Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  I had not realized how completely Cardinal Bea had been defeated nor that Pope Paul had been led to withdraw his support from Bea in the last Session. I knew of course that the Pope had announced a complete reform of the Curia–and done nothing about it. Also of course the unscrupulous political acts of the curial party were to some extent well known. The appalling scandal is the way in which the whole idea of the Church’s authority is brought into question by these politicians! It raises once again the serious question of my own “vocation” (frustrated (?) by a political deal between the Abbot and the Congregation?). Certainly I do not doubt Providence, but just as certainly I cannot let a strictly political, pragmatic and juridical answer be the final word. And of course I have never intended to. In any case, I am in a hermitage. The important thing is understanding, and resolution of doubts and misgivings.

  Reading this book has been important for me. At one point it looked like a real hatchet job on Paul VI, but he takes it back to some extent. The ending is not conclusive. But I realize that here we are at the end of June and still nothing definite has been said about the next session. I certainly expect nothing from the new Secretariat for non-Christian religions. At best a political expedient–(in part to field the ball of the Jewish problem before it gets lost in the bushes).

  After a series of really bizarre incidents our Father Bernard has gone off to the monastery of the Prairies. Dom Walter (of the Genesee) has vanished. I think he has gone to the Carthusians. Father Herbert has left. Father Marion is going to Weston Priory. (Then where?) Father Francis and Father Gerard going to Rome to study. My undermaster, Father Felix, is now Guestmaster. Brother Timothy (Kelly) is the new undermaster.

  July 2, 1964

  Meadowlark sitting quietly on a fence post in the dawn sun, his gold vest–bright in the light of the east, his black bib tidy, turning his head this way, that way. This is a Zen quietness without comment. Yesterday a very small, chic, black and white butterfly on the whitewashed wall of the house.

  July 8, 1964

  On Sunday, after Father Abbot had left for visitations in the West, some visitors from Nicaragua came. Alfonso Calleja, etc. For nearly ten years his family has been trying to give us a coffee plantation near Chinandega, Nicaragua, to form a monastic community there. I told him I was sure the Abbot would not accept it. Then he asked me to come and preach a retreat. I said permission would never be given. He insisted. I said that only if the Pope himself told me to go would I be able to go. He said he would get the Nuncio in Managua to ask the Pope.

  There is some worry about President Johnson’s policies in Asia. To make sure of votes, he has to threaten war and promise “results” against the Communists. Something very strange about a system where political power for a party demands the sacrifice of lives of poor people thousands of miles away who never heard of democrats and republicans! I am not talking about Communist power only, but that of Democrats or Republicans. Can I honestly vote for any one in this year’s election? The possibility of a long, stupid, costly, disastrous and pointless war in Asia is no mere phantasm. It will certainly bring no good whatever to anyone. But because it does not involve a nuclear threat to the U.S., everyone shrugs and thinks about something else.

  Card from [Wilbur Hugh] Ping Ferry who was here a couple of weeks ago, is now in Scotland–card of the West Coast near Iona. I am reading Adamnan’s Life of Columba [1962], one of the great Vitae. Full of a very special character and spirit of its own: not the general aim of Latin hagiography. (For instance the two chapters about the whale, and those about men shouting across the strait for a boat to the Island.)

  July 10, 1964

  Rafael Squirru’s “New Man” pamphlet is very provocative. How much this is needed. The little that is published on Latin America in this country is likely to be nonsense. There is no deep interest in the question–yet this is one of the deepest and most urgent questions. As for Antonio Cruz, a brilliant, violent book, but Cruz is still the Mexican stereotype, magnificently redrawn. But is that the way Latin America is to be forever–as U.S. wants it to be forever? There is much more to it, surely! And I must read, read, and read. It is my vocation. The risk is not in seeking and knowing these things, but in claiming to intend more than I am able to intend. They are looking for a Savior and will take anyone as one. And I suppose I am looking for a Savior or an Earth Mother. I still believe in the idea of the dark Ecuadorian Virgin I got Jaime Andrade to do for the novitiate. She is there, I do not talk of her, nobody prays to her, but such a presence nevertheless! (Dom Gabriel did not like her.)

