Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  Galley proofs of the little Gandhi book for New Directions came and I finished them in a couple of hours. They were pretty clean. It was nice reading them in the fairly warm sun. A good letter from Morcelliana12–a small book of bits and pieces will be called Fede e Violenza–and an architect in Madrid who will use two essays on art from Disputed Questions, etc., etc. Drawings from Lax. And a couple of the usual letters from crazy people. It is good to be part of all that too! Alas! Vanity. But that is the thing about solitude. To realize how desperately we depend on the “existence” that recognition gives us, and how hopeless we are without it until God gives us feet to stand alone on. I have those feet sometimes, but once again, let me realize that there is no absolute “standing alone”–only awful poverty and insecurity and clinging to God in one’s need of others, and greater appreciation of the smallest and most insignificant of communal verities!!

  (Afternoon) Landscape of stylites! REA men all over the hillside, one on top of each pole, brand new copper wire swinging and shining, yellow hats all over the place. The light is coming. Venit lumen tuum Jerusalem! [Your light comes, Jerusalem! ] (This at 1:30 p.m.) They came in the morning and the first pole was already up by 9.1 hope it may be finished by tonight. I was talking to some of them, and they are real nice guys. Open and friendly and without guile.

  A moving letter from a woman in Texas, Mrs. [Elizabeth Land] Kaderli–who had written here and whom I had answered in 1962. (I remember being touched by her letter, which was about the fact of death, her daughter’s awakening to that fact.) Now it turns out she also wrote to Mark Van Doren, Katherine Ann Porter, Aldous Huxley, Leonard Bernstein and a lot of people like that (Graham Greene too) and got good letters from all of them. Now the letters are to be in a book. Curious thing! At first sight one might think it was a trick, but it is so typical of the time and place–this country now–! That it turns out to have been a charismatic act and probably quite fruitful.

  A nice little card came from Hiromu Morishita, the poet, in Hiroshima (who was here with the group last summer).

  Evening. About 2:45 the red-faced foreman (a very good simple man) came and set up the meter, and I put on the switch and had light. I was in the middle of translating some Pessoa poems for Suzuki in return for his calligraphy. The light is a great blessing. I thought I would dislike the fluorescents in the front room but actually they are perfect and fit in with the milieu. There are enough shadows in the corners, and the stone fireplace shows up well and the concrete blocks too–there is enough roughness so that it looks like anything but a factory, thank God. In fact the modulation provided by the latticework blocks is really impressive! And the New Mexican mask at the end of the lattices–Suzuki’s black ink shows up wonderfully–better than by daylight. The ikons look presentable–(much better in ordinary daylight when the light is outside and they are in the shade of the room).

  I celebrated the great event with a good supper of potato soup, cooked on the old beat-up electric stove which nevertheless works well. So it is an evening of alleluia.

  February 17, 1965

  Early morning. The light is a great help, a simplifier. Makes prayer simpler. No fussing with matches, candles, flashlights. The electric heater is sufficient for a morning that is not freezing, and there is no distraction of logs and pokers. Also the fact that the light comes from other people, a collectivity, a rural cooperative–“Salt River RECC”–this is to me a significant and consoling thing. I am united by it to the people of the countryside who share the same source of light as I. (Incidentally not the monastery, which is on K.U.–I am with the poor farmers on REA!)

  Reading the remarkable notes of (Abbé Saintanlieu) in La Vie spirituelle of 1952 on solitude. One thing I know now that I could not realize then: it is not enough to be a part-time hermit living mostly in community. “Quand il faut composer entre les deux esprits, on partage ses forces entre deux tiédeurs.” [“When one has to compromise between the two spirits, one divides one’s forces between two mediocrities.”] Perfectly true! I must keep working toward the day of genuine solitude, perhaps even without conventual Mass. (But I think that it makes sense to take dinner down there to avoid the fuss of cooking.) As long as I have the novices I am tied, however. And (as Father Flavian my confessor says) it remains a duty of charity to be present with the community for some things.

