del mio cuore non era che un momento
del tuo; che mi era in fondo
la tua legge rischiosa: esser vasto e diverso
e insieme fisso;
e svuotarmi cosi d’ogni lordura
come tu fai che sbatti sulle sponde
tra sugheri: alghe asterie
le inutili macerie del tuo abismo.
[ … You were first to tell me
that the tiny ferment
of my heart was but a moment
of your own; that deep inside my being
was your perilous law: to be immense and diversified
and at once constant;
and thus empty myself of all foulness
as you do who beat yourself against the shores
among corks seaweeds starfish
the futile rubble of your abyss.]15
June 26, 1966
Got my X-rays quickly – the back has healed OK. I have another deteriorated disc but it poses no problem as yet.
Came out of the office looking for M. – she was on the first floor just about to get on the elevator I was getting out of. Went back up to the 4th floor and sat alone in the hall by the window, talking, deeply moved, torn with sorrow. She had called Jim W. in desperation and he had told her, apparently rather coldly, to leave me alone. She was trembling like a leaf in the elevator. But as soon as we sat down (and I gave her the ms.) all our love came out again and deeper and more complete than ever. We just sat looking into each other’s eyes and saying what we had in our hearts and what we needed to know, and I realized once again not only that our love was the deepest thing in our lives, but was growing deeper.
She said she had sent in her application for a job at the _________ Hospital. (“Everything reminds me of you at St. Joe’s – it would be too much!”) Obviously Wygal’s attitude and that of the abbot had a lot to do with this. Then on top of everything her fiancé is missing in action over North Vietnam. (She heard the night before, from his mother.)
She thought S. knew of our love from having read one of my letters (!)
I insisted that she come to lunch with me and W. at Cunningham’s, though he was very peeved about that and was quite hostile towards her. Nevertheless we had a good lunch, and she and I anyway laughed and talked, and enjoyed being together – played some of our favorite records, like Nancy Wilson singing “Together Again” etc. Then finally Jim left us alone for a little while and we fell on each other in desperation and love, kissing each other over and over, swept with love and loss. In it, knowing it would probably never be like that again. Then we took her to St. Joe’s, and she vanished into the shadows through the glass doors – will I ever see her again? I don’t know! But I think we will meet again.
We went out to Anchorage then, and she called me out there, sounding as if she were almost in tears. She was just about to go to work on the 3–11 shift.
What is the use of saying over and over that we love each other? It is the most obvious thing in the world. We are completely possessed by love for each other, fully reciprocated, the kind of thing that grows with every little bit of fuel – and everything is fuel for it! I know if we saw each other more often it would become a raging furnace. It could very well destroy us. But in spite of all the suffering and loneliness, it even grows when we are not together.
I am helpless to say more about it. Slept very little last night. From 11 to 1 (when she was off work and probably reading the Diary) I was walking up and down the porch. Slept fitfully from one to five. Got up and said Lauds, made some strong black tea and ate some rye bread. She is right at the center of my life and my solitude. I know I must now make a determined effort to be what I am supposed to be, and it means not seeing her, and obeying the commands that have been given me. Yet there will be slight exceptions perhaps, when necessary. However, in so far as regularly seeing her goes, in so far as continuing our affair, it is all over. And that is how it has to be.
I forgot the most moving thing of all – she just mentioned it in passing and the full impact only struck me this morning. She signed up for work with special hard cases – I forgot the term, it distracted me from the meaning of what she was saying – and that she would offer all this up for me. How deep and beautiful her love is. The others have not realized this – they see in it only what they want to see.
June 28, 1966
After a hard weekend I think I am finally turning the corner and getting back on my true road. Wrote what is I hope my last letter to M. (normally anyway, in this “intense” series – not excluding some future friendly note from time to time). Had a great struggle over it and what I felt was a real mess. The struggle was to keep out anything suggesting a commitment to meet her any special time in Louisville between now and the time she leaves in August. This I finally accomplished – I mean after tearing up page after page I finally got a letter that just said I loved her but not that we would meet on such and such a day. Thus I am left free, and there is actually no need to worry about future meetings: they can be avoided. It is better that way, though terribly difficult. The sacrifice is I think demanded.