  Remembering so many things that come back from New York. Especially the raining streets around Columbia on the first evening, on Monday. Amsterdam Avenue, wet, empty, a few cars and buses speeding along, and a tall girl with long white bare legs and a little black jacket hurrying to Johnson Hall. The trees along 116th Street, the dark comfort of the rainy trees and of their shadow and half shelter. Foreign students everywhere, the comfort of foreign languages, French, German, Polish, Puerto Rican Spanish. The New Asia restaurant and the grey-haired Chinese waiter who had seen everything. Pork and fried rice and then tea, and egg drop soup. I was hot and wet. Ate gladly but there was too much. Too much the next day at lunch at the College Inn. Too much Japanese food at the Aki next to Butler Hall. (Bits of eels, bits of chicken, etc. floating in a nice broth. Rice in a wooden bowl. Then tea.) I was hot and wet in the Aki. Many Japanese faces. Earnest Japanese student talking to American student there by the window. Not much else. Hot and wet in the paperback book store. Too many books. Glad to get back to Butler Hall and have a bath. I sit in pajamas on the floor looking out over Harlem (lights, but not so many) and listening to all the sounds, and drinking that cheap wine. Lovely vacation!

  The Wednesday–a lovely morning and noon. Riding down in the taxi to the Guggenheim Museum around one o’clock, through the park, under tunnels of light and foliage, and the driver talking of his problems, his nerves, his analysis and his divorce. The more I think of the museum the more I recognize it as a light and beautiful and airy and intelligent place. And the Van Goghs. Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied, honest, victories over desperation, permanent victory. Especially the last light and shadow calligraphic impastos. But the Metropolitan was zero. In and out. An old world, an old station. The people walking on Fifth Avenue were beautiful, and there were those towers! The street was broad and clean. A stately and grown-up city! A true city, life-size. A city with substance and scale, large and right. Well lighted by sun and sky, anything but soulless, and it is feminine. It is she, this city. I am faithful to her! I have not ceased to love her to the last page of this ballpoint pen, the gift of Nazionale Distributing Co. (distributors of Stroh’s and of Schlitz) in Follansbee, West Virginia.

  Down at the end of Park Avenue, shadows, darkness, noise, crowds, traffic, a building being destroyed. The mornings going to Corpus Christi; coming from Corpus Christi. Walking in the sun and wind of Broadway along the Barnard Fence or behind Earl Hall. (I remember the medical examinations!) The pleasant sunny plaza, near the library. Campus Corner and going to work at the catalogue, finding almost everything I looked for! What an experience to go to a library and find what you look for! It is not that way in Louisville, but I do enjoy mornings at the University of Louisville Library. Stroh’s is dead. Schlitz is dead.

  Some conclusions: literature, contemplation, solitude, Latin America–Asia, Zen, Islam, etc. All these things combine in my life. It would be madness to make a “monasticism” by simply excluding them. I would be less a monk. Others have their own way, I have mine. To write to Squirru. Follow Grinberg as he goes to San Francisco then to Argentina, with a letter when needed. To think with those new men. The opening to the South has not closed. One day to the monastic places in Western Ireland!

  July 12, 1964

  Deeply moved by Adamnan’s extraordinary life of St. Columba. A poetic work, full of powerful symbols, indescribably rich. Through the Latin (which is deceptive–and st
range too) appears a completely non-Latin genius, and the prophecies and miracles are not signs of authority but signs of life, i.e., not signs of power conferred on a designated representative (juridically)–a “delegated” power from outside of nature, but a sacramental power of a man of God who sees the divine in God’s creation. Then the miracles etc. are words of life spoken in the midst of life, not words breaking into life and silencing it, making it irrelevant, by the decree of absolute authority (replacing the authority of life which life has from its Creator).

  July 14, 1964

  An amazing and fruitful evening yesterday: drove in with Father Prior (Flavian) to meet Abraham Heschel at the airport. A fine sunny afternoon, cool, the hills, all green and splendid, noise in the airport about the Republican Convention where Goldwater will obviously be nominated. (One of the first things Heschel said was that he was disturbed at this incredible thing–Heschel of course went through the Nazi persecution and escaped with his life.)

