Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  The problem is simply this: American vocations have been to our Order, eager, volatile, vulnerable, impatient. They have come with obvious possibilities. They have found an elaborate structure of usages and more or less of a spiritual void. When I came, you had people who still knew to take all the usages and all the hard work and make something out of it at least for themselves. Hence you had a few people who obviously had attained something, though God alone knew what. (No question about the old brothers, most of whom had come from Europe before entering.) Now all that anyone seems to have is an infinite number of doubts and questions. This is in a way a great pity, in so far as one has to have strong personal motives before this kind of life can make any sense. On the other hand it is inevitable, because when they get into a monastery their motives tend to be undermined by the sense that much of what is considered officially most important is in fact largely a matter of keeping up a front, provisionally hiding the void while, one hopes, some substance creeps back into the life somewhere. The ironies of this, Father Anselm [knows], are alive, significant and not hopeful. And they certainly show impatience with all that one has traditionally regarded as “the religious spirit.”

  September 15, 1965

  In the refectory the other day articles on the Council were being read and a lot was said about St. Thomas–he is no longer on an official pedestal–he is no longer to be considered the one to be followed as chief authority in seminary teaching. This is the best thing that could happen to St. Thomas and to Catholic Truth, if we consider that he himself would never have consented to be the kind of authority the text books have made of him (and as a matter of fact the Church did not really constitute him an authority–but rather a model).

  For a couple of days I was a bit disturbed about one of the problems of life here at Gethsemani. Dom James takes a completely negative and absolutist view of all “contact with the world.” He goes to any length to prevent me from responding to any invitation to participate in anything, even in another monastery. I am sure for instance that the invitation to go to Chimay to the meeting of the board of editors of the Collectanea was what prompted him to move me into the hermitage in August rather than at the end of the year. Then the other day a letter came from Douglas Steere about the ecumenical meeting at Collegeville, to which I was forbidden to go. I have good reason to think some people in Latin America even tried to reach him through the Congregation of Religious so that I could be sent to Nicaragua to give a retreat. All this is not “returning to the world.” Yet he will have none of it. And I don’t think he realizes that such contacts could and would be good for one’s Christian and monastic life. He has a negative and I think rather narcissistic idea of the contemplative life–and can get away with it because he is extremely active himself and travels a great deal. To justify his own activity and traveling he imposes his distorted ideal on me. I have been angry and bitter about this, but in the end, especially yesterday, I was able finally to see not only that obedience is the only practical thing, but it is really best for me. This expression of God’s will may be in its own way irrational and even unfair but it is God’s will. And what, in fact, could be better than that? I am much better off in a life of simple solitude, not compromising or playing around. And this also is much better for the Church. Certainly I will be criticized and called selfish, negative, passive, etc. I know well enough that I am not–at least not negative or passive, though I am selfish, I am afraid. But my solitude is not selfish. I don’t think I could stay in it if it really were. I would be too guilty.

  And now today I got a letter from old [Serge] Bolshakoff who, at times, is a bit of a bore. Yet there is something extraordinary about the man nevertheless. He knows monasticism and monks, and he loves the monastic life. He said he had heard I was going to the hermitage and approved it. He said it was the best thing for me, that he thought I was ready for it etc. He added: “I should say you should follow the way of the great Russian mystic of the last century, Bishop Theophane the Recluse. He felt an irresistible attraction to solitude. He resigned his see being fifty-one years old and a monk for over 20 years. He lived afterward twenty-eight years in solitude. For six years he went to the Abbey Church of Vysha for all services and received people who wanted to see him. He gradually accustomed himself to solitary living and only after Easter Vespers of 1872, being fifty-seven years old, he retired altogether with a house built for him and received none except the Abbot, his confessor, and a brother who served him, and only when he called them. He said his Mass alone as well as the offices. He practiced the prayer of Jesus, read copiously, wrote a great many books and conducted a vast correspondence on spiritual subjects, etc. You may very well go the same way. Like Theophane go into solitude slowly and gradually. Within five–seven years you will be accustomed to it. But even in complete solitude write books and letters at least for a time.” And then he goes on to speak of Father Michael, recluse at Unsi Valamo, etc. Then he spoke of a group of Sobesedniks he is forming–including a Dom Alfred Spenser who has become a hermit at Prinknash, etc., etc. I know Bolshakoff is a bit of an actor and likes to cast himself in the role of Staretz, and I know it is flattering to be even remotely compared to a saint like Theophane the Recluse, but nevertheless the thing does seem to represent something of God’s will for me.

