to “be” once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was…There are drops of dew that show like sapphires in the grass as soon as the morning sun appears, and leaves stir behind the hushed flight of an escaping dove…Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you…The distant blue hills praise you, together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light…I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers, and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices…Here I am. In me the world is present, and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence…(Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours)

On the Second Day of May

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creation, light, pandemic, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, wholeness

Today feels like what Thomas Merton might describe as “the first day of Creation.” I feel the warmth of a sun that is already shining so bright and full through my window that I am unable to see my computer screen. I need to lean toward the south to shade the brilliance enough to type. It is glorious in both heat and light and leads me to shout silently to God that “this is what May is supposed to be like!” In my mind I am already out picking up branches that were victims of the wind these last three days. I can already imagine that by sunset there will be tiny leaves on branches everywhere—a gift from the mixture of sun and rain…just how things are supposed to be.

It’s difficult on a morning like this to remember words like pandemic. The reality slowly seeps in but at the same time I begin to wonder if there isn’t a way—or more than one way—to see a wholeness in what seems an overwhelming dissonance. Would I be able (or even willing to try) to maintain the lightness of being produced by the sun’s warmth and the consequent burgeoning of life in creation today while holding the reality of death and dying that is all around? It would seem an impossible task but I sense a worthy challenge in it for myself today.

Of Sun and Snow

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accepting, Asian Journal, love, present, spirit, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

On a morning like this when the sun is shining, accenting the beauty of an April snow, I look for words from Thomas Merton, having nothing of my own worthy of this glorious scene. From his Asian Journal here is the prayer I found:

O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen. (Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours, p.156-7)

And I would add on this Thursday in the Octave of Easter, ALLELUIA1

Sunshine

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coronavirus, Holy Week, infinite mercy, Jesus, Kathleen Deignan, New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

It was 6:37 a.m. this morning when I looked up from reading the updated statistics of the cases and deaths from the Coronavirus and saw the sun just below the top of my backyard mountain looking like a supersize flashlight that God had turned on just for me. Now it’s almost 8:00 and I am still sitting with a heavy heart because of the state of our state (NY)—highest statistics for infections and deaths from the virus—and the state of our nation and the world. There is no good news as we march toward Holy Week to consider what seemed to be the end of the amazing ministry of Jesus, the miracle worker.

There is no possibility of looking directly out my window now, however, because the sun is too bright. I can no longer see the mountain and I notice a stirring inside me that is totally contradictory of all that I have been considering since my morning began. It rises like the words of Thomas Merton as I read a random (?) psalm prayer to obliterate the darkness and get me off my chair to face the day.

Love comes out of God and gathers us to God in order to pour itself back into God through all of us and bring us all back to Him on the tide of His own infinite mercy. So we all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house. (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 67, quoted by Kathleen Deignan in Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours, p.153.)

A Little Touch of Merton

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God, infinite mercy, love, New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

I wrote yesterday in anticipation of the two sessions of our book study. It was the last of five sessions and did not disappoint. Today I sit in gratitude for the growing number of spiritual seekers who find their way to all kinds of groups that assist in the process of deepening understanding of self and meaningful life. This morning I read something written by Thomas Merton more than half a century ago that could have been said of our two wonderful, diverse groups of people who in their sharing and their silences created community in a way that was beautiful to watch. (You may want to read it aloud a couple of times to catch the flow and beauty of meaning.)

Merton wrote: Love comes out of God and gathers us to God in order to pour itself back into God through all of us and bring us all back to God on the tide of God’s own infinite mercy. So we all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house. (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.67)

Becoming A Saint

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desire being a saint, Henri Nouwen, saint, The Seven Storey Mountain, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

In a book by Henri Nouwen entitled Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic, I read a quote yesterday from Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain that I found quite ingenuous. It was from an incident early in Merton’s life of searching, when he was at college in the company of his friends, Bob Lax and Mark Van Doren. He remembered the conversation and recorded it word for word (as Nouwen then does in his book) and reads as follows.

Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:

L: What do you want to be, anyway? M: I don’t know. I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic. L: What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?…What you should say…is that you want to be a saint. M: How do you expect me to become a saint? L: By wanting to. M: I can’t be a saint, I can’t be a saint… L: All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let God do it? All you have to do is desire it.

The next day I told Mark Van Doren: Lax is going around saying that all a man needs to be a saint is to want to be one. “Of course,” said Mark.“

The conversation first made me smile and then got me wondering what I think (or what I had been taught in my early days in Catholic school) was necessary to become a saint. I rather like how Merton’s friends see the process. I intend to go back to smiling and remembering to “want to be one” every day.

Unadulterated

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Cynthia Bourgeault, fulfillment, image of God, joy, Kathleen Deignan, love, Peace, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, The Wisdom Jesus, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton A Book of Hours

In searching for something today to express the heart of our book study conversations yesterday of Cynthia Bourgeault’s magnificent text, The Wisdom Jesus, I found the best answer in Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours by Kathleen Deignan (ed.) Much of what Merton says is more a felt sense than a gathering of intellectual content. I can only affirm this morning’s find with a resounding “Thank you!” while listening to the beat of my heart.

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.

To find love, I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God. (New Seeds of Contemplation, 60-61)

Exhortation

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heart, metanoia, peaceful world, september 11, The Hidden Ground of Love, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

As I remember the shocking attack on our country that was perpetrated on 9/11/2001, I turn to Thomas Merton for a word and find it immediately. It is not soothing but calls me to step up to responsibility. And you?

“The real job is to lay the groundwork for a deep change of heart on the part of the whole nation so that one day it can really go through the metanoia we need for a peaceful world.” (The Hidden Ground of Love, p. 92)