  At least half a dozen Loretto nuns were around the airport meeting other Loretto nuns coming for their General Chapter which opens today–a fine day for it!

  Riding back in the car, and at supper we talked of many things–of his new book Who Is Man (not what is man!), of the basic sin idolatry. Two Rabbis, Akiba and Ishmael (?)–argued as to what was the greatest commandment–Love of Brother or prohibition of idolatry. Both are right. I would be inclined to think the prohibition of idolatry was more fundamental, since when one has “an idol” (and any God that stands in the way of loving one’s brother is an idol) one can permit himself to sacrifice everything to it–including truth, love, justice, etc. The function of the idol is to permit everything, provided the idol itself receives (unconditional) adoration. Heschel talking about Rabbinic commentary on the phrase “other Gods”–Gods that are always changing (always “others”). Gods made by others, etc. To have a God other than the Lord is to be alienated. Idol = principle of alienation.

  Heschel is convinced that Serafian’s Pilgrim is perfectly right. We both look at this book in the same way, as crucially important. Heschel thinks the Jewish Chapter will never be accepted, in the Council. We spoke of how symbolic this fact was! In my opinion the acceptance of this chapter and the consequent at least implicit act of repentance is necessary for the Church and in reality the Church stands to benefit most by it. Heschel said, “Yes, but when I was a child I was beaten up often (by Catholic Poles) for being a Christ-killer, and I want to see that fewer Jewish children are beaten up for this reason.” He thinks [Cardinal] Bea is really finished, that he suffered a crushing defeat in the Second Session (obvious). The envy aroused by his American trip brought him many enemies, and he had plenty before that. Heschel very impressed by Willebrands, now a bishop. Has much hope in him. Scorns Monella and the new Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions (in which I have no interest!).

  Sat up until 10:30 talking with Heschel after a good supper fraught with dietary problems too great for Brother Edwin to solve, but Heschel did well on cheese, lettuce, etc. He enjoyed the wine and smoked a couple of long cigars.

  This morning before High Mass Brother Simon [Patrick Hart] told me a letter from the Definitor, Dom Lawrence, had come, and the long section on peace for Seeds of Destruction had been passed without change by the General! Thus the real heart of the forbidden book, Peace in the Post-Christian Era, is to be published after all. Now this would never have happened if Dom Gabriel had not been so stringent with the other three articles, which would have been used in Seeds of Destruction if he had not forbidden their reprinting. Thus in effect the very thing he wanted to prevent most has happened because of his own authoritarianism! This is something to remember when we think of religious obedience. The Church is not entirely run by officials!! None of this was arrived at, in the end, by my initiative! Again, Dom Ignace’s part–demanding the reworking of the one article the Publisher tried to insist on, led to this whole new approach! How strange are the ways of God!

  Must write the preface to E[dward] D[eming] Andrews’ new edition of Shaker Furniture. But first a short article for Père Hervé Chaigne, O.F.M.–a French Franciscan interested in non-violence. And I still have to proofread the typescript of Seasons of Celebration which has been lying around for several months. The job does not appeal! I have heard a rumor that E. D. Andrews is dead. Am not sure and have not dared to write to his wife [Faith Andrews] to find out.

  Brother Alphonse, the Ecuadorian, has his arm in a cast (broken elbow). Brother Eugene, from Texas, drawls, goes about with his hands in his pockets and is for Goldwater because Goldwater “Knows where money comes from and is for the individual.” These are our two postulants of the summer. Another, younger, is to come from a farm in Michigan, and it was decided yesterday that a Jesuit from the Detroit province did not have a vocation to our life. This afternoon I am to talk to one who was a postulant in the big group in 1957 and who left after an appendicitis operation. Perhaps wants to reenter. How many of those that entered then are still here? I can think only of ones that have gone. Perhaps Brother Methodius is the only one left, and Brother Paul of the Cross. And are they going to last? I really do not make a crisis out of these departures. But they are significant. Others would say ominous. For what? For the big institution, yes, but not simply for “monasticism.”