  After dinner Brother Timothy (the undermaster) said there had been news of an attempt on Pope Paul’s life by a bomb in his Vatican apartments.13 The bomb was nowhere near the Pope! No one apparently was hurt. One wonders who was behind this. Poor Pope Paul VI! I do not envy his job. He has tried to do well in a diplomatic way, and his sincerity and friendliness, his desire to be open, certainly make him a good Pope. I would be very sorry to see anything happen to him!

  One of the things I liked about the REA foreman yesterday was that after asking whether I saw any deer around, he said “I don’t think I could ever kill a deer.” And he seemed to think deer came around here “because they know they would be safe.” That was nice! But I told him I had to chase hunters out of here all the time even though it is supposed to be a wild-life refuge.

  Translated some more Pessoa today.

  February 24, 1965

  I have to go in to Dr. Scheen again today. The skin of my hands erupted again, leafed and cracked, deep holes in the skin are quite painful. It interferes with work. Even tying shoes is painful. Wore gloves to make my bed. Mess!

  Brother Joachim was up yesterday to put some finishing touches on his electrical work, and Brother Clement bought me a big glossy refrigerator which came Saturday–or was installed here that day. It immediately became a big distraction and in many ways I wish I did not have to have it, but in summer it will be necessary. The first couple of nights I was annoyed by the noise it makes when it wakes up to cool itself, and each time it did this I woke up too, but I set myself to learn sleeping again and by the grace of God it worked. And I might as well forget about being guilty. The thing is splendid. But–local farmers have such, and they have TV too. Really I am glad of the lights, even the fluorescent.

  Everything about this hermitage simply fills me with joy. There are lots of things that could have been far more perfect one way or the other–ascetically, or “domestically.” But it is the place God has given me after so much prayer and longing–but without my deserving it–and it is a delight. I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for my death and my exodus to the heavenly country, to love my brothers and all people, and to pray for the whole world and for peace and good sense among men. So it is “my place” in the scheme of things, and that is sufficient!

  Reading some studies on St. Leonard of Port Maurice and his Retiro [retirement house] and hermitage of the Incontro. How clearly Vatican II has brought into question all the attitudes he and his companions took completely for granted: the dramatic barefoot procession from Florence to the Incontro in the snow–the daily half-hour discipline in common–etc. This used to be admired, if prudently avoided, by all in the Church. This was “the real thing” even if one could not do it. Now we have come to be openly doubtful of the intrinsic value of such things. The sincerity was there, and it meant something to them. Depth psychology, etc. have made these things forever questionable–they belong to another age. And yet there has to be hardness and rigor in the solitary life. The hardness is there by itself. The cold, the solitude, the labor, the need for poverty to keep everything simple and manageable, the need for the discipline of long meditation in silence. But not drama, not collective exercises of self-chastisement, into which there can come so much that is spurious and questionable.

  I also question Pessoa. He has some good intuitions, but lacks real depth and his pretenses are also quite dubious. Yet what is valuable is beyond question–the Zen-like view of things–his phenomenolog
y.

  Yesterday had a session with Brother Ephrem and Brother Pius about the photo book14 we are supposed to do. Went over contact sheets, and there is much good stuff!

  (Evening.) It has been a strange day. I end it writing with dermal gloves as the rain pelts down on the cottage. I was supposed to go to town with Bernard Fox but he had left when I arrived at the Gatehouse at 8:03. As a result, while I was waiting for another ride, the Brothers in the store were making signs: “Good thing that fellow that wanted to kill you has gone away!” Apparently some nut in the Guesthouse (from New York) was breathing fire and brimstone on my account. In the mail too there are some letters from fanatics–varying degrees.

  Then I rode in with Bobby Gill who is afraid to drive in city traffic and who in fact had never driven in Louisville before. He got me to the Medical Arts building all right and slept peacefully in the parking lot while I was in Dr. Scheen’s office. Read a “Party of One” in Holiday by Kingsley Ames, on Science Fiction. Dr. Scheen simply does not know what is causing this dermatitis. He took bits of skin for lab tests. I wear dermal gloves. My hands hurt. Riding back (about 12) we made good time. If I had been with Bernard and the others it would have meant lunch in Louisville. As it was Bobby Gill wanted only the sandwiches he had left on his job with Brother Christopher. I got some food at Kroger’s in Bardstown, and ate lunch at the hermitage.

