Moving Beyond the Question of "Who is Right"

[Septuagesima Sunday, 1967] And, after all, am I not arrogant too? Am I not unreasonable, unfair, suspicious and often quite arbitrary in my dealings with others? The point is not just “who is right” but “judge not” and “forgive one another” and“bear one another’s burdens”. This by no means implies passive obsequiousness and blind obedience, but a willingness to listen, to be patient. This is our task.

Thomas Merton. The Road to Joy, Robert E. Daggy, Editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989): 96-97

Tolkien on the Pleasures of Language and the Imaginative Wonder of Faërie

So remember when I started the Tolkien Readstravaganza? Well I have been sneaking back to the dragon's hoard that is the works of and about JRRT. In recent weeks I have finished reading The History of the Hobbit, Tales from the Perilous Realm (a collection of most of Tolkien's non Middle-earth related fiction), His translations of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, and am almost finished with The Monster's and the Critics, a collection of his essays and lectures named for his well known lecture on Beowulf.

It is from this book of essays that the following three passages come from. All three show Tolkien in full philological force as a lover of words, language and the imaginative wonder that surrounds them.

The first is from an essay entitled English and Welsh which dealt with the ' British or Celtic element in the English language...' In this section he comments on the pleasures to be found in a language, particularly in the words themselves.:

I will not attempt to say now what I mean by calling a language as a whole 'beautiful', nor in what ways Welsh seems to me beautiful; for the mere recording of a personal and if you will subjective perception of strong aesthetic pleasure in contact with Welsh, heard or read, is sufficient for my conclusion.

The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. it is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.

This next section is from his most famous essay, On Fairy Stories. I must admit that I found this passage to be quite stirring, and I think it expresses the effect language and philology had on the way he crafted his works. For Tolkien, language was a magical thing. We have already seen above how he could take great pleasure in the words themselves, but here he expresses the potential for language and meaning to come together, get turned on their head and result in something that goes beyond fantasy and into the realm of Faërie.

Philology has been dethroned from the high place it once had in this court of inquiry. Max Muller's view of mythology as a 'disease of language' can be abandoned without regret. Mythology is not a disease at all, though it may like all human things become diseased. You might as well say that thinking is a disease of the mind. It would be more near the truth to say that languages, especially modern European languages, are a disease of mythology. But language cannot, all the same, be dismissed. The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval. The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalisation and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faërie is more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical grammar. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light, and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power - upon one plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes. It does not follow that we shall use that power well upon any plane. We may put a deadly green upon a man's face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of a cold worm. But in such 'fantasy', as it is called, new form is made; Faërie begins; man becomes a sub-creator.

I end now with a beginning. In this final selection, the introduction to the same essay, he describes the realm of Faërie in his own words:

I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer (or trespasser) in the land, full of wonder but not of information.

The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of the traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.

The Riddle by Thomas Merton

This is the English translation of Merton's poem "Le Secret" by Br. Paul Quenon

I might be defined

The imaginative kind.

My life is charmed,

Untouched by harm.

Fast or slow

Off I go

To view the scene

On cloud serene.

What secret I've read

I've left unsaid;

It'd make you smile,

Or puzzle awhile.

My naked heart

Betrays no art,

With nothing concealed,

And nothing to steal.

Nothing to know

Nothing to dream;

I tell no lies.

In truth, my eyes

Are globes that see

All lands and seas:

I never complain

Be it China or Spain.

I've been around

And always found

Great happiness,

Tremendous bliss.

At earth's deep core

I've seen no sore.

And if I fly

To spheres on high,

Or visit afar

Some secret star

In depths of night

Though quite profound

- to put it right -

I would be found

To be

No one and everyone.

When I fly free

Of memory,

You should not yearn

For my return,

Or try to see

Where I might be.

I'm there unknown;

In nothing shown.

Without a face,

Without a name,

Without renown

Or any fame.

I am a strange

Enchanted bird:

God formed me - Love,

By his own word.

This poem can be found in the collection entitled In the Dark Before the Dawn, edited by Lynn R. Szabo.

Gandhi, Humiliating and Humbling.