Ping Ferry came and we drove all over the place – Hodgenville, Campbellsville, Lebanon, Bardstown, ate some hamburgers on the tobacco farms. Then when he left I got back to the hermitage – very hot indeed, about 100 on the porch – and felt that M. and I had at last reached the point where we were able to get along without hanging madly on to each other’s necks – I hope so anyway. But one can never be sure. The letter I sent was too sentimental and may start everything up again.
There is an immense amount of work to be done to get back to being solitary. How much I have lost in a way! How weak and confused I have become! The state I am in is in some way quite appalling. As if I had lost everything. And yet I trust in God’s grace – and feel that though I have proved once again that I am totally absurd and helpless when left to myself, He nevertheless has secretly remained with me and is supporting me.
June 29, 1966
A good night’s sleep for a change – was able to get up on time, make a halfway decent meditation. There was a thunderstorm about 4:30 (still going on); dirty rain frothed off the roof into the baskets like beer. Eating breakfast, read Ernesto Cardenal’s first circular letter from Solentiname. It sounds fine! A letter from him yesterday (with charming photographs of the island) says one has already left.
Difference in my inner climate: this morning I am no longer singing “Silver Dagger” but “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” – my music is getting out of the M. syndrome.
I don’t read German well enough to read Von Balthasar in the original, and in French he is fogged and confusing (one can’t come to grips with it easily). Yet if something looks interesting in French and you go to the original you are likely to get a real flash of light. See the correctness of this: “Der Glaubensakt wesentlich existenzial ist, das heisst die ganze Wirklichkeit des Glaubenders als Gehorsamsopfer einfordert [The act of believing is essentially existential, that is to say, the entire reality of the believer is put forward as a sacrifice of obedience].”
Much more real than French, “le don de tout son être [the gift of all his being]” etc.
June 30, 1966
Gehorsamsopfer –
To offer oneself to God as a sacrifice of obedience in faith. This is the crucial point. Too much emphasis on one’s own truth, one’s own authentic freedom, and one forgets the limitations and restrictions of this “my own.” Tendency to take “my own” truth and freedom as unlimited, ultimate, “in my own case.” This is a total loss. Paradox that only God’s truth is ultimately my truth (there is not one truth for me, another for my neighbor, another for God) and only God’s will is my freedom. When they appear to be opposed, am I acting freely?
Linda Parsons was here yesterday. We had a good long talk.
“Blessed are the pure in heart who leave everything to God now as they did before they ever existed.” Eckhart. This is what I have to get back to. It is coming to the
surface again. As Eckhart was my life-raft in the hospital, so now also he seems the best link to restore continuity: my obedience to God begetting His love in me (which has never stopped!).
July 8, 1966
Last week and its excesses. Drank with L.P. [Linda Parsons] at the lake, then in the evening called M. and she was coming out Saturday, changed it to this Saturday and then I called it off. And regained some perspective. Instructive to see how easily I am shaken and thrown off balance. I am going to have to do a lot of work to get really steady again. Reading book on Zen: not the best, but good things in it.
I have been writing more notes for M. going back over the story of our love, but this too is probably useless. Still I will finish.16 Last night when sleepless I at least resisted the temptation to write to her!
“Silver Dagger” is back and I know all the words.
I can see how much I was deluded – and how much in fact I really wanted to be deluded and went out to welcome it. Because there is such a great good in human love – and I needed this good, or thought I did. Well I did. But I needed to know that I was called to something else, and the fact that I risked my other and special calling now frightens me! Have I perhaps gone too far? Will they now take the whole thing away from me? Have I started on a chain of inexorable mistakes? I certainly hope not! There is nothing I want but to make sense of this seemingly absurd solitary life which is nevertheless such a wonderful gift and has such enormous possibilities. I have not measured up at all and have not been worthy of it at all, but I beg God to let me continue with it and to give me the grace to do better.
