Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  There seems to be trouble with another disk lower in my spine. Considerable pain early yesterday morning and most of the day, tapered off after I spent some time lying down flat on my back. I was afraid I might have to go back to the hospital.

  Today I have the whole day in solitude with Dom James’ permission.

  One thing is certain. I am sick, nauseated with the purposelessness and futility and excess of my activity. It is my fault for accepting invitations to do and write things. Though in many cases the wasting turns out profitable. For instance the Schweitzer thing. Also last week I finished the long introduction to selections from Gandhi. Yet should I have written the notes on Father Perrin [“The Tragedy of a Worker-Priest”]? Glad I got the stuff on the Deputy [“The Trial of Pope Pius XII”] back from [Justus George] Lawler. He wants it but I am reconsidering. One thing is certain–I am simply surfeited with words and typescript and print, surfeited to the point of utter nausea. Surfeited with letters, too. This is so bad that it amounts to a sickness, like the obsessive gluttony of the rich woman in Theodoret who was eating thirty chickens a day until some hermit cured her. The only hermit that can cure me is myself and so I have to become that solitary in order to qualify as my own physician. But I also see that I am so sick that the cure is going to take time and if by the end of the year it can be well begun I can count myself fortunate. One plan to begin is perhaps in the area of letters–and I am so sick I don’t know where, except that when I respond to another one asking for a blurb I feel like a drunk and incontinent man falling into bed with another whore, in spite of himself. The awful thing is that I can’t stop.

  At least in the middle of this afternoon they came to find me in the hermitage and said the editor of a Catholic magazine was there to see me. So I said I could not come. At least that much grace, that much sanity. I would only have been involved in nonsense about some article or other, some pseudo-serious crusade or even if the issue itself were serious (race for instance) how serious would it be when we all got through mouthing our words? I am tired of retching up avant garde opinions to create the illusion that we are all awake and “forging ahead.”

  This morning I wanted to do some work on the booklet [Come to the Mountain] I promised to the monks of Snowmass [St. Benedict’s Abbey, Colorado] (on the monastic life) but unfortunately the typewriter broke down. I took it in to the monastery at noon, and now I am better off. One job I will surely try to stay with–that of doing the “Chronique” for Père Charles and his Collectanea, on Oriental Spirituality. This makes sense. How much else does not!

  April 30, 1964

  The feast of St. Robert was showery. The men were pouring the slab for the infirmary porch. Portable typewriter in the hands of Father Peter to be fixed. Borrowed Brother Clement’s Hermes, a beautiful little machine but I couldn’t find anything. Tried to do a little work on the Snowmass pamphlet in order to get it out of the way, and wrote very badly. Have to see the doctor today so I will miss a day’s work, which is why I worked yesterday, but it was not a good enough reason. Too impatient to get clear of the jobs to which I am committed and be “free,” but that is not the way.

  In the evening of the feast, the dogwood still in full bloom stood out against the dark, distant, horizontal clouds of a clearing sky.

  May 1, 1964

  It was a lovely cool dawn, with a half-moon behind thin clouds and a great smell of cow dung around the monastery. Later when the sun rose hot and brave the smell was tar, and Negroes worked on the roof of the garage (they were doing the roof of the juniorate chapel the other day). Now in the afternoon there is some red machine whacking into the hill in the middle of the horse pasture to make an air hole down into Brother Clement’s cheese curing cave which, some aver, is also supposed to be a fallout shelter. This is never said or admitted.

  I have not been able to finish the Snowmass pamphlet and am disgusted with it. It is the worst piece of writing I have done in years. But as soon as I forget it, everything is all right. Perhaps I will finish it and forget it tomorrow. Clearly I have no longer any business even thinking about writing such things.

  May 8, 1964

  Finished the Snowmass pamphlet last Saturday. Sunday was a good day of recollection–long afternoon outside, alone.