"The First principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating." -Gandhi

Humiliate: to cause (a person) a painful loss of pride, self-respect, or dignity; mortify.

Humble: to make humble in spirit or manner.

The important distinction to be noticed, is the differences between humiliation and humility. Both involve the act of being brought low. One, however, requires the subject and object to be the same party, with a will to humble himself. The other involves an involuntary humbling, and more than likely two parties.

When I humble myself I am acting in a free manner, but if I am humiliated, someone else has acted upon me in such a way as to remove my free will and has brough me low through some source (be it physical/mental, or spiritual). The moment self-giving loved is replaced with force of any kind, violence has crept in and there is a rupture in human relations.

Thanks to our human capacity for exaggeration and escalation, the word humiliate can take on a trivial nature. I am reminded now of the teen who goes out in public with her parents. When one of them does something "parentally odd," the teen becomes "humiliated" or even "mortified."

And yet, this is not really humiliation as I understand it. Their embarrassment is rooted in their own pride, that they have not even attempted to give up freely in a genuine attempt at humility. I say that I am reminded of a teen, but in reality I am just as guilty of confusing prideful embarrassment with humiliation in my own life.

Humiliation need not be some grand act of maliciousness to be harmful to another person though. A rape victim is surely a sever example of someone being humiliated in so many ways, but the less severe interactions of our snarky and cynical age can be humiliating to our chosen targets as well.

How often do we make the sarcastic remark to our friends about something they said or did? How often do we take it upon ourselves to point out their deficiencies at inopportune times "for their own good." How often do we relish the schadenfreude that comes at the misfortune of others? If you are like me, the answer is far too often.

We must be vigilant and guard against all forms of humiliation, because it is so easy for it to creep into our routine. My generation has grown up in the MTV era where cynicism, sarcasm, and biting satire are the norm for public and private discourse. It is much easier to laugh at our enemies mistakes than our own because we let our pride inflate our self-opinion by deflating the worth we assign to them.

The opposite, and in my mind much harder, approach is to place a high value on sincerity. Sincerity that allows us to show concern for our friends and enemies. Sincerity that is able to discern when things have gone too far. Sincerity that says, you know what I don't agree with you, but you do not deserve to be treated as you have been.

This starts with our friends and inner circles. We certainly need relationships which allow us to speak freely into someone else's life as they can speak into ours. What is important is that this be a mutually chosen way of interacting. The intent is important in this case as well. if our goal is to build others up, that may entail appropriately acknowledging their shortcomings, but it does not involve humiliating them in little ways over time.

When we have learned to do this with our inner circle, it will become easier to do this with those we know less, or even not at all.

My Perfect Girl...

photo courtesy of Kaptain Kobold

...is one to which I would sing this song by Toy Horses.

Now I just have to find out where she is hiding!

But What About the Future?

(click above to go to their site and listen to the song)

We're alright now, but what about the future?

You've got an IQ thats so bloody high,
and i watch rugrats and it makes me cry.
If i drink so much that i miss my flight
would you drive to the airport in the middle of the night?
There's a thousand things that I'd do for you
but I'll never miss an episode of Doctor Who

These days won't last for ever,

could you make it last forever?

Well I'm just a geek, and you're no fool.
You'll have to tell me what to wear so that I can look cool.
Say I take a test online one day
and the results say I might be 42% gay
Well if this makes you laugh and you still want me
you'd better wait until you've met the family .

These days won't last for ever,

could you make it last forever?

And we will both like Steven Fry
hes such a clever fucking guy.

Oh my...

And if we've got no money just a clapped out van
We'll 'ave an ironic trip to a caravan.
We'll sit in the van in the seaside town
feeding chips to the seagulls as it chucks it down.
And then one evening for a special treat
We'll have a nice curry while the kids are asleep.

These days won't last for ever,

could you make it last forever?

but if we do quite well then I'll make you ski
we'll go twice a year and you'll be cross with me
but we'll live in a house with a swimming pool
you'll have ducks and chickens and an aga too
in the summer you can go for a daily swim
and I'll buy a TARDIS and I'll stick it in the gym.

These days won't last forever,

could you make it last forever?

but we will both like Steven Fry

hes such a clever fucking guy.

Oh my...

