Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  We have to see history as a book that is sealed and opened by the Passion of Christ. But we still read it from the viewpoint of the Beast. Passion of Christ = passion of the poor, the underprivileged, etc. Viewpoint of the Beast: self-righteousness and cruelty of power. Hubris of human might and technological efficiency. But the same cruelty is bred by this hubris in the weak who grow strong by resisting and overcoming it–to be proud in their turn. Christ remains in agony until the end of time, and in His agony triumphs over all power.

  May 23, 1965. Fifth Sunday after Easter

  One lovely dawn after another. Such peace! Meditation with fireflies, mist in the valley, last quarter of the moon, distant owls–gradual inner awakening and centering in peace and harmony of love and gratitude. Yesterday I wrote to the man at McGill [University] who thought all contemplation was a manifestation of narcissistic regression! That is just what it is not. A complete awakening of identity and of rapport! It implies an awareness and acceptance of one’s place in the whole, first the whole of creation, then the whole plan of Redemption–to find oneself in the great mystery of fulfillment which is the Mystery of Christ. Consonantia [harmony] and not confusio [confusion].

  May 25, 1965

  Whole day at the hermitage. I have come to see that only these days in solitude are really full and “whole” for me. The others are partly wasted. And yet I have “done” almost nothing, though it is true I worked an hour in the morning and another hour in the late afternoon on Book 23 of Chuang Tzu, one of the very best, and most rewarding. So I got some good material for my own Chuang Tzu book.2 Also I went out in the afternoon and burnt a couple of brush piles and cut down a few wild grape vines and some brush in the woods, actually accomplished very little but got very hot and tired doing it. I will need to keep this work up, at least moderately, to get back in shape for it. But I have been at it all spring two or three days a week. This is not enough, but there are other things to do!

  Was down in the monastery for my own Mass only, and came back up. Did not go to vote in the County elections. Why should I? I don’t know any of these people. And probably would be confirmed in my intention not to vote for them if I did! (Though really I like the county people in this county, and there is no more wonderful old farmer than Aidan Nally!)

  Jack Ford brought me a couple of loaves of pumpernickel from a Jewish delicatessen in Louisville Monday, and he also gave me some excellent tea, which I iced for myself at supper tonight. Twining’s Earl Grey. It was superb! And that was about all I had for supper with a can of mandarin oranges. Cool and pleasant. But it is still hot. The sky is cloudy. The birds still sing. Maybe there will be rain tonight.

  For Meditation–part of the morning on the Sapiential books (Vulgate) and in the evening some of the time I spend on the Apocalypse in Greek. Have a good little book on Camus for light reading, finished Volume I of De Lubac’s Exégèse médiévale (and enjoyed it immensely). Still haven’t finished Tertullian on the Resurrection.

  Tomorrow, Vigil of the Ascension and sixteenth anniversary of my ordination. At Mass I shall pray especially for the Buddhist, Vo Tanh Minh, who has been fasting since March in Brooklyn in protest against the fighting in Viet Nam: He will probably die, as there is little likelihood of a cease fire. His calm and peace are completely admirable.

  May 28, 1965

  A cool and lovely morning, clear sky, everchanging freshness of woods and valley! One has to be in the same place everyday, watch the dawn from the same house, hear the same birds wake each morning to realize how inexhaustibly rich and different is “sameness.” This is the blessing of stability, and I think it is not evident until you enjoy it alone in a hermitage. The common life distracts you from life in its fullness. But one must be able to share this fullness, and I am not for a complete and absolute solitude without communication (except temporarily).

  Yesterday, Ascension, was also St. Bede’s day (he died on Ascension Day, 735). He is one of the saints I most love, and the simple story of his life and death fill me with love and joy. The afternoon was peaceful and marvelous–a nice walk and meditation at St. Malachy’s field, then came back and gave a conference on Philoxenus. The simplicity and innocence of the monks is a real joy, a shining joy, so evident one does not notice it. Yet I must say that the concelebration in the morning did nothing to express the reality of love and oneness in Christ that is actually here. The singing was timid and depressing, and I must say that we are not anywhere near properly realizing and manifesting what it is all about.

