March 16, 1966
The latest in Religion:
Los Angeles, “A Genuine New Revival” “Astronauts and Cosmonauts of Youth”
Why, spaceships and spacemen from Mars and other worlds have landed on earth! Miss Velma will descend from high out of the skies in a spaceship wearing a gold space suit and space helmet and preach her entire sermon from a spaceship surrounded by spacemen! Positive proof that spacemen from Mars and other worlds have landed on earth!
(Miss Velma is shown emerging from a Flying Saucer with a space helmet in one hand and a Bible in the other.)
Closer to home – Kentucky. A Protestant group at the U[niversity] of K[entucky] is invited to see a magician “prove” the Resurrection. He puts a picture of Jesus in a box. Closes the box. When he opens the box the picture is gone.
Catholic Aggiornamento. A priest is amazed that some of his people continue to say the Rosary at Mass. He announces a “special service.” Sunday Evening all are to bring Rosaries and candles. They light the candles and walk in procession to a spot outside the Church where they find a hole has been dug. They are told to throw their rosaries in the hole. The rosaries are then buried. Spirit of liberty of Vatican II.
March 19, 1966. St. Joseph
A marvelous, clear, clean spring morning: after some warm days and rain yesterday afternoon, the sky is washed of any trace of clouds. The hills in the south stand out sharp against the immaculate morning. Soon the sun will rise. In the most pure silence a pileated woodpecker drums on a loud tree and the solemn sound goes out through the clear halls of the forest.
After five, I looked at the stars, and discerned my zodiacal sign rising in the East, Aquarius, and Venus glittering in Capricorn.
Read some Angela of Foligno (I love her admirable, passionate fervor and honesty) and St. Thomas on the light of glory – also some Milarepa which I must return to Linda Parsons today. Sending off the preface to Japanese translation of Thoughts in Solitude and, tentatively, to Harper’s, “Apologies to an Unbeliever,” though I do not like the tone of it and will have to make changes – if they want it.
In the last few days – two different visitors, total strangers came up here with questions. This is a sign that the place can after all be easily found and it is a bad sign. Something that will have to be met with when I return from the hospital. (Probably in part a result of the Jubilee article.)
March 20, 1966. Laetare Sunday
Yesterday was perfect. Went for a walk in the warm sun and strong, cool wind down to one of my corners, a little spot at the edge of the wood by St. Edmund’s field, and there walked up and down with simple hesychastic resolutions taking deeper shape in me. “When I get back …” etc. Momentarily bothered by the fact that I sent off “Apologies to an Unbeliever,” but it can be changed and must be. It’s the tone that is bad above all. And really I have no more need to be making pronouncements.
The sun was very good!
Came back and boiled three eggs for supper, as it was a feast, and drank green tea.
Then as it got dark I saw that the hills across the valley were at one place covered with a wide warm circle of biting and rapidly advancing red flame in a big sweep half a mile across or more. This morning the fire was there but the perimeter was broken and there was a flame wandering jaggedly eastward. Before dawn even that was gone. Either men fought it all night, or else the dew got so heavy that everything was too wet.
Prepared a formal conference on Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet for the group today. There seems to be something to his ideas on love – at any rate they complete some of the rather mystifying notions in the Elegies.
Yesterday I sent the ms. of [Robert] Lax’s (unnamed) Journal to New Directions. He has been keeping it on his Greek Island, Kalymnos, and there is a lot of good stuff in it, especially about the sponge-fishers. Forty or thirty years ago we went to France to live in the [indecipherable]. Now that would be too crowded I imagine, and Greece would still be possible. More exactly South America.