We're alright now, but what about the future?

and then one day when we're really old
and when we're all cutched up so we dont get cold
you'll be dressed in purple and i'll be fat

and I'll kiss you on the cheek
so what d'you think of that?

These days won't last for ever,

would you make it last forever?

These days won't last for ever,

would you make it last

could you make it last

would you make it last forever?

Eberhard Arnold on Violent Defence

No one who has heard the clear call of Jesus’ Spirit can resort to violence for protection. Jesus abandoned every privilege and every defense. (1 Pet. 2:21– 23) He took the lowliest path. And that is His challenge to us: to follow Him on the same way that He went, never departing from it either to the left or to the right. Do you really think you can go a different way from Jesus on such decisive points as property and violence and yet claim to be His disciple?

Eberhard Arnold, Oct. 1931, Quoted in God's Revolution

Everything is Terrible: Caring Voices Edition

I was reminded of this song tonight while browsing the blog Everything is Terrible! I remember when this song came out during the Gulf War, and I also remember playing it over and over (when I wasn't listening to MC Hammer of course!).

That said, this video is a riot- especially when you get to the end and see all the celebrities. And there is also Gary Busey. Yes, watch for Gary Busey.

Today's Verse & Voice from Sojourners

You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.

- Deuteronomy 16:19

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

- Thomas Merton,

New Seeds of Contemplation

Plateaus Suck

So I have officially entered into my first plateau since I started losing weight. As you can see from the chart below (click on it to enlarge), nearly the last three weeks have been stuck in the same 5 pound range just going up and down (there was also a time in April where I didn't lose much, but that was because I was sick). it doesn't seem to matter how little I eat or how much I exercise, it is stuck in some cycle. I knew that I would hit one at some point, but it makes it no less frustrating.



I am trying to push through it, and am meeting with one of the people at the Y this weekend to run through the weight machines. I usually am ok on machines, but I never know where to start so I have been putting it off. Hopefully that will be the kind of change my body needs to work out of this rut.

My diet has been completely vegetarian for about 6-7 weeks now, and I stay away from almost all junk food, with the occasional indulgence. I have read that another thing which could help is actually eating a couple hundred more calories a day for a while. There are honestly too many "solutions" out there to make much sense of them, as they all have conflicting advice.

Perhaps I just need to be patient and all of a sudden it will start trending back down again. I am still pretty happy with the loss that has happened so far. Losing 25-30 lbs is nothing to scoff at. Yet I am now only back to what was for a long time my normal weight range. I am probably more frustrated because it seems like breaking out of the 240s has always been a struggle and I am afraid I am going to stay here again.

Anyway, I will keep plugging away. I know that I have made the right changes to my diet and lifestyle that should have long-term results, but in the midst of it I still struggle with the nitty gritty.

Goodbye Solo

Sometimes I go to see random movies I know very little about. This past Sunday I decided to see what was playing at The Esquire here in Cincinnati. There was a mix of things I recognized and had never heard of. Goodbye Solo is one that I knew nothing about. I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes to find that it had a score in the 90s which is usually a good sign. After reading the synopsis I thought that I may not enjoy it, but it was a movie worth checking out. In the end it was a movie I thoroughly enjoyed and would like to revisit after taking some time to think about it more.

For now, here are some thoughts. Mild Spoilers to follow.


The movie is about a taxi driver in Winston-Salem who is a Senegalese immigrant (Solo)and one of his passengers. At the start of the movie we find that an old, grizzled, Southern white man has asked Solo if he is willing to take on a job for him. In ten days, he would like to be driven up to a place called Blowing Rock, but does not need a return trip. The trip itself would normally cost 200 dollars, but he is willing to pay a full $1000.

Solo is perplexed, and is not able to get much else out of the man, suspecting that the man is contemplating suicide. What follows in the next 90 minutes is a parable of two equal and opposing forces, at least as this movie seems to frame it. Roger Ebert, in his review, says that "It is about the desire to help and the desire to not be helped." This is the theme of the movie in a nutshell.

Solo is a relentless pursuer of friendship with William. He begins to work it out so that whenever William calls in for his regular trip to the movie theaters, it is Solo who ends up picking him up. This is much to the consternation of William. He wants nothing to do with anybody. He wants to seal up his life in a fortress that is impenetrable to the kindness of others.