I wonder how much M. and I have really been totally frank with each other. I think we have been more than ordinarily sincere, but still I think there has also been a slight duplicity and calculation: what was necessary for us to hold on to each other with one hand while looking around for some other support with the other. I in my solitude, she doubtless with another man. Not that I have been ambiguous about solitude – but still I have made it appear that I am more desolately lonely than I am. I am alone and I love her, but the choice between her and solitude presented itself and I chose solitude. (Though I don’t think it was that real a choice – was there any way in which I could have effectively chosen her?) As for her – I don’t hear from her now and don’t know what she is doing. I know she loves me and is lonely for me, but certainly do not expect to remain a kind of exclusive love-object for her!
Walked over to Fr. Flavian’s new hermitage, which is being built now in the woods beyond the creek and to the East. At the top of a little hollow looking directly toward my own place, but with nothing but woods in view. It will be hot in the afternoon – no protection from all day sun. One enters as though by a rabbit hole – small road plunging into thick brush and low trees. Smaller, more compact than my house, it will be more modern, better “appointed” – inside john etc.
July 10, 1966
Yesterday was very hot. I was glad M. did not come out, though of course I missed her. It would have been a fatal mistake in many ways and probably would have been pretty ghastly too. [ … ] And that would really have messed up everything, besides the sheer folly of risking loss of the hermitage merely by seeing her out here in the woods. Glad I called it off! I can see that I am better off without any alcohol. At least in this kind of situation. Drank some heavy, dull California sherry Dan gave me and it put me in a stupor. Only made the heat harder to bear and meditation impossible.
Borrowed a record player, played Joan Baez over again – and now really know “Silver Dagger” (before I had the melody confused with “East Virginia”). One record I like more and more is Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61.” Fr. Augustine sent me some Asian (Folkways) records but at the moment they are too subtle and I can stand only so much music. In a word, what I really need is the simple reality of my own solitary life in its nakedness, absurdity, or whatever you want to call it (I must be careful of imposing arbitrary words on it).
For instance – this early Friday morning is great. A big woodpecker out there drums on a hollow tree. A fly buzzes on the porch. It will be a hot day. I have read a little, emptily, thoughtfully or rather receptively, and that is that. There is little to be said except that I have been too involved in what is alien and irrelevant to this. And am not quite sure I know what is relevant. It is as if I had to start learning – I don’t say over again – I have the impression of never having learned and of never having begun.
July 12, 1966
Before dawn, in the dim light, I sat on the porch and looked out at the peaceful valley. I realized that no matter how much I may love M. and be attached to her, there has never for a moment really been any choice. If it is a question of leaving Gethsemani and trying to live with her, and staying here in solitude and doing whatever it is I am supposed to do, then the answer is easy. There is not even a credible question. Even when she was talking so earnestly about my coming to live with her “in the world,” it simply never was a realistic option for me. I don’t think I was ever able for a moment to consider it. When Ping Ferry said I could have a job at the Center in Santa Barbara – it did not even click for a second. It is just inconceivable. (I remember us driving somewhere around Campbellsville and my trying to explain how impossible it would be.) Life “in the world” has become for me quite inconceivable. I cannot imagine myself living it, except as a fireguard in a distant forest or something like that. I am wildly surprised that someone like M., who seems to understand me in so many ways, could find my leaving believable.
Yet there is no question I love her deeply, and am drawn to her with an almost agonizing desire sometimes. I keep remembering her body, her nakedness, the day at Wygal’s, and it haunts me. At moments it gets so bad I feel a kind of utter despair at my frustration. I suppose really what my nature, in its hunger, really secretly planned was to have her as a kind of mistress while I continued to live as a hermit. Could anything be more dishonest? I must say I never really accepted the idea, although I really think she would have. I am convinced that if she had come Saturday, it would have been a kind of showdown in which, perhaps, I could have been enslaved to the need for her body after all. It is a good thing I called it off.
