Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  Maybe. But it seems to me that the Gospel says this and that the Gospel remains necessary if men are to attain this freedom rightly and not fall into the fanaticism and arbitrariness rooted in despair. In any case Jaspers certainly shows the difference between the popular residue of Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity and its really profound implications–and ends with Nietzsche’s curse on his own admirers: “To this mankind of today I will not be light, nor be called light! Those I will blind!!” (p. 102).

  Thank God that after interminable NCWC reports of this or that speech we are finally back to Meriol Trevor’s biography of Newman in the refectory. I have missed it for three months!

  January 11, 1965

  I spoke too soon. The NCWC reports started again yesterday (Sunday).

  A little Nietzsche is stimulating, but what I like is to read Isaac of Nineveh in the hermitage or Zen Masters in the fields. I like to say Lauds of the Little Office of Our Lady coming down through the woods by starlight, with everything there: starlight, frost and cold, ice and snow, trees, earth, hills, and cozy in the lighted monastery, the sons of men.

  January 17, 1965

  It is the Feast of St. Anthony, but because of Sunday (Second after Epiphany) there is nothing in the Office.

  Brilliant night, deep snow, sparkling in the moon. Difficult to get this ballpoint to write. A good fire keeps the front room of the hermitage warm and I think it will be wonderful walking down to the monastery in an hour or so. The snow began in the early morning yesterday and by the time I started down to the monastery it was blowing in my eyes so that I had to keep them half closed. It blew and snowed all day.

  In the monastery after dinner I played Brother Antoninus’ record “The Tongs of Jeopardy” to the novices and some of the juniors. It is remarkably good–meditation on the Kennedy assassination. He was talking about his ideas on this when he was here and I was very struck by them then. They cannot be summed up simply as “Jungian.” A remarkable and sensitive poetic insight into the state of the American mind–better than anything else I know (for instance how much deeper say than Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd which I have just recently read). More than Jungian, the “Tongs” meditation is deeply Buddhist, and the Cain idea, the drive to fratricide as the great weakness in the American psyche, is most impressive and I think accurate. Illtud Evans is coming to preach the retreat and I will talk to him about it. Am tempted to review it for Blackfriars.

  Stunning how the Kennedy assassination moved people rightly or wrongly, sanely or otherwise. One of our Brothers did a drawing (nothing to do with the record) of a crucifixion: on the cross was Jacqueline Kennedy (!!). A failure of taste and full of curious implications: a concept that to me is unintelligible. She of course was central in the whole thing. Brother Antoninus had little to say of her in “Tongs.” Perhaps the Irish keening at the end was meant to carry what could not be articulated. My feeling was that the relationship to her in which we all ended up was the most significant thing of all. As if she had redeemed us from all the evil. (Of course I suppose that was the idea of the Brother who did the drawing.) She was a presence of love and nobility and truth who chose to be as she was and to forgive inexplicably, and to be loved and admired. It was she, actually, who did the greatest thing of all, and the noblest thing, disinterestedly and without strings (Brother Antoninus contrasted the funeral rites with the mendacity of conventions, etc.) and gave America a sense of being true which we rarely get in public life.

  When I step out on the porch the bristles in my nose instantly freeze up, and the outdoor jakes is a grievous shock. The temperature must be zero or below. Inside the house the thermometer by the door says 45 but it is unreliable. I am warm by the fire–but have plenty of clothes on! But the whole valley is bright with moonlight and snow–and perfectly silent.

  Last week I wrote the preface for Phil Berrigan’s book [No More Strangers, 1965] in which there are many fine ideas and some bad writing.

  January 19, 1965

  Very cold again. Snow still fairly deep, but a bright day. Father Illtud Evans began our retreat last night. Sister Luke came over with him from Loretto yesterday. She is now on a sub-committee working on Schema 13 for the Council–one of the first women to be in such a position–and she wanted to talk about it, I mean the work of the committee, and the Schema. So I gave her what ideas I had. And I think that as long as they don’t take account of the real problems posed by technology, anything they say or do will be beside the point.