As the movie goes on we learn that (unsurprisingly) William has had some bad things happen in his life, but the movie is less concerned with all of the specifics of these things than it is with the interaction of these two men. When William sells his apartment, Solo finds him a hotel, only to show up at Williams door a couple of days later needing a place to stay after his wife has kicked him out.

Whereas William is a source of draining joylessness, Solo is a fountain of joy. He is constantly upbeat, and enthusiastic in his pursuit of William. He continually refers to William as "Big Dog" and gets a little too enthusiastic when William shares he used to ride Harleys, eager to learn more about this man's past.

He is not terribly happy with his job, but is studying to become a flight attendant. He has an interview/test coming up and we get to see how much preparation goes into that. He is not this way with William alone, and we get to see his relationships with friends, ex-girlfriends and his step-daughter too.

As I said, it is a movie about two opposing forces. As eager as Solo may be, William is just as vehement about detachment. We never fully get a glimpse inside his head to see what is wrong, but we do understand that he comes with loneliness, regret, and sorrow.

Ramin Bahrani is an Iranian-American and I have found nothing on his faith, so what follows is less about him and more about me.

What struck me about this relationship is that it can be viewed in two similar ways from within the church.

The first is it reminds me of evangelism. When God calls us to pursue a relationship, I think he calls us to act in similar ways Solo does throughout the movie, although he does overstep some boundaries. Overall though, Solo is a source of unconditional love for someone who consistently rejects it. We must be sensitive to the people we seek to serve, and we may never get any positive feedback from them, but if we are acting in genuine love, we can continue to seek ways to serve them. The danger of course, is that we make it about what we are doing for them, and take a prideful stance on the matter. This is something that can only be guarded against through humble prayer.

The second thing it reminds me of is the human will. I believe that God issues a call to all humanity to follow him in loving submission, and then provides room for the human will to respond. If this is true, then the human will can reject him. William is a perfect example of this rejection. Solo has done nothing but shower him with kindness, and yet William will not allow himself to be loved in this way. There are brief moments hinting that there is some sort of friendship there, but ultimately Solo's advances are not successful. So too, I think God is constantly pursuing his creation, but in the end, we still can resist that love. We have been giving the option to say no, so that we may freely make the choice to say yes.

Going back to the idea of evangelism and personal relationships, we must keep this aspect of the human will in mind with any of them. Not all of the people we want to be friends with, want to be friends with us. Not all of the people we love, want to be loved by us. Part of caring for them in a manner suited to Christ is recognizing that and loving them anyway. But loving them in as non-manipulative a way as we can.

Whenever we try to manipulate someone's thoughts or feelings, we are only fooling ourselves. Even if they were to allow themselves to be manipulated, what we have done is no longer love, but selfishness. This will be worked out in a million different ways depending on the people involved. Not every relationship should get the same intensity of a chase as Solo has given to William. Listening to the Holy Spirit in prayer and in the counsel of others is a good way to determine how to go about things.

One other lesson from Solo, is that I never felt like he treated william as a pet project; he sought him out with a genuine desire for William's well being, and out of charity. This is where I think a lot of personal evangelism runs into the ground. Christ did not send us out to fix people. We are not mini-saviors going around working miracles. We are witnessess. Witnesses can only point to the thing witnessed. We witness to a life-changing Gospel, but we ourselves are not the Gospel.

I will not speak on the finale of the film, as it is best experienced for what it is. But I will say that once the film was over, I sat there for a few minutes trying to make sense of what I had just seen in the last hour and a half. I felt extremely conflicted by the hope of Solo and the despair of William that permeated the entire film. Nonetheless it is a conflict I am comfortable staying in. Much like the film, I feel it is a conflict that need not be reconciled in reality as well.

Regina Spektor- Laughing With

There is a new Regina Spektor Album out today. It is called Far (Album). I listened to some of it on the way into work. One song in particular caught my attention, and apparently it has actually been around for about a month.