  In the long run, I have to face the fact that if I am here in such circumstances it is because the way leads to the real solitary life and this is God’s will for me. It is not my natural inclination, and I would gladly compromise with a little apostolic work outside. But I think that is just not God’s will for me. So I must sacrifice it and be content with writing and prayer. This decision gives me deep peace, and I trust in Him to lead me along this way He has decided for me.

  September 16, 1965

  A fine storm about Prime. Then I went down early (about 8:30) to the monastery to meet a Printer (Mr. Mill) and Peter Geist, a designer, from St. Louis. This in connection with the picture book which is to replace S[hirley] Burden’s God Is My Life. (Brother Pius, Brother Ephrem and I have been on this for some time.) Also the new Guide, which I had to write recently. We got through our work quickly and I can see that Peter Geist is a first-class designer and that it is going to turn out well, or should. As usual, I am happy when there is prospect of turning out something that has a little quality and character to it. And one “worldly” pleasure I will never renounce is that of helping something to take shape with a good designer and an understanding printer. In the end I don’t call this “worldly” at all because it implies a liberation from mendacious routines, not subjection to them. I think of the books I have given to Victor Hammer, for example. But Peter Geist is modern. All the better. I like what I saw of his work.

  This afternoon, while I was working on Conjectures, there was a queer, tense electric storm. Very black, very low clouds, extreme stuffiness, a wind that cooled nothing, and repeated bolts of lightning and crashes of thunder without any rain. At one point, in the space of two or three minutes, lightning struck three times within a hundred yards of the hermitage, besides hitting all over valley. Three times the clap of lightning, then the crash of thunder-once I could see leaves flying off the poplar in the field that was evidently struck but not injured. Very exciting! Then the clouds went, and it was cooler. But the absence of rain was curious and disquieting, with all that lightning!

  September 20, 1965

  I have been working on Conjectures in the afternoon–at moments it gets to be like Cantares Hopscotch–criss-cross itinerary of the various pieces taken out of time sequence and fitted into what? An indefinite half-conscious pattern of associations which is never consistent, often purely fortuitous, often not there (and not sought in any case). A lot of rewriting. For instance rewrote an experience of March 18, 1958 (entry of March 19) in light of a very good meditation of Saturday afternoon, developed and changed. A lot of telescoping, etc. In a word, transforming a Journal into “meditations” or “Pensées.”

  A splendid pre-daw
n, with a big thin light slab of cloud in the south red in the east, light mist over the field, last quarter of the moon high up, and a quail whistling in the field to my deep chagrin because the place was alive with hunters yesterday–kids only, I suspect, as one was firing a twenty-two. Raging about them disrupted my morning. They were not close enough for me to go after them and throw them out.

  September 21, 1965

  A brilliant September day–cool wind everywhere but in the hermitage. One of those winds the cottage does not catch directly because of the rise to the southwest. Fasting. Heavy work splitting logs in the morning and very good for me. My back feels it a bit but I think I can get along if I work carefully and steadily.

  Sister Penelope has sent translations of Isaac of Stella which seem to me very good indeed. I have not read them carefully. (She is an Anglican nun at Wantage.) A good letter from Sor Emmanuel after a long silence. They have finally got rid of a Superior who, I guessed, was being rather nasty and would not let Sor Emmanuel write me annual letters though she is handling all my Portuguese translations. Dom Timoteo [Amoroso Anastacio] is elected abbot at Bahia. Dom Basilio Penido’s monastery at Olinda is doing very well.