  Had a couple of direction sessions in the novitiate. Went to infirm[ary] kitchen to stock up on sugar. Over the public address from Chapter–reproof of hermit life in a Benedictine’s book. Father Amandus was standing there, told me Brother Gerard had been anointed at 6 p.m., and was very low.

  Coming up in the rain, thought peacefully of death and accepted the fact that very possibly some madman will come up there one night and do me in. And if that is the way it is to be I am glad to accept it from God’s hand if He will give me the grace to die in a manner pleasing to him.

  Bobby Gill is now living at the entrance to the back road that leads to Edelin’s place (Bell Hollow is its proper name. Keith Hollow branches north east from it). So that if I go to live in Bell Hollow, Bobby Gill will probably be my contact man with the monastery.

  In the papers–much acrimony over Viet Nam: rightists clamoring for war. Others for negotiations. Malcolm X, the Negro racist, has been murdered (I am sorry because now there is bitter fighting between two Muslim factions).

  February 26, 1965

  I see more and more that solitude is not something to play with. It is deadly serious. And much as I have wanted it, I have not been serious enough. It is not enough to “like solitude,” or love it even. Even if you “like” it, it can wreck you, I believe, if you desire it only for your own sake. So I go forward (I don’t believe I would go back. Even interiorly I have reached at least relatively a point of no return), but I go in fear and trembling, and often with a sense of lostness, and trying to be careful what I do because I am beginning to see that every false step is paid for dearly. Hence I fall back on prayer, or try to. Yet no matter, there is great beauty and peace in this life of silence and emptiness. But to fool around with it brings awful desolation. When one is trifling, even the beauty of the life suddenly becomes implacable. Solitude is a stern mother who brooks no nonsense. The question arises: am I so full of nonsense that she will cast me out? I pray not, and think it is going to take much prayer.

  I must admit that I like my own cooking. Rice and Pinto beans today, for instance, with applesauce from the monastery and some peanuts. A nice meal! Read an excellent Pendle Hill pamphlet Douglas Steere sent, by Edward Brooke. Three letters on the situation in South Africa. They are “hopeful” in a Christian sense. But I wonder if that hope will, in fact, be realized in history. Certainly it is important to understand South Africa if we want to get a real perspective on our own South.

  February 27, 1965

  Certainly the solitary life makes sense only when it is centered on one thing: The perfect love of God. Without this, everything is triviality. Love of God in Himself, for Himself, sought only in His will, in total surrender. Anything but this, in solitude, is nausea and absurdity. But outside of solitude, one can be occupied in many things that seem to have and do have a meaning of their own. And their meaning can be and is accepted, at least provisionally, as something that must be reckoned with until such time as one can come to love God alone perfectly, etc. This is all right in a way, except that while doing things theoretically “for the love of God” one falls in practice into complete forgetfulness and ignorance and torpor. This happens in solitude too, of course, but in solitude, while distraction is evidently vain, forgetfulness brings nausea. But in society, forgetfulness brings comfort of a kind.

  It is therefore a great thing to be completely vulnerable and to feel at once, with every weakening of faith, a total loss. Things that in community are legitimate concerns are seen in solitude to be also temptations, tests, questionings: for instance the skin trouble on my hands.

  March 2, 1965. Shrove Tuesday

  Light rain. Forty hours. Pleasant vigil last night with the novices in Church. But it took a long time for the place to calm down. Sacristan running around until 7:30.