While she is not writing this from a Christian perspective, she certainly hits on some things that we in the Church can learn from. I am struck much less by the verses as I am with the Chorus. The god she sings about in the chorus is more of a caricature than what I believe the bible teaches us about God. Nonetheless it is a pretty good description of the god that has been preached and presented over and over by many in the Western Church.

The challenge we face is to preach the living and true God, and live our lives in and by his Spirit. Only when the Church is doing this will the caricature begin to fade and the reality come back into the foreground. This is no easy task, because as with all things Christ-related, it means we must allow ourselves to die and be given new life in Christ. It means that some of the ways we do things "because that is how they have always been done" must be abandoned or altered.

I make no claims to know what these things are, even if I have my opinions. I am also a big fan of Church Tradition, it means a lot to me. But tradition for tradition's sake means nothing to me. As the church learns to be the Bride of Christ, it must continually seek out what the Holy Spirit is doing in this world and then participate in that. Traditions and habits can be very edifiying to the Church and the world, but only when they are God-centered.

Here are the lyrics to Laughing With:

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late and their kid's not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they're mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say "We've got some bad new, sir,"
No one's laughing at God when there's a famine, fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they've lost all they got and they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God in a hospital
No one's laughing at God in a war

No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God

Excerpt from the Epistle of Discretion

Please forgive the Elizabethan English. It makes it much harder to wade through for sure. The full epistle can be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library It is an anonymous work found in a collection called The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises which was published in 1521.

It speaks a reminder that is pretty consistent in all that I have been reading on contemplative prayer lately, but applies to things much more broadly than that. In all that we do, it is God who must be our pursuit. When we make it a pursuit of prayer for the sake of prayer, or fellowship for the sake of fellowship, we are crudely extracting God from the equation.

When we are pursuing God with all of our being in truth and love, all of those external things like prayer, service, devotion and study can find a fruitful and meaningful place in our spiritual life. If God is not at the center of these endeavors, then we are deceived in thinking they will make us more holy or better people.

Of course the reality is that we are constantly trying to do those things without God at the center. We mean well, and we may try very hard to keep that focus. Sooner or later though, we will shift that focus away from him. In those cases we can be thankful that the Holy Spirit has come to guide us back to the way, truth and life that is found in God alone.

But now thou askest me, what is that thing. I shall tell thee what I mean that it is: It is God; for whom thou shouldest be still, if thou shouldest be still; and for whom thou shouldest speak if thou shouldest speak; and for whom thou shouldest fast, if thou shouldest fast; and for whom thou shouldest eat, if thou shouldest eat; and for whom thou shouldest be only, if thou shouldest be only; and for whom thou shouldest be in company, if thou shouldest be in company. And so forth of all the remenant, what so they be.

For silence is not God, nor speaking is not God; fasting is not God, nor eating is not God; onliness is not God, nor company is not God; nor yet any of all the other such two contraries. He is hid between them, and may not be found by any work of thy soul, but all only by love of thine heart. He may not be known by reason, He may not be gotten by thought, nor concluded by understanding; but He may be loved and chosen with the true lovely will of thine heart.

Choose thee Him, and thou art silently speaking, and speakingly silent, fastingly eating, and eatingly fasting, and so forth of all the remenant. Such a lovely choosing of God, thus wisely lesinge and seeking Him out with the true will of a clean heart, between all such two leaving them both, when they come and proffer them to be the point and the prick of our ghostly beholding, is the worthiest tracing and seeking of God that may be gotten or learned in this life.

Busy Lives Do Not Exempt Us From Prayer

I finished my latest Merton book last night and have a stack of various things waiting for me to pick from now. One of them is a collection of sayings from Mother Teresa on prayer.

Lately I have been trying to be very intentional in allowing God's presence to show itself to me throughout the day, so this quote has particularly stood out to me.

Setting aside proper time for prayer is terribly hard in today's society. It is something that I believe is important, but there are always days where I seem to have woken up later than I had planned, or that quiet time I scheduled in my head never came around because I got lost in the internet etc. These are all the sorts of things I try to tell myself when I simply don't feel like sacrificing some of my free time to pray. What she has to say here is important for those days because it reminds us that we always have opportunities to be prayerful. This is a lot like Brother Lawrence's little book Practicing the Presence of God.