  January 20, 1965

  “Verumtamen audito Deo Pater, nullus tam auditus sit filius et non festinat ad verigenitoris amplexus” [“Truly having heard God the Father, there is no one who having heard the Son who does not hasten to accept the Son’s source.”], says Venantius Fortunatus in his commentary on the Pater which I came upon by accident this morning (in [Migne’s] Patrologia Latina 88, looking for the “Irish” rule for nuns which is curious).

  January 21, 1965

  Another good day in Edelin’s valley. Snow, sun, peace; this was yesterday. I explored a little more, climbed back up the gullies to the spring and came down again by the logging trail. All was undisturbed snow except for the tracks of dogs and rabbits, though at the top of the ridge, on the old wagon road to Howardstown, were the steps of a man who had been there probably the day before.

  Reverend Father came out there with Brother Nicholas and I ran into him–which I did not particularly want to do. The talk got around to electric fences, boundary lines, snakes, etc. He is very interested in the place, and especially in acquiring the place. He is full of ideas and deals, and Edelin is dealing with somebody whose name sounds like Cruise, and getting ready to trade something for something else. The big trees have been cut off “Cruise’s” land and the tops are lying around all over the place. Cruise, it is said, buys only in order to sell. And so on. “Cruise” owns the valley where the ruined barn is and this is right next to Edelin’s so that if we wanted to be fully protected we would have to have it. Besides his valley would be good for hermitages. I saw it yesterday, and it goes back deep into the hills.

  But when I think of all the dealing and organizing and planning and so on, and the “institution” that might finally result, the whole thing gives me pause. Would I be a fool to go along with all this? Would it not be much wiser and simpler to stay where I am and make the best of it, for at the moment I am really on my own, and need to make no more plans, and am arousing no comment, and am dependent on no one. And the hermitage behind the sheep barn is a very decent and beautiful solitude. All this is something to think about.

  January 22, 1965

  Vintila Horia sent me his novel about Plato and I find it extraordinarily beautiful, a sustained tone of wisdom, with all kinds of modern undertones. Very “actual.” He says (Plato): “I saw the world rushing into stupidity with such natural self-assurance that it caused me to suffer keenly, as if I had been personally responsible for it, while the people around me saw the future as a new pleasure to be expected from a certain joy: as if by being born into the world they acquired a right to this.” (p. 101)

  Meanwhile an ex-novice (Brother Alcuin Grimes) sent a copy of the Kiplinger Newsletter, which wound up 1964 with the gift of prophecy–peering into the glad future of 1980. Millions more people but no nuclear war, no world war, but more, more, more of everything-more super highways, cities rebuilt, more suburbs, more money (ignores the question whether all these “more people” will have more jobs), more recreation, more fun, more college, and even, with all the money around, a boom in art, music and literature!! I just can’t wait to be sixty-five (still not fully able to believe I will make it to fifty, in nine days’ time!). Will I see this glorious future, in which he does hint at the possibility of “problems”?

  What total lack of imagination–the prophecy is unimaginative enough to be perhaps even true! But how intolerable. Nothing to look forward to but more of the same inanities, falsities, clichés, pretenses. But there will surely be more frustrati
on, therefore more madness, violence, degeneracy, addiction. The country will be one vast asylum. I have higher hopes. I dare to hope for change, not only quantitative, but even qualitative too. But through darkness and crisis. Perhaps I say that out of custom.

  January 25, 1965

  St. Paul’s day, and nearly the end of the retreat. I have been making a good one, I think. An element of emptiness and anguish from the concentration of it, but not much. Actually I feel more sure than I ever have in my life that I am obeying the Lord and am on the way He wills for me, though at the same time I am struck and appalled (more than ever!) by the shoddiness, the laziness of my response. I am just beginning to awaken and to realize how much more awakening is to come. And how much to be faced. How much I must admit and renounce ambition and agitated self-seeking in my work and contacts (I am so tied up in all this that I don’t know where to start getting free!). But God will take care of me, for in my confusion and helplessness I nevertheless feel (believe in) His closeness and strength. I don’t have to know and see how it will all come out.