  It is said that the war in Kashmir is due in part to some machinations of the CIA. This is a very strange outfit from what I hear, and in some ways typical of what is ill about America. It appears to be monumentally stupid in the first place! What this country has to suffer from fools in government! But since it is the most powerful country in the world, the whole world is endangered by the folly of these idiots.

  September 23, 1965

  Rain most of the day. Dom James is back from visitations in New York and the West looking well. I hear there is a truce in the Kashmir war. Pope Paul’s visit to the United Nations next month is a hopeful sign and should do something for peace, at least by giving his support to the U.N., which has been made more or less ridiculous by the U.S.A. in these past months.

  September 25, 1965

  It got cold during the night and on getting up this morning I sprayed one of the two big hornets nests that are within a hundred feet or so of the hermitage. The second is less easy to get at. The sun came up in mist and as I was finishing my wood chopping the house was steaming like a big contented beast. The sun was warm but tonight promises to be cold again. Maybe I shall build a fire in the early morning. Enjoyed the Ember Saturday Mass. Last evening began again reading parts of Maritain’s Carnets de notes–good things on the layman and a plea to be left unorganized!

  This afternoon Father Chrysogonus and Father Prior (Flavian) came up for a visit. Father Chrysogonus is just back from Europe. He brought a bottle of white Gaillac sent by the man who owns our old house in St. Antonin and so we drank it. Very pleasant. He had a lot to say–does not think much of Dom Ignace, the General, though he is liked by the students. Some good stories about Père Charles Dumont, my friend, editor of Collectanea. The picture of the Order I get from Father Chrysogonus and from everybody else, always, is quite depressing!

  After they left I leafed through a book about St. Antonin he brought. It was sent by Mme. Fonsagrives, wife of the Doctor (whom I have frankly forgotten). I learn that Dr. Fonsagrives “saved my life,” i.e., diagnosed me as having TB or being disposed to it in 1926 or 7. That was why I had to go to Murat and also why I had special food in infirmary at the Lycée, etc. I was never told. But my health as a child was always quite poor. I know that all right. I remember spending most of my time at the lycée in the infirmary. My health picked up when I went to school in England and was excellent until about my senior year at Columbia. Has never been too good since, but is as good now as I can remember, though I have chronic trouble with the stomach. My hands have broken out again.

  So many things I did not know about Saint Antonin. They have found bone weapons, etc. and also engraved stones from stone age (reindeer, horse, bison). The town was under the special protection of St. Louis–that was its best period, from the mid-thirteenth century to the Hundred Years War. Albigensianism was strong. Protestantism also. The part where I lived, across the Bonnette, used to be in Guercy. The town itself was in Rouesque. Louis XIII besieged the place and watched the siege from the Calvaire, above the site of our house. He had a good view!! A lot of old houses were destroyed in a flood in 1930, so there is a big square that I never knew, right by the bridge before the Place de la Condamine.

  September 30, 1965

  The month began in rain and is ending in it–though there were a couple of long dry periods. A fine rainstorm with lots of southeast wind began just as I was finishing my afternoon work (and finishing the selections from this Journal to be used in the book for Doubleday. Took it up to end of 1963). It went on during supper, at which I was reading Harrington’s The Other America–the shocking chapter on the aged! Time goes fast in the hermitage. September already over. I do not regret the monastery for a moment. I have plenty to do–have split practically all the wood that was piled up behind the cottage–there is writing to be done, there is the main business of all which is prayer.

  After a bitter debate the Religious Liberty declaration was voted on and accepted in principle in the Council–but there will be changes still. It sounded good to me. Cardinal [Josef] Beran of Prague, after years of imprisonment, made one of the most moving speeches in its favor and so did the Ukrainian, Archbishop [Joseph] Slipyj, so long a prisoner in Siberia. The fighting in Kashmir has not stopped.