  May 30, 1965. Sunday within Octave of Ascension

  Wonderful days. Bright cool weather. Clear skies and green hills, and I have this Sunday’s Mass. Today I have finished Chuang Tzu “poems” (if one can call them that). More exactly, finished them yesterday afternoon and went over them all around dawn. I was exhilarated by the effect of all of them. They make a good group, and I never would have thought it possible for the result to be so (relatively) satisfactory. I am glad John Wu kept insisting that I do it. It has taken time, but most of the time was spent in getting to do it. At first I was very slow and hesitant, and progress was painful, but lately it has been fun.

  Also the flycatchers, tamer and tamer, play about on the chairs and baskets on my porch, right in front of this window, and they are enthralling. Wrens come too, less frequently.

  Father Felix gave a good talk on Cassian in chapter. And I spent a couple of hours in the morning with Father Robert McDole, who came up from Oklahoma: sorrows of a priest in civil rights and peace movement. Not easy! From what he says, I am quite right in thinking our military are looking for a pretext, any pretext, to smash China with bombs. This is atrocious as well as stupid, but I do think that in spite of all protests it has a good chance of happening. If it does, there will be great trouble for this country. Not that China could hit us back–and Russia would not–but there will be revolution all over the world, and perhaps even here. In any case much turmoil and chaos. The whole thing leaves me sick, mostly the unfairness and crass stupidity of it, and the needless, brutal violence that in the end will bring down certain punishment on its perpetrators.

  My stomach is still upset–it has not been the same since the intestinal flu I had in April. Next Friday I have to go to Lexington for ex-rays, etc.

  They continue the Trevor life of Newman in refectory and I do not get tired of it. My admiration for the man grows constantly, the more I know of the details of his life and all the nonsense he had to suffer from almost everyone. And with what good sense and patience, after all!

  June 3, 1965

  Finished the introduction to Chuang Tzu this afternoon. It is hot and misty, there is thunder in the distance. A cardinal sings loud in the quiet of evening.

  Dan Berrigan was here Monday with Jim Douglass and Bob McDole. We talked a bit about Schema 13 and the alterations that have been made in the article on war. It really seems that they want to approve the bomb after all. In a way it is funny, though I should not say that! But behind it all I wonder if there is not an apocalyptic irony. But we must do what we can to prevent a disgrace and scandal of such magnitude.

  June 6, 1965. Pentecost

  On Friday I went to Lexington for some examinations at the clinic (Dr. Fortune) and was supposed to return that afternoon but stayed overnight in the hospital for more tests yesterday morning. What with enemas, proctoscopes, barium enemas, etc. I had a miserable time. When I began these examinations ten or fifteen years ago they were unpleasant but bearable. Since then, my insides have become so sensitive that they are a real torment. However, there is no cancer, there are no ulcers, just a great deal of inflammation and sensitivity, etc. The results of all the tests are not yet in. However, on Friday I had lunch with the Hammers, and borrowed from them the Tao of Painting [by Mai Mai Sze, 1963] to take to the hospital. I had some very enjoyable moments reading it. A very exciting first chapter. Also read [Samuel Nathaniel] Behrman’s life of “Duveen” which is very funny [A Biography of Joseph Duveen, Baron Duveen, 1
869–1939, 1952].

  Apart from that–the usual hospital images and confusion. I am glad I got out so soon. In the clinic I seemed to be able to get hold of nothing but Life to read and it was full of helicopters in Viet Nam, white mercenaries in the Congo, Marines in Santo Domingo. The whole picture is one of an enormously equipped and self-complacent white civilization in combat with a huge, sprawling, colored and mestizo world (a majority!) armed with anything they can lay hands on. And the implicit assumption behind it all, as far as Life and apparently everyone else is concerned, is that “we” are the injured ones, we are trying to keep peace and order, and “they” (abetted by communist demons) are simply causing confusion and chaos, with no reasonable motives whatever. Hence “we,” being attacked (God and justice are also attacked in us), have to defend ourselves, God, justice, etc. Dealing with these “inferior” people becomes a technical problem something like pest-extermination. In a word, the psychology of the Alabama police becomes in fact the psychology of America as world policeman. In one word–there is a world revolution going on, in which now whole nations (a minority of nations) are “the rich” and the “aristocrats,” and all the rest are “the poor.” Russia is in a very ambiguous position as a “rich” nation that still claims to be on the “poor” side but isn’t. America is oversimplifying all the questions–reducing them to terms which make sense to us only and to no one else, and expecting others to see things our way, since our way is by definition the only reasonable one. Hence the fatal breakdown of communication.