March 21, 1966. St. Benedict
Song of robins and cardinals in pre-dawn dark. I am trying to clear the porch of wood before going to the hospital, so though it is only 45 or so I had a fire, a bright one that flamed high and lit up all the ikons. Then drank my coffee with honey in it (to use up the honey – and am no longer using sugar) and read Angela of Foligno, who is great: intense purity, sincerity, penance, like the warm clear light of the Florentine primitive painters, and those of Siena. Began the book on [Abu’l Qsim] Junayd which Abdul Aziz sent – perhaps will take this to the hospital, but don’t know how much I will be able to read.
[Justus George] Lawler sent Notes of R. Garaudy’s (Marxist) view of Marxist Catholic dialogue. Clear-cut division between us. God simply “is not” and any view that is based on the idea of a divine presence in and to the world, and a divine will ruling all for His ends, is excluded by Marxism. Marx on the contrary is master, responsible to no one but himself, and he must learn to rule all for his ends. This is at once a comic and apocalyptic myth, and the results are already evident in our world. We are doing a magnificent job of ruining things!!
The “acceptable” point of contact seems to be Teilhardian, in which God is accepted and man, as God’s servant, makes himself and makes a world that will be an eschatological manifestation of God’s love. His view is emotionally active and activistic – and in its own way “mystical” too.
On both sides, Marxist and Teilhardian, there is agreement in rejecting the contemplative life as “static” – because it accepts God simply as infinite, transcendent-immanent presence and truth in its wish for the dynamism of salvation history to work out. The contemplative is “with” this dynamism not by virtue of some elaborate project and historic plan, but in Zen-like, mysterious fluidity in here and now immediate and existential every-day-ness.
The danger I see is this: in “getting with” Marxism one consents in fact
1. to trust God as “absent” and as a presence to be “realized” in the future classless society
2. to substitute the dynamism of Marxist-Communist theory for “salvation history” or rather to identify the two
3. so that in fact the “will of God” is “secularized” in the name of faith and becomes simply the party line.
This means nothing more than a transition from the rigidity of curial-control to the political rigidity of party control. I can imagine nothing more futile! All in the name of freedom of the sons of God. My task is to preserve that freedom.
March 23, 1966
The bell tolls slowly in the dark for the preface of the conventual Mass and I listen to it with the wind swaying the heavy pines in the night. The icebox is already turned off. I have a little oleo to return to the infirmary kitchen when I go down. Mass at 9:30, then to the eye-doctor, then to the hospital for the back operation. One other thing: a small tumor in my stomach (can be felt on the surface) has been growing a little in these last weeks and had better be investigated. Fr. Eudes thinks offhand it is not a malignancy.
Anyway, if I can be serious, I suppose I am so now. And yet not terribly, not alarmed or concerned. Yet I know I have to die sometime and may this not all be the beginning of it? I don’t know, but if it is I accept it in full freedom and gladness. My life stands offered with that of Christ my brother. And if I am to start now on this way, I start on it gladly. Curious that the operation will coincide with the big protest against the Vietnam war. It is my way of being involved.
Bell for Consecration at the monastery!
The high mass on the Feast of St. Benedict was very fine. Certainly the spirit of the community is excellent and the place is blessed. There are some very good men there. It is a sincere and excellent community. Fr. Chrysogonus is writing fine new melodies which are very authentic, probably as good as any Church music being written now. In fact may turn out to be the best. This is an extraordinary mass. Fr. Flavian may soon be a hermit, and he has impressed many with the seriousness of his life
of prayer. Fr. Eudes is doing an excellent job. Fr. Callistus is a good person and will be head of the Norway foundation. And so on. Dom James himself, with all his limitations and idiosyncrasies, has done immense good to this community by stubbornly holding everything together. He too is an extraordinary man, many sided, baffling, often irritating, a man of enormous will, but who honestly and in his own way really seeks to be an instrument of God. And in the end that is what he has turned out to be. I am grateful to him. Am part of all this non meis meritis [not on my own merits].