  On Monday I had to go to the hospital for some tests and the best that can be said of it was that I got back quickly–on Wednesday. Hospitals bore and irritate me. Not only that I feel, and am, trapped when I am in one, not only the noise (if they had not given me pills I could not have slept through the traffic noise of Preston Street) but the sense of being in a totally alien country, a country of ceaseless movement, in which things are thought to be happening: where, if necessary, ingenious and complicated happenings are arranged, and engage the full-time attention of entire teams of people (e.g. the glucose tolerance test I had to take). The best thing about it all was the half day of fasting and the blood letting. I came back lighter by a couple of pounds (175) and found the monastery full of heat and noise (they were pouring the top of the infirmary porch). I have still not ceased to be tired, but quails whistle in the field, and everything is green for there was much rain yesterday (Ascension Day).

  The archbishop [John A. Floersh] entered the hospital same day as I did, Monday–but he has cancer, and faces a grave operation–may not survive it. Poor man. It is fifteen years since he ordained me, and he is getting old–was old then. I wrote him a letter and sent him a copy of the Guigo booklet.

  James Laughlin is pleased with the Gandhi book [Gandhi on Non-Violence, 1965] which I sent him a week or ten days ago. That introduction was easy writing! I don’t know how the Snowmass pamphlet will look. It is being typed now.

  Read José Coronel Urtecho’s long, witty poem about his wife in El Paz y la Serpiento. Mark Van Doren would like it. Too long to translate. Coronel and Cardenal are thinking of an anthology of my work in Spanish. I am eager to read Carlos Martinez Rivas (just sampled him when Cardenal was here). Good poems by [Ernesto] Meija Sanchez who has for some reason been in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  May 10, 1964

  28Much as I want to let go of every “distraction” and live in the woods without a thought of “the world” a sentence like the above proves the futility of mere solitude and the necessity to have some of the blank austerity of Robbe-Grillet in one’s meditation–or to go out into that particular desert which the Spirit has provided for our century!!

  May 12, 1964

  A new loud noise over in the direction of the dehydrator–mechanical snoring which will probably become in some way permanent (perhaps a new alfalfa chopper). It is very insistent. The same problem of machines here remains. As we get more used to them, the noise increases. Small wonder that Brother Basil was in last evening talking about becoming a hermit. I wish there were some way of making it “normal” for those who seemingly have such a vocation to live a completely solitary life here, but I do think it is becoming gradually possible–and certainly a partial solitude is already available, as I have it.

  Sad story of the affairs at Berryville [Holy Cross Abbey, Virginia] that led up to the resignation of Dom Hugh. I am not too clear about it, except that apparently the community was split into two groups, conservatives led by the novice master and others, “progressives.” The novice master following the old Directory to the letter, etc. Dom Hugh, thought to be one of the best American Abbots, is now at Vina [New Clairvaux Monastery, California].

  Dom James home from visitation in the South is constantly talking about the “bad effect” of sending students to Monte Cistello, and gloating over the fact that a “case” is being made out of it and an increasing number of abbots are refusing to send students there–which he himself refused for years until forced to by Superiors. The main tenor of his idea is–distrust and dislike of the exchange of ideas and the communication that takes place there, and the fact that men return to their monasteries with “new ideas.” It is true that they come back with some bad ideas, but merely stopping all commun
ication and keeping everyone in the dark about new developments is no use. Brother Basil said Dom James is like a man at a desk with wind blowing in through an open window, trying to hold down as many papers as possible with both hands.

  Scripture conference in Chapter today. Impression of the whole group sinking deeper and deeper into boredom and resignation until finally, at the “discussion” when the same dutiful ones as always stood up to speak, the whole place was enveloped in dense spiritual and intellectual fog. Is this irremediable? Perhaps, all things considered, it really is. A community of men dedicated to the contemplative life without too much sense of spiritual things. Earnestness cannot compensate for such a lack. Virtue is putting up with despondency that results when they try to hide our collective failure!