  Wives of astronauts talk by radio with their husbands in outer space; a priest of St. Meinrad’s in Peru can call Jim Wygal and talk to him on the phone he has in his car, while he is driving around Louisville. And what do they have to say? “Hi! It’s a nice day! Hope you are feeling good, I am feeling good, the kids are feeling good, the dog is feeling good, etc., etc.”

  Coming home-through Shakertown, Harrodsburg, Perryville and Lebanon. Beautiful June countryside–deep grass and hay, flowering weeds, tall cumulus clouds, corn a foot high and beautifully green tobacco struggling to begin. The old road between Perryville and Lebanon–winding between small farms and old barns, with wooded knobs nearby, is one I like. After Lebanon, thundershowers, heavy rain and black sky over the fields to the north, with much lightning. Country people in the streets of Lebanon (Saturday afternoon). It was a nice ride. Coming through Pleasant Hill without stopping, saw new aspects of the wonderful Shaker houses–inexhaustible variety and dignity in sameness.

  June 8, 1965. Whit Tuesday

  The great joy of the solitary life is not found simply in quiet, in the beauty and peace of nature, song of birds etc., nor in the peace of one’s own heart, but in the awakening and attuning of the heart to the voice of God–to the inexplicable, quite definite inner certitude of one’s call to obey Him, to hear Him, to worship Him here, now, today, in silence and alone, and that this is the whole reason for one’s existence, this makes one’s existence fruitful and gives fruitfulness to all one’s other (good) acts, and is the ransom and purification of one’s heart that has been dead in sin.

  It is not simply a question of “existing” alone, but of doing, with joy and understanding “the work of the cell” which is done in silence and not according to one’s own choice or the pressure of necessity but in obedience to God. But the voice of God is not “heard” at every moment, and part of the “work of the cell” is attention so that one may not miss any sound of that Voice. When we see how little we listen, and how stubborn and gross our hearts are, we realize how important the work is and how badly prepared we are to do it.

  June 11, 1965. Friday in Ember Week

  Tomorrow Fathers Timothy and Barnabas are to be ordained priests. I shall concelebrate with Timothy on Trinity Sunday (the most competent and reliable of all my undermasters). Already Reverend Father is sending them to Rome this year and getting them ready quickly for Norway. We are to vote on the Norway foundation this morning in chapter. There is a certain amount of misgivings in the community about it, naturally. It is a risk, and Dom James is so obviously enthused that he is pushing ahead fast with the delight of the operator who has got a good thing going. (It is a good thing in many ways–possible support in Norway from Bishop John [Gran] and his friends, etc., etc.). But more men are leaving here and we are short handed, few novices come, Spencer is going to have to close down at least one recent foundation (ought to close the one in Chile. I hope they don’t close Snowmass).

  I take delight in Mai Mai Sze’s Tao of Painting, a deep and contemplative book. I am reading it slowly with great profit. She is becoming (with Nora Chadwick, Eleanor Duckett) one of my secret loves. Nora Chadwick writes charming letters and Eleanor Duckett sent me a beautiful spontaneous note written in the Cambridge library on Ascension Day, with a splendid quote on the monastic life from a ninth-century text.

  Am discovering Ambrosian chant. Maybe the various lesson tones of the Ambrosian rite may turn out to be very great aids to lectio divina (e.g., marvelous proper tone for Genesis). I will try this. Noticed that after practicing the Genesis tone (itself quite oriental), I turned to read a bit of Youssef Yousnaya on Humility (Syrian–ninth century). It had extraordinary depth and resonance. Chanting gets those things from the head down to the heart and center. Makes one’s inmost center resound with the truth conveyed (not merely registering this in the reason).

