"There is no easy way out of love..."

December 10, 2008, was the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton. He died, on the same date as he entered the monastery at Gethsemani 27 years earlier. He died of electrical shock in a bathtub in Thailand, only a few hours after he had spoken to a conference of Benedictine and Cistercian Abbots in Bangkok. His last words at the conference are reputed to have been, "so I will disappear."

Thomas Merton's death was labeled an accident, though given the circumstances it could have been murder, or even suicide. To me there seems to be something a little odd about the symmetry of the end of his old life as he entered the monastery and the end of his life on earth sharing the same date, but that's something to consider some other time.

On the same day, at his home in Switzerland, theologian Karl Barth died. Merton had written about Barth some years earlier, and they both shared a commitment to extracting the heart of christian faith from the cultural prison in which it had been placed (a lesson a goodly number might consider learning once again), Barth going so far as to stand up directly to Hitler at the beginning of WWII. Both men were far more conservative in their various perspectives than I am comfortable with in my own life and in our present world, but they both struggled (in concert with so many others) to move humanity in the direction of deeper spirit, and heart, and love.

Just before his death, on a trip through Asia leading to the conference where he died, Merton met with the Dalai Lama as part of an ongoing search for commonality and comunication between kindred spirits on different sides of geographical and spiritual divides. It was just one part of an ongoing struggle for Merton that waxed and waned through his 27 years at Gethsemani, and certainly would have continued to who knows where had he lived.

In another interesting connection, December 10 is also the anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights, a document that was heavily influenced by Jacques Maritain (quoted in the previous post), a friend and mentor for Merton and a man of eloquent, spiritual humanism. Maritain's spirit resides behind the brilliance of that document and is echoed in writings from Merton like this one from his book, Faith and Violence. "I am on the side of the people who are being burned, cut to pieces, tortured, held as hostages, gassed, ruined, destroyed. They are the victims of both sides. To take sides with massive power is to take sides against the innocent. "

Merton's thoughts, his writings, and his life all depict a deep abiding struggle to fit the bigness of love into the framework of life.

The Innumerable Universes Carried Within...

A daily reading from Thomas Merton this morning quotes Jaques Maritain on "the importance of a purely immanent activity," something taking place in the mind but without any necessary outward demonstration. Merton follows up the comment with the marvelous double negative, "the contemplative does not do nothing."

Many - and boy do I mean many - years ago I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine on a hot afternoon in a tiny radio station control room just outside of Phoenix Arizona. My friend was proclaiming the fact that contemplatives (monks in particular were the topic of this conversation) did work in the world by what they did behind the walls of the monastery. He insisted that their prayer, contemplation, and daily work were actively changing the reality of the world outside. Being the basic practical activist, misanthrope, and loud mouth, that I was (and pretty much still am) I insisted that this was crap.

So the long and the short of it is... I'm not feeling like that anymore.

These days, every day, every moment, that I spend on my cushion (and I've been doing it now for more or less 40 years) is a moment when I grasp a glimpse of that mysterious inner universe where all the world plays out, and changes (personal, communal, even universal) happen on a moment by moment basis. Despite my continued interest in, and work for, CHANGE in the "real world," I am presently convinced that the greater liklihood of real change will not come from an election on November 4, or a U.S. "regime change" on January 20, but will in fact only come as people come to terms with the change - the daily change - necessary inside themselves. Inside OUR selves. The fact is that it is the possibility of this inner change, and the call to make it happen, that is most compelling to me in the candidacy of Barack Obama. I do not see this man as the savior of America; I really do believe that "we are the ones we have been waiting for."

The Merton reflection continues with a further quote from Maritain, "The human being down here in the darkness of his[her] fleshly state is as mysterious as the saints in heaven in the light of their glory. There are in him[her] inexhaustible treasures, constellations without end of sweetness and beauty which ask to be recognized and which usually escape completely the futility of our regard. Love brings a remedy for that. One must vanquish this futility and undertake seriously to recognize the innumerable universes that one's fellow [companion] being carries within him [her] This is the business of contemplative love and the sweetness of its regard."

If we could, even just some of time, truly see this multitude of possibilities in each person, in all people, would it not COMPLETELY change who we are?

I Think I See a Crack...

THIS IS SELF-EXPLANATORY... THIS IS WHAT HOPE IS ABOUT.

The efficacy of change

I set this blog up some months ago with the intention of writing on things that come from my heart, rather than - like most of my other writings - things that come from my head. Subsequently I have had a hard time getting to a place where I felt like I had something to write about in that realm (my heart's been rather preoccupied of late).

But fortunately, for me and for my heart, I was given a "topic" just the other night.

A person very dear to me proclaimed that "people do not change." This is not the first time that I have been, and I expect that it is not the last time I will be, told that change is not possible, or at least highly unlikely. I had a very hard time hearing this the first time it was said to me, and I had a very hard time hearing it the other night.

If there is anything that holds my chaotic life to the ground it is the rock solid belief that change is not only possible but necessary... and inevitable. I don't know whether this perspective comes from the crazy quilt blend of religious faith I have sewn together over my 53 years, or if I have sewn the quilt in order to keep my strange life warm against the cold perspectives of the world surrounding me (it could even be Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, but that's for another blog).

At some core of my being I am a Baptist. I was raised as a Baptist, I came to faith as a Baptist, I was trained as a Baptist, and I even pastored a Baptist church for a very brief period of time. At the absolute center of Baptist faith is the idea of transformation. You not only CAN change your life, but you MUST change your life. A second fundamental of Baptist faith (something that seems to have been lost by the masses of fundamentalist loud mouths passing themselves off as Baptist in our present time) is that each individual is responsible before the God for her or his faith and behavior over time. We are not only asked to change initially, but we are expected to KEEP ON CHANGING. There are some Baptists who still believe this, but they are few and far between.

Laid on top of this Baptist foundation is a deeply, and long, held commitment to Buddhism. A commitment that has on occasion literally saved my life. The foundation of Buddhist belief is the concept of The Four Noble Truths. The Fourth Noble Truth delineates a process (The Eightfold Path)for... you guessed it... CHANGE.

Atop all of this is the strange reality that I was raised by a father who was both a journalist and a scientist. For me, what this means is that I am perpetually curious about new ideas and new ways of thinking and being. I am fully committed to the idea that humanity has climbed it's way out of the muck and mire through a never ending process of CHANGE, and I fully expect the process to continue with me.

This is certainly not a new idea (I very rarely have original thoughts) and one of my favorite expressions of the concept comes from Rainer Maria Rilke in what is my favorite poem in all the world, Archaic Torso of Apollo.

It is interesting to me that the vibrancy and life that Barrack Obama has pumped into our otherwise dead and decaying political process here in the U.S. is also based on this idea, this cry for change.

There is no other way of living, growing, or being. There is one reality in the universe... CHANGE OR DIE.