  May 17, 1964. Whitsunday

  Yesterday, on the Vigil, a group of the Hibakusha29 on the World Peace Mission Pilgrimage came out here. The grass was all cut, the hermitage all swept, a lovely bright day, everything ideal except that I had attempted to provide ice water by just providing ice, expecting it to be melted by the time we came to needing it. But it had not melted. It was moving and good to have them there. People signed and marked by the cruelty of the age, signs on their flesh because of the thoughts in the minds of other men. They are an important indication of what certain “civilized” thinking really means. When we speak of “freedom” we are also saying that others like these good, charming, sweet, innocent people will be burned, annihilated, if and when we think we are menaced. Does this make sense? Is it not an indication that our thinking is absurdly flawed?

  True, our thinking is logical and makes war seem right and necessary when it is fitted into a certain context, starting from certain supposed “axioms.” The trouble is with the context and the axioms, and the root trouble is the whole concept of man and indeed of reality itself with which man operates. The thinking has not changed because the “axioms” have not changed. They are the axioms of sophistry and sophistry as Plato knew spells tyranny and moral anarchy. An illuminating experience, to read the last pages of Gorgias and to meet the Hibakusha on the same day. I spoke to them briefly, was not expecting an interpreter and was a bit put out–he translated and explained enthusiastically and I think we were in good rapport but there was not much discussion. Dr. Matsumoto, affable and kind, wanted to take pictures and leave or he would have to speak in the evening. The others were in no hurry.

  Hiromu Morishita, with his burned chin and his immense shyness, gave me to read a poem he had written. I wish I had had a chance to ask him about calligraphy. Nobozu Yamada–saw the Sengai calendar and was telling me of the “spiritual principles” on which Idemitsu runs his oil company. Yamada is an old-style Buddhist, full of ineffable gentleness and tact. Dr. Namakura–I had little chance to talk to him, but he too was shy. The boy and girl interpreters were full of life and charm, and having grown up since the war gave a totally different impression. I thought they were American educated at least. Much closer to us. I think the one who impressed me most was the most silent, Mrs. Tayoshi. She was always thoughtful, said nothing, very much apart yet very warm and good. All she did was come up silently and with a little smile slip a folded crane on the table (I had read them a poem on Paper Cranes). After they had all gone, it was Mrs. Tayoshi’s paper crane that remained silent and eloquent, the most valid statement of the whole afternoon.

  I forgot the newspaper reporter, Matsui, a very alert and pleasant man. It was wonderful to meet all these people, and quite a few monks and brothers came up to meet them, too. They had to leave earlier than we all expected.

  May 22, 1964

  Last day of a Paschaltide that was gone too fast. Getting warm. Trinity Sunday tomorrow. A busy week, with a novice leaving after a psychotic breakdown, and a postulant leaving because I knew, and he knew, he could not make it here. A day at Loretto, busy, much talking, and then Archbishop [Thomas] Roberts was here yesterday. He does not impress one as either starry eyed or fanatical but as a very solid, radical, clear thinking person. Perhaps a bit combative, certainly frank, and in no sense an ecclesiastical politician!! I think there really was something great about him and he is one of the few, perhaps the only bishop in the Church who is an outspoken pacifist! He has got the whole English hierarchy up in arms about birth control by suggesting that the Council ought to reconsider the Church’s rigid position on this question of “Natural Law.”

  “La vraie et seule histoire d’une personne humaine c’est l’émergence graduelle de son voeu secret à travers sa vie publique; en agissant, loin de la souille, elle le puri-fie.” [“The true and only story of a human person is the gradual emergence of his secret wish in his public life; in acting, far from defilement, it purifies him.”]

  May 26, 1964

  Anniversary of ordination (fifteen years already!). I was expecting Zalman Schachter and two other Rabbis in the morning. So far, (late afternoon) they have not come and I am just as pleased! Too many visits and too much talking and also I am convinced that I have been involved in the wrong kind of talking—a kind of untrue and in a personal sense unfaithful playing with modes and perspectives which I do not find as important or as relevant as I seem to when I am talking about them. This gets back again to my deep, unresolved suspicion of activism and activistic optimism in which there seems to me to be a very notable amount of illusion (though no one speaks intelligently against it) because I find in it no rest, no certainty, no real deep sense. This may be due to a lack in my own life and so I cannot feel sure of my misgivings. The fact remains that I feel myself in fact caught, and hesitant, indeed profoundly dubious between the two triumphalisms of the Council: that of the conservatives, the static kind, which is obviously absurd (note the interesting connection between this and a certain type of Marian dogmatism) and that of the progressives, the dynamic kind, which after all is in a kind of frenzy over accidentals to a great extent (nuns’ habits) and is also somewhat naive in its estimates of the possible future. Behind this one senses serious possibilities for real intelligence and real concern. (Pope Paul’s talk at the Brazilian College read today.)