  I am reading a good biography of Simone Weil, which I have to review for Peace News.15 I am finally getting to know her, and have a great sympathy for her, though I cannot agree with a lot of her attitudes and ideas. Basically–I wonder what disturbs me about her. Something does. In her experience of Christ, for example. “Gnostic” rather than “mystical.” But one had to admit, she seems to have seen this herself and she did not cling to it. “The attic” was a place she had to leave behind. Her mystique of action and “the world” is her true climate now familiar-and I think more authentic (though the other was not inauthentic). For a time I think Catholics were running to Simone Weil to learn this but now they have forgotten her and Teilhard de Chardin is the prophet of this cosmic Christianity (and yet what about St. Francis?).

  Yet one thing the hermitage is making me see–that the universe is my home and I am nothing if not part of it. Destruction of the self that seems to stand outside the universe only as part of its fabric and dynamism. Can I find true being in God, who has willed me to exist in the world. This I discover here not mentally only but in depth. Especially for example in the ability to sleep. Frogs kept me awake at the monastery, not here–they are comfort, an extension of my own being–and now also the hum of the electric meter near my bed is nothing (though at the monastery it would have been intolerable). Acceptance of nature and even technology as my true habitat.

  March 3, 1965. Ash Wednesday

  Though I am uncomfortable with Simone Weil’s imaginative descriptions of her experience of Christ I think her mysticism is basically authentic. Though I cannot accept her dogmatic ambiguities, I think her reasons (personal reasons) for not joining the Church are sincere, profound, and also challenging. Furthermore I can also see that they might be “from God” and therefore have a special reference to the Church (an accusation if you will). What does impress me in her is her malheureux [ill-temper] of the unbeliever, the realization that God’s love must break the human heart, and this, finally: “Blessed are they who suffer in the flesh the suffering of the world itself in their epoch. They have the possibility and function of knowing its truth, contemplating in its reality the suffering of the world…. But unfortunate are they who, having this function, do not fulfill it” (Cabaud, p. 251, Letter to Bousquet). “We have to discard the illusion of being in possession of time.” Simone Weil–this implies consenting to be “human material” moulded by time, under eye of God.

  March 4, 1965

  I must admit that I am fascinated by a great deal of Simone Weil, but the thing is that she must be taken as a whole and in her context. Individual and independent as she was, the whole meaning of her thought is to be found not by isolating it but by situating it in her dialogue with her contemporaries. The way to dispose of her uncomfortable intuitions is to set her apart and look at her
as if she were a totally isolated phenomenon. Her non-conformism and mysticism are on the contrary an essential element in our time and without her contribution we remain not human. Especial importance for instance of her critique of shallow personalism. Her remarks (prophetic) on the Americanization of Europe after the war deadening the “Oriental roots” of contact with East in Europe–of America being purely non-Oriental (and rootless). World threatened with rootlessness through Americanization. This is a thought! Symbolism of the Viet Nam conflict, the burning Buddhists! South America (this is my addition) is more “Oriental” as well as more European than North America and is perhaps the hope of the world (bridge). Remedy–she thought France should substitute cultural exchange for colonial domination. Exposure of America to shock of misfortune may make them see need for roots, she says. No sign of it so far.

  (Evening.) Lots of wet snow. Had to spend the whole day in the monastery, as I had a conference, direction, etc. and then in the afternoon a long meeting of the Building Committee (from which I wish I could decently resign) about the project for the new Church. Came briefly up to the hermitage after dinner to sweep, get the water bottle to fill, and also read a few pages of a new book, Nishida Kitaro’s Study of the Good which Suzuki sent and which is just what I am looking for at the moment. Magnificent! But the rest of the day was dreary enough–a test of patience and resignation, and really I don’t care too much. But it was wonderful to get back to the hermitage and silence, and see the trees full of snow outside the bedroom window.

  This morning I said a Requiem Mass for Simone Weil, and also spoke of her in the conference to the novices and juniors ([George] Herbert’s poem on love, etc.). Holiday paid a thousand dollars for “Rain and the Rhinoceros” which they have changed into “The Art of Solitude” (only in proof, however). But otherwise no editing except my own. Though maybe they edited out the SAC plane. I must look again when it comes. Galleys were here a few days ago.