  July 18, 1964

  Yesterday, which is the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel in our Order, I wrote that Shaker preface [“Religion in Wood”]. It still needs to be revised. Perhaps I brought too much of Blake into it. A fine quiet afternoon, with one long intermittent thundershower.

  The Navigatio S. Brendani came yesterday from Boston College. I began it this morning, studying it as a Tract on the monastic life–the myth of peregrinatio, the quest for the impossible island, the earthly paradise the ultimate ideal. As a myth it is, however, filled with a deep truth of its own.

  A Cuban exile who does not speak English is here to be a family brother but I do not think he will be able to settle down. He comes from Sancti Spiritus, a lovely plain little town which I remember.

  Read an excellent piece by [Jorge] Carrera Andrade on Ruben Darío. Important, a key man for the “consciencia americana”–and the “new man.” I must read him sometime, and also Martí. Vitier mentioned him in a letter recently.

  July 19, 1964. Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

  Sun rising in streaks of dirty mist. If I had seen a Japanese print I would probably have experienced it in a purely western way: seen one thing among many. A multitude of trees, enclosure wall, etc. in the foreground. Sumie [black-and-white drawing] makes the whole view one. One, or unity seen because the sun is in the center, a unity which is more than the sum of a number of parts. But in the infirmary kitchen–atrocious printed color photos from paper companies, to advertise the quality of their paper. Emphasis on bright color. Colored objects without composition, without sense, dolls, flowers, toys, food. Food. Food. Food. Enormous hamburgers. Gook for chocolate icing in a bowl, etc. Thrown at you! Total barbarity.

  Last week Goldwater was nominated on the first ballot at the Republican convention, and made statements and a platform that were supposed to sound reasonable.

  Father Baldwin [Skeehan] is back from Rome and spoke in Chapter, saying how much he hated Rome. But Assisi, Subiaco and Chartres were “inspirational.” Just what Dom James likes best. He has taken a trip and suffered. He has not known enjoyment. He has a degree but has learned nothing dangerous. In fact he has learned a philosophy which, he avers, is useless for his spiritual life and cannot be meditated on (“being” is in his way of thinking an unreality). This is excellent! He has been away for two years and comes back without ideas and indeed with a repugnance for thought. This is just what Dom James likes best. If only they were all so! Should one then waste time thinking about what goes on in Rome?

  July 21, 1964

  It has been cool. Today will perhaps be hot, as the sun looks red and angry through early haze and one can barely discern the hills (which a novice
the other day referred to as “the Appalachians”) across the valley.

  I sent the article on “Honest to God” to the Commonweal yesterday. Really Bonhoeffer is far deeper than Robinson would lead one to think. I am reading Bonhoeffer’s prison letters [Letters and Papers from Prison, 1953], which are very “monastic” indeed–in fact I mean to make a collection of some of the “monastic texts” there. His “worldliness” can only be understood in the light of this “monastic” seriousness, which is however not Platonically “inward.” It is not a withdrawal, a denial, it is a mode of presence. Paradoxically then Bonhoeffer’s mode of unnoticed presence in the world is basically monastic–as opposed to the “clerical” presence which is official and draws attention to itself and has a “message.” That is the trouble with the Bishop of Woolwich. He is concerned with “The Message” and in the end he seems still to be saying that he has discovered another sales pitch that will perhaps work. If that is so, he is wasting his time except that others like himself may feel comfort for a while. His whole problem boils down to that of being needed in the world even when he begins to admit he may be not needed.

  Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case–takes this up a bit savagely and very well. The complete burning out of Christianity in the official, clerical sense, is the subject of the book. Not a great book, but still timely, urgent, convincing. Greene knows what he is saying. Burning out of the appetites of the bourgeois world, sexual, cultural, religious: the appetite for life: Pfft! (On the back of the paperback, the usual inane comments, about that same mythical “other” book which is the one the salesmen sell, not the one the author wrote. He was famous! She was lovely! Ra ta ta ta TA TA!!)

  Finished first reading of the Navigatio Brendani this morning. Interesting monastic vocabulary. The geography–a liturgical mandala? I have to check back on the significance of directions. North is liturgical hell here too, and the Promised Land is West (except that in reference to the Paradise of the Birds it is east (liturgical)). Two traditions perhaps.