  May 29, 1964

  Yesterday, Corpus Christi, was a day of cold, pouring, beating rain, crashing down uninterruptedly through the trees. For the first time, no complex, formal designs in the cloister, only a neat carpet of alfalfa, but the smell of alfalfa in the cloister and church is vile. Some of the seniors were furious about this, of course (furious about the end of the formal designs and all the hullabaloo that went with them).

  A student from the Cistercians at Spring Bank is on retreat here and I spoke with him briefly. Things do not sound too wonderful up there, but I wonder what they can possibly do. Got a note from Dom Leclercq in Africa. lie read his excellent essay on “l’érémitisme en occident” in the Athos volume.

  Am reading [R. M.] Enomiya Lasalle, in German, on Zen, and like it [Zen, Weg zur Erleuchtung, 1960]. Fascinating picture of shiji, a Zen nest among evergreens in the mountains!

  June 2, 1964

  More business visits. Yesterday afternoon a long council meeting (the first time there has been a serious discussion in the council of the problem of noise around here). In the middle of it a call came from Bob Giroux in New York. It appears that the problem of publishing Seeds of Destruction is being finally resolved. (Giroux wrote to the General and got a settlement. One essay on war may be printed if I will “transform” it. What the “transformation” requires I do not yet know.)

  Bishop John Gran, the Norwegian Cistercian from Caldey who is now coadjutor of Oslo, is here after wild traveling. Had supper with him and Rev. Father and Father Eudes last evening. Mostly anecdotes about Cardinal [Richard] Cushing [of Boston], and some talk about monastic questions of friendship in the monastery.

  Saturday I spent the afternoon (at Rev. Father’s desire) with the wife of the head of Columbia Records [Goddard Lieberson]. She turned out to be [Vera] Zorina, who starred in Claudel’s Jeanne d’Arc and also it was the feast of St. Joan.
Very good, spiritual, a bit tormented and I like her. She is Norwegian too and knows the Bishop. It was nice to talk to someone with whom I instinctively felt I had a lot in common. Yet at the same time there is not much use getting terribly involved in direction, etc.

  Morning mist clearing–a sweet dialogue of woodthrushes outside the window. Before the mist cleared I would have thought the window looked out perhaps on the sea, through the gap in the trees. Now the familiar fields and woods appear but not yet the hills on the other side of the valley.

  Reading about Celtic monasticism, the hermits, lyric poets, travelers, etc. A new world that has waited until this time to open up.

  I suppose that in some way I have been going through a small spiritual crisis. Nothing new, only the usual crisis and struggle, a little more intensified by the “fiftieth year.” Still it is getting to be quite decisive because there are fewer evasions possible. As I go on, the ways of escape are progressively closed, renounced, or otherwise abandoned. I know now that I am really committed to stability here, and that even the thought of temporary travel is useless and vain. I know that my contacts with others of like mind by mail, etc. are relatively meaningless, though they may have some raison d’être. I know that my writing solves nothing for me personally and that it has created some problems which are still unresolved. I know there is nothing to be solved or settled by any special adjustment within the framework of the community. That my position is definitively ambiguous and my job is to accept this with the smallest possible amount of bad faith.

  Today I have faced the fact that even if I could obtain permission to live permanently in the hermitage (I don’t think under Dom James this is possible and under his successor I will be too old) it would not be the solution it once appeared to be but only “vanity and vexation of spirit.” However, all this being true, it also remains true that the hermitage is there and I should make the best use of it, not as an evasion but as a real place of prayer and self-renunciation.