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?