Mother Teresa:

There are some people who, in order not to pray, use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents them from praying.

This cannot be.

Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer.

It is not necessary to always be meditating, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice this would be. What matters is being with him, living in him, in his will.

Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila

Let nothing trouble you.

Let nothing make you afraid.
All things pass away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains everything.
God alone is enough.

– St. Teresa of Avila

The Emptiness of Love

photo courtesy of jbelluch

To the surprise of no one who has been reading this blog lately, here is another Merton quote. Every time I post something from him, I tell myself it will be the last one, but then he goes and writes something that jumps off the page and attacks me with its profundity, and then leaves me stuck pondering it over and over in my mind.

In this section of his book, Contemplative Prayer, he has been addressing the paradox of emptiness in contemplation. It is a terribly confusing section in which (as best I can understand it) he argues that being emptied of all things in prayer leaves you anything but empty in the end. In contrast, one can actually pursue emptiness in such a way as to fill them self up in a bloated egotistical quest for emptiness, and completely miss the fact that it is God who brings emptiness about so that he may fill us with himself through his Spirit.

Like I said, confusing. I am not even convinced my above interpretation is quite right.

I do however believe that the following excerpt is a much more easily grasped. He is no longer explaining what emptiness is not, but rather what it is.

But true emptiness is that which transcends all things, and yet is immanent in all. For what seems to be emptiness in this case is pure being. Or at least a philosopher might so describe it. But to the contemplative it is other than that. It is not this, not that. Whatever you say of it, it is other than what you say. The character of emptiness, at least for a Christian contemplative, is pure love, pure freedom. Love that is free of everything, not determined by any thing, or held down by any special relationship. It is love for love's sake. It is a sharing, through the Holy Spirit, in the infinite charity of God. And so when Jesus told his disciples to love, he told them to love as universally as the Father who sends his rain alike on the just and the unjust. "Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect." This purity, freedom and indeterminateness of love is the very essence of Christianity.

It is to this above all that monastic prayer aspires."

While this excerpt is directed at the concept of contemplative prayer, I think (much like most of the book) it shows how contemplative prayer is not a static thing. It is not simply something that stays in one place of our spiritual growth while the actions we make in faith stay in a different place. The line is blurred.

This presence of pure love and freedom might start in contemplation, but it spills over, and out of the thirst quenching cup of prayer, and into the active love we can only hope to manifest toward are neighbors. He calls it a sharing in the "infinite charity of God," Others might call it "inhabiting the cruciform God." Still others might call it "mere christianty" or simply "discipleship." Whatever we call it though, I believe it is the living participation in the Kingdom of God which James reminds us is essential to the Christian life in James 2:14-25.

What began in faith, in the emptiness of prayer (love), if it is in true faith, has no other option but to come to life! In our faith, we are crucified with Christ; our outer egotistical self is killed and then the inner self (the self that reflects God's image as it was intended) is raised up into active love towards the world around us.

This means that complacency, selfishness, hatred, unforgiveness, and plenty of other things no longer can have top billing in our attitudes and actions. These are not things we can simply remove on our own. And this brings us back to prayer. Prayer is our access to the living water of Christ. We no longer have need for the empty and cracked cisterns we have made for ourselves.

Finally, this active life, the deeds that James talks about are found in everything we do. These are not characterized by grandiose actions. God may indeed call us to take bold steps in following him and loving our neighbors and his creation. Focusing on these as the "ideal" will get us nowhere though, because this is the ego at work again, obscuring our true identities.

These deeds are the deeds we do in any given situation. These are the deeds we do in public, but also the ones we do in private. They are the deeds we do toward our family members, friends, roommates, acquaintances. They are also the deeds we do towards those we have never met before, those towards which we have great animosity as well as those who quite frankly just annoy the heck out of us.

Every encounter is an opportunity to become Christ to someone- the just and unjust alike. This can only ever take place if we are led by the Holy Spirit. And self-emptying, love-filled prayer is one way in which our relationship with the Holy Spirit can grow and open up those future opportunities.

Self-sacrifice, Prayer and 2 Corinthians 6:6-10

This is a paraphrase by Merton found in his book Contemplative Prayer. He is addressing the idea of "interior freedom" through self sacrifice and denial.