  My intention is, in fact, simply to “die” to the past somehow. To take my fiftieth birthday as a turning point, and to live more abandoned to God’s will, less concerned with projects and initiatives (which have, however, perhaps also been His will). More detached from work and events, more solitary. To be one of those who entirely practice contemplation simply in order to follow Christ. And who am I anyway?

  Illtud Evans has been preaching a good retreat. We had a couple of walks and long conversations together on grey, windy afternoons, about Cambridge, and Blackfriars, and the new colleges, and the Hebrides (on Rum now they allow no one to live except those protecting the wildlife and trying to restore the original ecology. This is wonderful!). And California. (He is not impressed with Ed Keating or even with Antoninus!) And the Times Literary Supplement, etc., etc. He says the manager of the Beatles said on a TV program that he had read Elected Silence five times, that it was one of his favorite books. He described it as “a novel about Roman Catholicism.”

  January 27, 1965

  The retreat ended yesterday, Father Illtud tired, with a cold. John Howard Griffin came (because of Illtud) and I saw him briefly. He spoke of a bombing in Youngstown, Ohio (house of some Negroes who moved into a white neighborhood). So now it all moves North. He said my stuff on the race issue was by no means too pessimistic (some reviewers are indignantly stating that it is).

  There was a concelebrated Mass (the first here) (after some difficulties with the Bishop–not exactly obstruction, but meticulous observation). It was solemn and impressive and I think a very great grace for the community and a fine ending for the retreat. I was not one of the concelebrants as I preferred to watch it, this time, and also wanted to be sure not to exclude someone else who is more keen on Liturgy than I am. I am near the top of the list, so I might exclude one of the Junior priests if I signed up for it. Actually, only three priests senior to me got in it, Fathers Joseph, Raymond and Amandus. But it was a great festival, but over long due to great slowness and delay, for instance purifying patens, chalices, etc. at the end. The Communion of the concelebrants went extremely slowly. Still, it was impressive.

  After the Mass I came out into a high wind and a strange massive fog, a dust storm from somewhere. The infirm[ary] refectory was full of dust at dinner. A swinging window was smashed and fell in the elevator shaft (put in where there are still windows). The fire alarm went off, and everything was in confusion. And I was buried under the avalanche of mail they had obligingly saved up over the retreat.

  Best thing in the mail: two books from Nicanor Parra. I would love to translate some of it. Maybe a book of translations from Parra and Pessoa, and call it “Two Antipoets.” Maybe write Laughlin about this! And not to neglect Chuang Tzu either.

  January 30, 1965

  A cold night. Woke up to find the night filled with the depth and silence of snow. Stayed up here for supper last night, but having cooked soup and cut up a pear and a banana for dessert, and made toast, finally came to the conclusion that it was all much too elaborate. If there were no better reason for fasting, the mere fact of saving time would be a good enough reason. For the bowl and saucepan have to be washed, and I have only a bucket of rainwater for washing, etc., etc. Taking only coffee for breakfast makes a lot of sense, because I can read quietly and sip my two mugs of coffee at leisure, and it really suffices for the morning.

  There is a great need for discipline in meditation. Reading helps. The early morning hours are good, though in the morning meditation (one hour) I am easily distracted by the fire. An hour is not much, but I can be more meditative in the hour of reading which follows (and which goes much too fast). (This can be two hours if I go down later to the monastery, which on some days I do.) The presence of Our Lady is important to me. Elusive but I think a reality in this hermitage. Here, though I do not agree with the medieval idea of Mediatrix apud Mediatorem [the Mediatrix with the Mediator] (without prejudice to her motherhood which is a much better statement and truth). Her influence is a demand of love, and no amount of talking will explain it. I need her and she is there. I should perhaps think of it more explicitly more often.

  In the afternoon, work takes up so much time, and there can be so much. Just keeping the place clean is already a big task. Then there is wood to be chopped, etc. The fire is voracious–but pleasant company.