The main thing is to get back to reading, study, meditation, more depth. Curious book on LSD – informative. Something one has to know about. Charles Luk a bit unsatisfactory. Yet a lot of information comes through between the lines.
July 14, 1966
Yesterday was one of the hottest days I can remember – and it seems today will be another. Officially 101 in Louisville, said to have been 104 at the monastery; the hermitage was stifling because what little breeze there was was blocked off by the rise to the SW. Jim Wygal came out to get some books, and we spent the day together, driving around and drinking beer, which was not much help and in the end I was hotter, heavier, stupider than ever. Was sweating like a pig all day.
We got some hamburgers at Riley’s in Bardstown and went to eat them on the new farm, where Jim told me his opinion of M. – very negative. (He says she is narcissistic, selfish, is not capable of really loving me etc.) He is much too hard on her, and does not see her as I do, the real sweetness and sincerity of her heart, and the real love she has given me. [ … ] But I see the real core of excellence that is in the depths of her being and that he does not see, and I love her and want to help her be true to that inmost center. In the late afternoon I wanted to call her and Jim would not cooperate at all – which I thought was a bit self-righteous of him.
We went to Loretto in the afternoon – very hot – Sister [Mary] Luke [Tobin] was not there. Sat in a room with a bunch of very warm nuns and talked for an hour or so – about Zen mostly. One of them played some Gershwin and Debussy very well on the piano. I enjoyed it, but felt uneasy about talking so much and so glibly.
Noted: general dispersion and distractedness all yesterday, obviously, and all night. Only recovered a real awake “mindfulness” after about 3 hours reading etc. this morning. The other
state was of an anxious, disoriented consciousness, not properly centered, and making erratic and desperate acts, calling on God, trying to recover orientation, thinking of M., questioning self, fearing consequences of imprudence etc.
July 15, 1966
Blazing hot yesterday afternoon – I found a good breeze at one of my favorite spots, the N.E. corner of St. Edmund’s field where the road (track) plunges into the woods. Read on Buddhist meditation [The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (London, 1962)] ([Bikkhu] Nyanaponika Thera – excellent) – on “bare attention”! Then Alan Watts on LSD (poor). Later came back and read some, The Idiot. It is too hot to work in the hermitage. I am not writing anything. Also hard to get a typist who will copy my stuff these days. Bro. A. is a bit temperamental, and others are not available.
Naomi Burton [Stone] having vanished into Maine seems to have lost interest in publishing and I don’t hear from her – a word indirectly through the Abbot now in California.
This morning – after a hot night – some rain. It is cooler. I am moved by Luther’s distinction between God’s “alien work” (in which by suffering and humiliation He reveals to us what we are) and His “own work,” in which He lifts up and heals us with His love. Certainly in all this business of M. I have seen a lot of both – and she has too. I think of her with just as deep a love and need as ever. Yet soon she will be gone – one month and she returns to Cincinnati to work after graduation. I have to face the fact of living without her and of being without much contact. Perhaps I will even have to finally let go and be without all contact whatever, which I still find impossible to accept, yet I have to accept it I guess.
July 16, 1966
Went to see Dr. Mitchell about my ankle (sprained it the other day) and M. came to meet me in a taxi – we went on to Cherokee Park and had a quiet picnic together and it was marvelous. One of the most lovely days we have spent together – to begin with the weather was bright and cool again and then something deep and purifying seems to have happened to both of us in the days of separation and loneliness in which we have been unable to communicate. Our love seemed to have been greatly deepened, was more peaceful and more concerned but above all even more intensely serious than ever. I felt how completely we really had come to belong to each other. We loved and kissed each other with passion. She looked tired and serious, and clung to me with such warmth and love!
Learning To Love Page 13