It means detachment and freedom with regard to inordinate cares, so that we are able to use the good things of life and able to do without them for the sake of higher ends. It means the ability to use or to sacrifices all created things in the interests of love. In St. Paul's words: "We have to be pure-minded, enlightened, forgiving and gracious to others; we have to rely on the Holy Spirit, on unaffected love, on the truth of our message, on the power off God. To the right and left we must be armed with innocence, now honored, now slighted, now traduced, now flattered. They call us deceivers and we tell the truth; unknown and we are freely acknowledged; dying men, and see we live; punished, yes, but not doomed to die; sad men that rejoice continually; beggars that bring riches to many; disinherited, and the world is ours."

He goes on later to say:

Our ability to sacrifice ourselves in a mature and generous spirit may well prove to be one of the tests of our interior prayer. Prayer and sacrifice work together. Where there is no sacrifice, there will eventually turn out to be no prayer, and vice versa. When sacrifice is an infantile self-dramatization, prayer will also be false and operatic self-display, or maudlin self-pitying introspection. Serious and humble prayer, united with mature love will unconsciously and spontaneously manifest itself in a habitual spirit of sacrifice and concern for others that is unfailingly generous, though perhaps we may not be aware of the fact. Such a union of prayer and sacrifice is easier to evaluate in others than in ourselves, and when we become aware of this we no longer try to gauge our own progress in the matter.

Redemption, by So Elated

I keep coming back to this band. Their self titled album has quickly become one of my favorites and I appreciate their lyrics more and more with each fresh listen. Here is one of the better songs from the album.

So Elated

Redemption

I’ve got melody
runnin’ through my veins
And the blood I bleed was transfused by you
All the air that you breathed first
And the water that quenches thirst
Everything I need was redeemed by you

And the work of your redemption blankets every fear we know
And the song of your redemption blares above the radio
And the hand of your redemption carries everybody home

We are the redemption

Every war torn state
Every child born with AIDS
Every broke down mixed-up place is being fixed by you
Every political view
Every Christian, Muslim, Jew
Is being recreated new and fixed by Jesus

And the work of your redemption blankets every fear we know
And the song of your redemption blares above the radio
And the hand of your redemption carries everybody home

We are the redemption

A Hymn From Wesley

Image courtesy Br3nda's photostream on flickr.

1 JESUS, the needy sinner's friend,
Command the crowd to sit,
Who hungry still on thee attend,
And nothing have to eat;
They hear the word thy lips have said,
Low at thy feet they bow,
Distribute now the heavenly bread,
And feed their spirits now.

2 O'er-whelmed with blessings from above,
Father, before we taste
These freshest tokens of thy love,
We thank thee for the past;
Our eyes and hearts to heaven we lift,
And, taught by Jesus, own
That every grace and every gift
Descends from thee alone.

3 The gospel by our Saviour blessed
Doth efficacious prove,
The loaves a thousand-fold increased
Communicate his love;
We banquet on the heavenly bread,
When Christ himself imparts,
By his disciples' hands conveyed
To all believing hearts.

Merton's Prayer

MY LORD GOD,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
© Abbey of Gethsemani

Linkfest 06/06/09

Here are some of the links that have kept me busy this week:

Zach Galifianakis was profiled in the NYT.

Ben Witherington tackles NT Wright's new book on Justification with some thoughts of his own, and an interview with the Bishop himself.

I did not see the MTV Movie awards, but this song certainly made me laugh like a bowl full of jelly.

iMonk offers a reasoned response to one man's walking away from the faith.

The always entertaining zombie killing coop Left 4 Dead is getting a sequel!

There is a new Star Wars MMO coming out. I am not sure what to think of that, but I do know that this trailer is a Jedi Sith extravaganza.

In other Star Wars news- Someone did a very cool mashup of Magnum PI and Star Wars, creating Han Solo PI

The Dirty Projectors have a new album coming out next week and it is streaming on NPR until then. It very well could be my favorite album of 2009 so far.

Richard Ayoade of the IT Crowd has directed a strange video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Greg Boyd explains what is wrong with the American Patriot's Bible in two parts: One, Two.