  June 12, 1965. Ember Saturday

  Early mist. Trees of St. Ann’s wood barely visible across the valley. A flycatcher, on a fencepost, appears in momentary flight, describes a sudden, indecipherable ideogram against the void of mist, and vanishes. On both sides of the house, the gossip of tanagers. The tow lizards that operate on the porch scuttle away when I arrive on the porch, however quietly, from outside. But when I come from inside the house, even though I may move brusquely, they are not afraid and stay where they are. To be conscious of both extremes in my solitary life. Consolation and desolation; understanding, obscurity; obedience and protest; freedom and imprisonment.

  In one sense I am transcending the community, in another banned from it. In one sense I am “rewarded,” in another punished, kept under restraint. For instance, I cannot go to Asia, to seek at their sources some of the things I see to be so vitally important (all the discussions of expression and mystery in brushwork of Chinese calligraphy, painting, poetry, etc.). An “imprisonment” which I accept with total freedom (what I need could be brought to me here!) but nonetheless a confinement. A perfecting of monastic life and a final disillusionment with monastic life! Renunciation of meaningful action and protest in contemporary affairs, awareness that the action itself may be ambiguous, the renunciation of it more clear, better defined protest, etc.

  I have no doubts and no hesitations about not being any part of the Norway project (passed yesterday with very few black votes), yet I can see where in other circumstances I could get totally and fruitfully involved. Much better not to, however. (Ambiguity of famous convert making friends with Bishop John’s artistic crowd in Oslo, etc.)

  I protest by obeying, and protest most effectively by obeying in an obedience in which I am not subject to arbitrary fantasies on the part of authority, but in which both I and the abbot are aware (or think we are aware) of a higher obligation, and a demand of God. That my situation has reached this point is a great grace. Some will say it has come to this perversely, through my fault. To say this is to see only those “reasons” one chooses to see. That is not hard to do, and it is done all the time.

  Last evening, during a heavy rainstorm, learned and sang the marvelous “Requiem Tuam Domine” from the Ambrosian Vesperale. This will be, for a while, a short dawn office (with the Benedictus es and oration). It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever run across.

  June 14, 1965

  Two concelebrations: one for Father Timothy’s first Mass yesterday, another for Father Barnabas today. Probably the best concelebrations we have had so far. Very spirited and joyful. One felt that
all the celebrants were really in it with their hearts! And I certainly was. Bright fine weather. I cleared out the closet where I keep typewriter and paper. Typed the Origen poem (written some time ago). Found a fine Ambrosian Sanctus. Dr. Fortune said tests showed a staphylococcus infection in my intestines and I have been taking an antibiotic for three days. It seems to be helping quite a bit.

  June 18, 1965

  Corpus Christi was yesterday. I did not concelebrate. It was a good cool day. Wrote to Marco Pallis in answer to a good letter of his (he liked my letter to Northbourne). John Wu wrote and sent some chapters of his book on Zen. I corrected proof of the Eremitism article which is coming out in the Collectanea (though I would have preferred otherwise. I don’t want to appear to publicize solitude in the Order, or to be crusading for it! Quite the contrary, it is best that people in the order do not become excited about this issue and make another “problem” out of it).

  Brother Basil (McMurry) left to try hermit life at Mount Saviour. I think he is too young and unprepared, but they have (surprisingly) given him a chance and I hope he makes it. But he has a lot to learn (precisely because he is very bright).

  “Solitude” becomes for me less and less of a specialty, and simply “life” itself. I do not seek to “be a solitary” or anything else, for “being anything” is a distraction. It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with only hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off (two last night. It is cold for June!). Making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working (ought to get on to the article on symbolism3 today), praying. I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially to assert it as MINE, though it is doubtless not somebody else’s. I must learn to gradually forget program and artifice. I know this at least in my mind and want it in my heart, but my other habits of awareness remain strong.,