  Rain keeps blowing up out of the dark valley. The trees continue full of wind and the storm will probably continue all night. I have been walking up and down on the porch for an hour and am full of the joy of it. Somehow I seem happiest here when rain encloses my solitude. Perhaps I will need a fire in the morning (did not light one the other day) but some of the wood on the porch is wet.

  October 5, 1965

  Finally built the first fire of the season, though it is not freezing outside. 40 or 45 I should judge. It was about 55 in the house, before I built the fire on getting up. Sunday, the third, was bored with the liturgy as we have it, but concelebration, etc. is I feel something I must go to out of faith. I need this contact with the expressed mystery of the community, however poorly expressed. But it is heavy and tedious. A good bright afternoon. Went up to the end of the long field next to [the] hermitage and walked in the sun reading [Mathieu Richard Auguste] Henrion on St. John of the Cross. Good letter from Maritain the other day. He had been to see Pope Paul and found him with a “great firmness” that lifted him above the struggles and conflicts around him. That is something to be grateful for.

  Yesterday, Feast of St. Francis, I made a holiday of it. In the morning (bright and cold) walked through the hollow then to the long field and in and out the wood where the deer sleep. In the afternoon took a long walk to Dom Frederic’s Lake and around by St. Edmund’s field to the shallow lake, etc. Stopped at the monastery on the way back to get a few pieces of bread. The only difficulty in the day was another letter from Marie Tadié, who is getting excited again. She is a very troublesome and demanding person and under pretext of doing me favors and helping me she is causing more trouble than all my publishers and agents put together. Now she insists she must be my agent for Italy as well as France and Spain and is very strong about it. I have no need whatever of all this “help” and she is trying simply to badger me into it. It is very insulting to undergo such exploitation, and I don’t know how to handle it in the first place because I have never kept up with business and anyway business information has been kept from me. (For instance I have no idea if she has sent in any royalties at all in the last four or five years.)

  October 6, 1965

  There was frost yesterday after all (became evident when the sun rose) and probably today too. Brilliant October sun yesterday-more today, so it seems. Pope Paul’s speech at U.N. Monday was a magnificent appeal for peace and seems to have had a great effect (some of it was read in refectory yesterday).

  I see more and more the fruitfulness of this life her
e with its struggles, its long hours of silence, the sun, the woods, the presence of invisible grace and help. It has to be a creative and humiliating life, a life of search and obedience, simple, direct, requiring strength (I don’t have it but it is “given”). There are moments of frightening disruption, then recovery. I am only just beginning to know what life really is–away from all the veils, cushions and evasions of common life. Yet see my great need of common life. Seriously, last night at supper, a deep awareness that I need the saints and angels with me in my loneliness. (Cf. Maritain on the Heavenly Church.) Read Maritain’s beautiful biographical note on Vera [Oumansoff]. This is the real dimension of Christian community. What could be more beautiful or more real? There is much of this in the monastery, in spite of everything.

  Picture of Galla Placidia in H[erbert] Read’s book [Icon and Idea, 1964]. Byzantine Medallion of her, her son and her daughter. A most lovely and fascinating picture. The children are beautiful but dull. She is full of life and character. A fascinating face. How is it that this face is so contemporary to me, so ready to speak to me? As if she were someone I had always known. I can imagine it is mother, perhaps, I see in her; there is some resemblance, the same kind of features. Anyway I am moved by the picture.

  October 11, 1965

  Dawn. Cold. Mist in the valley. The rampart line of hills is always new every day.

  There has been much self-searching, some futile, some disquieting. It may be excessive, but there is something in the core of my being that needs to be revealed. I wonder if I can face it. Is it futile even to try? “Let sleeping dogs lie, leave things as they are, etc….” I will try to do whatever God wills. Jeremias XX.14–18. (Cursed be the day on which I was born…etc.) Lines I do not experience or understand. I hope to God I do not have to experience them. Reading them is enough. I have the Vulgate and Luther’s German (which is much more graphic and concrete). Importance of obedient meditation. God will take care of the rest.