The one thing for which I am most grateful: this hermitage. The ability to spend at least half a day (the afternoon) here frequently, sometimes daily, since December 1960. Then sleeping here and having also the pre-dawn hours here since October 1964. Finally being here all day and all night (except for Mass and dinner) since August 1965. This last was the best and I am just beginning to really get grounded in solitude (getting rid of the writer of many articles and books), so that if my life were to be on the way to ending now this would be my one regret. Loss of the years of solitude that might still be possible. Nothing else. But there are greater gifts even than this and God knows best what is for my good – and for the good of the whole world. The best is what He wills.
PART II
Daring to Love
April 1966–September 1966
Now I see more and more that there is only one realistic answer: Love. I have got to dare to love, and to bear the anxiety of self-questioning that love arouses in me, until “perfect love casts out fear.”
April 25, 1966
April 10, 1966. Easter Sunday
Back in the hermitage sooner than I expected (sleeping in the infirmary). The operation was much more smooth and effective than I expected, and apparently went beautifully. Had a hard time the first walk and am still troubled by the leg from which they took the bone graft, but on the whole have had less trouble than I anticipated. The worst was just the strain of the abnormal mechanized routinized life of the hospital, poked and pushed and stuck and cut and fed and stuffed with pills, juices etc. Got home yesterday and came up to the hermitage as soon as I could, silly with exultation. I suppose it is all a bit childish really.
[On] the 23rd left with Bernard [Fox] on time, rain started pouring down in sheets. It rained all the way in and I was glad, because of the fires I had seen in the woods at night. The eye-doctor did not find anything specially wrong with my eye. The tumor was not malignant and not even something to bother with at all. The one thing that bothered me most was the myelogram and that went well enough, though I found it hateful to be looking in a screen and seeing fluid running up and down my spine and seeing the needle sticking in me.
As to the operation, it was on the 25th, the Annunciation (I was glad of this), the Friday before Passion Week. I went up and semiremember the anesthesiologist introducing himself as Dr. St. Pierre and Dr. Marshall appearing in the green suit. That was the last I clearly knew of anything until I found a lot of people milling around my bed in my room and I asked what time it was, and was told it was eleven o’clock at night. For some reason (half-aware of being there for some time) I had imagined that a day had gone by and I had missed communion. I was surprised to find I could lie on my back without pain.
I remember being fed by a nurse at my first meal, then trying to eat one myself and picking a small piece of veal off a plate with my fingers and sticking it in my mouth. That was all I could take. The first day was hard and when after four or five days I still could not sit up and read without pain, I began to get scared and thought it would be a long haul. Then I also had a fever and apparently some pneumonia. They gave me an antibiotic which made me sick; and then when I finally got off that everything began to improve rapidly.
One week after the operation Friday in Passion Week, I was able to get up and go out to walk a while on the grass, and this made an enormous difference and also did the fact that I got a very friendly and devoted student nurse1 working on my compresses etc. and this livened things up considerably. In fact we were getting perhaps too friendly by the time she went off on her Easter vacation, but her affection – undisguised and frank – was an enormous help in bringing me back to life fast. In fact all the nurses were very interested and friendly and warm. Being surrounded with all this care and esteem was a great indulgence! A huge luxury. And I realized that though I am pretty indifferent to the society of my fellow monks (can live without being lonely for the community at all, and it is a work of will to go down and participate in the essentials, not an emotional need), I do feel a deep emotional need for feminine companionship and love, and seeing that I must irrevocably live without it ended by tearing me up more than the operation itself.
The best thing of all was lying reading Eckhart, or sitting up, when I finally could, copying sentences from the sermons that I can use if I write on him. It was this that saved me, and when I got back to the hermitage last evening to say the Easter offices everything else drained off and Eckhart remained as real. The rest was like something I had imagined.
The doctors were fine. Had some amusing visits with another patient with a lumbar disc, Dr. Handelinan, and visited Mother Peter, the Carmelite prioress, who also has, apparently, a lumbar disc.