  Sent off to Holiday a revised version of “Rain and Rhinoceros” which is also being censored. Telegram (yesterday) from New Orleans that the drawings had not arrived. (Frame House however said they had sent some by Air Express. Catherine Spalding College is supposed to have sent the others ten days ago.)

  Vigil of my fiftieth birthday. A bright, snowy afternoon, delicate blue clouds of snow blowing down off the frozen trees. Forcibly restrained myself from much work around the hermitage, made sure of my hour’s meditation and will do more later. How badly I need it. I realize how great is the tempo and pressure of work I have been in down in the community–with many irons in the fire. True I have there gained the knack of dropping everything and completely relaxing my attention and forgetting the work of going out and looking at the hills. Good the novitiate work is not exceedingly absorbing. (Biggest trouble now is letter writing.)

  More then of my vigil: Shall I look at the past as if it were something to analyze and think about? Rather I thank God for the present, not for myself in the present but for the present which is His and in Him. The past: I am inarticulate about it now. I remember irrelevant moments of embarrassment, and my joys are seen to have been largely meaningless. Yet as I sit here in this wintry and lonely and quiet place I suppose I am the same person as the eighteen year old riding back alone into Bournemouth on a bus out of the New Forest, where I had camped a couple of days and nights. I suppose I regret most my lack of love, my selfishness and glibness (covering a deep shyness and need of love) with girls who, after all, did love me I think, for a time. My great fault was my inability really to believe it, and my efforts to get complete assurance and perfect fulfillment.

  So one thing on my mind is sex, as something I did not use maturely and well, something I gave up without having come to terms with it. That is hardly worth thinking about now–twenty-five years nearly since my last adultery, in the blinding, demoralizing summer heat of Virginia. And that heat, that confusion and moral helplessness of those summer days made me know what is in the weather of the south: what madness and what futility. I remember walking on the beach with her the next day and not wanting to talk to her, talking only with difficulty, and not wanting to share ideas, or things I really loved. Yet being attacked with something in my solar plexus.

  I suppose I am the person that lived for a while at 71 Bridge Street, Cambridge, had Sabberton for my tailor (he made me that strange Alphonse Daudet coat, and the tails I wore perhaps twice–once to the boat race ball where I was very selfish and unkind to Joan). And Clare was my College, and I was a damned fool, sitting on the ste
ps of the boat house late at night with Sylvia, when the two fairies came down expecting to get in the boat house, saw us there, turned and hurried away…. All things like that. Adventures.

  What I find most in my whole life is illusion. Wanting to be something of which I had formed a concept. I hope I will get free of that now, because that is going to be the struggle. And yet I have to be something that I ought to be–I have to meet a certain demand for order and inner light and tranquillity. God’s demand, that is, that I remove obstacles to His giving me these.

  Snow, silence, the talking fire, the watch on the table. Sorrow. What would be the use of going into all this? I will get cleaned up (my hands are dirty). I will say the psalms of my birthday.

  “Quoniam tu es, qui extraxisti me de ventre: spes mea ab uberibus matris meae. In te projectus sum ex utero: de ventre matris meae Deus meus es tu. Ne discesseris a me.” [“Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Do not be not far from me.”]

  (Psalm 21 [22]: 9–11)

  No matter what mistakes and illusions have marked my life, most of it I think has been happiness and, as far as I can tell, truth. There were whole seasons of insincerity, largely when I was under twenty-one, and followed friends who were not my own kind. But after my senior year at Columbia things got straight. I can remember many happy and illumined days and whole blocks of time. There were a few nightmare times in childhood. But at Saint Antonin life was a revelation. Then again at so many various times and places, in Sussex (at Rye and in the country), at Oakham, at Strasbourg, at Rome above all, in New York, especially upstate Olean and St. Bona’s [Bonaventure University]. I remember one wonderful winter morning arriving at Olean to spend Christmas with Lax. Arrivals and departures on the Erie were generally great. The cottage on the hill, too–then Cuba: wonderful days there. All this I have said before and the whole world knows it.