Here are words you
may have heard before, from Thomas Merton’s “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”,
written back in the mid-1960s: In
Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping
district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all
those people… that we could not be alien to one another even though we were
total strangers. It was like waking from
a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the
world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an
illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost
laughed out loud…
He was a Cistercian
monk, master of novices at the Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky. He had gone in to Louisville on some errand
for the monastery. To this day,[1]
at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, a notice commemorates “Merton’s Epiphany”,
which changed him deeply and permanently.
So what had happened? I would
like to express this as clearly as I can, because we need to understand the
changes that begin to occur in contemplative life and prayer.
Merton had set
himself, over more than 20 years by now in the monastery, to be a good
monk. It was difficult for him, partly
because of his independent, questioning nature, partly because he and his abbot
were at odds. The Rule of St Benedict is
actually a liberal and flexible way of life and faith, but Merton had set out
to do it perfectly, and to teach it to his novices… Now, somehow, spontaneously, in downtown
Louisville, he was turned from being occupied with his personal faith and
obedience – and thus inevitably, what he saw as his frequent failures and
fallings-short – to seeing that the miracle of the kingdom is there
anyway. Merton didn’t have to achieve
it, he had to join it. It wasn’t about
Thomas Merton – it was about being surrounded and enveloped anyway by grace,
which on the corner of 4th and Walnut he could see already embraced
all the world including him. To become a
giver he had first to be a receiver. It
is not about measuring up, it is about saying Yes, in all our inadequacy. It is not first our love for God, but God’s
love for us, and for all.
I am putting these
things in my way, 60 years later and outside any monastery. Merton experienced a kairos, a moment
of grace and truth. These are moments
when there is no bargaining and no regret, writes Fr Laurence
Freeman. We are not doing deals with
God. We are empty-handed and consenting
at the deepest levels of our consciousness.
We enter the kingdom in the only way, by a humble Yes. And in this we are deeply at one with all the
world and all its pain and injustice.
Merton points out
that it is inseparable with joy. He
experienced relief and freedom. It
informed and inspired the rest of his life and teachings. We are here to do justice, love mercy, walk
humbly. There are failures and sadnesses
ahead. But we are moving from the
charmed circle of me and my needs and my fears and my ego – and all my doings
and possessions and anxieties. Priority
has shifted… and it is such a liberation.
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