Began saying Mass on Laetare Sunday. Concelebrated with numb sweat on Holy Thursday with the two chaplains – and again here this morning. The Mass here was beautiful, but I found myself wondering if I would be able to get down three sanctuary steps without falling on my head, and got Fr. Matthew to help me as we left.
Spent the afternoon at the hermitage. Warm sun. Eckhart – Toward the end of the afternoon Bro. Eric came walking by and I made some signs to him. He wants to come up and talk some time so I said sure. (Permissions are given for this.)
April 12, 1966. Easter Tuesday
Yesterday, cold rain all day, thanks to which I stayed in the infirmary and rested. I needed it. Easter day had tired me more than I realized. Came up to the hermitage only to pick up a notebook and write addresses of the nurses to whom I had promised autographed books. The infirmary is depressing and I found it hard to sleep in the overheated room (where I cannot turn the heat entirely off). Then there are so many snide or deranged people around (Dom Vital seems to be gone in senile dementia now, poor man), though some, like Bro. Jerome, are wonders. Bro. Jerome seems almost blind now but he gets around and seems happy I am a hermit, for he greets me with much liveliness once he recognizes me.
Last night as I lay awake in the hot room, seriously considered disobeying all orders and coming up here. Did not. Came up after dinner today – warm rain, gentle, spring rain, and my redbuds are bursting out for real. Easter I was here in a kind of daze. Today I made my regular hour’s meditation and began to get myself together again.
The community has moved out of the Church (yesterday) to a temporary chapel on the third floor. Already, there is a lot of banging in the Church, getting ready to tear everything out and remodel the interior. I have not seen much of the community, have no taste for meals in the infirmary refectory, and found the reading today very tedious (a speech of Pope Paul on Catholic Action, praising the aspect of organization etc. etc.). The best moments have been at Mass, back in the library chapel! Psalms and office getting back their old savor. Capitulum of II Noct[urn], Christ died for all that we might no longer live for ourselves but for him who died for us and rose again. This is the heart of Eckhart, and remains that in spite of all confusions. At least that is the way I understand him, though he does speak of the Godhead, and living “in” the Godhead rather than “for Christ.”
Again the old men in the infirmary: it is disconcerting when they are walled off in blackness and you can do nothing to cheer or help them. I suppose prayer is all, and the ordinary physical services.
Beginning to think a little of work again – I mean writing. But I do not feel I can type yet and do not intend to try. Have no really serious ideas either. Yet I can feel them coming back again. I am more myself.
&nb
sp; April 14, 1966. Easter Thursday
I dreamt that I was talking to Dom Vital and that he made sense; and today he was better, was up – fully dressed, not looking blank, walking around with his cane, and sitting in prayer before the Bl[essed] Sacrament.
For my part I too am becoming once more myself, deeper and deeper. It is shocking to realize that you sometimes have to fight to get yourself back when some great trauma has broken in on you. The hip incision is improving. I sleep better, sweat less and less. Yesterday I wrote a longish poem about the hospital experience2 and I think it is a good poem too. Better than the others I have done so far this year. Today revised the notes on solitude written as preface for the Japanese Thoughts in Sol[itude]3 and I think deepened and improved it. One thing has suddenly hit me – that nothing counts except love and that a solitude that is not simply the wide-openness of love and freedom is nothing. Love and solitude are the one ground of true maturity and freedom. Solitude that is just solitude and nothing else (i.e. excludes everything else but solitude) is worthless. True solitude embraces everything, for it is the fullness of love that rejects nothing and no one, is open to All in All.
After several days of rain the sky is clearing. Afternoons at the hermitage become once again possible. I walked a bit in the woods, under the pines, and again plan work, study, ideas, not to affirm myself but to give to others. Anything I have that is good is worth sharing. What is not worth sharing is not worth bothering about. What is “mine” can be tolerated only in so far as I am willing to share it with everybody.
I see this is ambiguous though. It needs qualification.
Learning To Love Page 6
