And yet I love her. There is nothing for it but to accept the seeming contradiction and make the best of it in trust, without impatience or anxiety, realizing that I can’t realistically manipulate things for us to meet etc. Yet if God wants us to be together somewhere it will be possible. But there is no use in fostering a lot of illusions.
Apart from that – the whole thing makes me ache through all the regions of my being and at times I am close to sheer desperation.
All this was made more acute by the visit of a priest who left his diocese and is getting married. He is under great strain – looked and acted like a weary salesman. Chainsmoking and gesturing with both hands while driving down the middle of the highway etc. Drivers behind exasperated wondering how to get past him. He has in fact been driving around selling his case to various people. I encouraged him as best I could – since his “wife” is now pregnant, and the decision is semi-public. Yet before this I had tried to encourage him not to do this. He is trying to get up an ordinariate for married priests who could continue functioning as priests and I wrote a letter in favor – which may get me in trouble, but so what. The whole thing does not in reality inspire me with much confidence – there is too much inertia and stupidity to be met with. I think the possibilities are vaguely tragic – not much more.
So all this made doubly clear to me that there is no use whatever my thinking of this as a solution for myself and M. It would be utterly preposterous.
First streaks of dawn beginning to appear in the East. Arcturus rising is the only star left in that part of the sky. Cold but not freezing. All I can do is thank God that I am in this peace, solitude, joy. The ambiguity that love has brought into it is no cause for disturbance. Somehow in the depths of my being I know that love for her can coexist with my solitude, but everything depends on my fidelity to a vocation that there is no use trying too much to rationalize. It is there. It is a root fact of my existence. I cannot pretend to understand it perfectly. I know a certain response is required of me – and I try with God’s grace to give it.
November 23, 1966
This morning wrote several pages of French insertions for “Edifying Cables.” Can’t remember what started this going. I think I rather like them. Haven’t worked much on revising Faith and Violence because I scratched my eye with a branch and it is still sore. Naomi said Conjectures sold over 15,000 before publication and apparently now it is hard to get. Lunch at Tommie O’Callaghan’s the other day. Her sweet little girls, the utter loveliness of children. The little blonde girl in the doctor’s office, so delightful in her littleness, her love of her mother and grandmother, her happiness at being loved.
Sunday Fr. F. cracked up – preached a homily on the abomination of desolation in which the abomination seemed to be the Abbot (just about to return from Chile), but it was psychologically ambiguous and in the end we were exhorted to complete submission. Fr. F. now hospitalized. Crazy place, this!
November 27, 1966. I Sunday Advent
Advent is here already. Warm night with wind and many clouds. Full moon trying to be seen from time to time. Yesterday – visit of Napoleon Chow from Nicaragua, friend of Ernesto Cardenal. I couldn’t think of much to do. We drove around and talked. An auction going on near the tobacco barn. Teenage kids everywhere, all over the place, groups of two, three, eight, a dozen, hanging around with nothing to do. It was Saturday. This year I have for the first time seen how crowded everything is. Especially the U. of L. But even the country.
Bro. A. met me on my way up to the hermitage. Is trying to get out of the monastery and wanted to discuss this (without permission of course). An interesting talk. He is bright, nervous, frustrated, hopeless, and sees nothing for himself here except despair. He and I agree that as things are now there is really no future for this monastery: that the “changes” now being made are seen to be illusory – mostly a game to make the players get the good feeling that “something is being done.” Far from the crisis being over, it has just begun. What is the real trouble? I used to think I knew. But it is so complicated! Dom James is certainly in the middle of it all in the sense that everything crystallizes around him – yet it is not all “his fault.” He is typical of a certain mentality. He is incapable of doing and seeing things in a really new way. He never really listens to anyone else, is convinced of his own rightness, is secure – now more than ever – in his own ideas, despises, secretly and openly, everything he does not agree with. His mentality is exactly that of the people in Washington, in the Pentagon, in Wall Street: the arrogance of nice, self-satisfied, rich people who have everything and imagine they are kind and good because they are pleased with themselves. The “manifest destiny” outlook – which has led to the ludicrous impasse in Vietnam and may lead to a war with China.
Dom James does not know how much he is detested by so many of the monks. How they writhe with embarrassment at his long triumphalist letters from Chile (still being read a week after his return). (He is now an expert on South America.) How attuned they all are to his atrocious and naive vanity which he alone does not realize (his boasting about all the important people he has met etc.).
Inevitably his conviction of his own importance means one thing only: his rule has to be a complete autocracy – and often very arbitrary at that. It was never more so because he has immense prestige and he knows that now even Rome will never say “boo” to him. I understand that even the [abbot] general who is out to make visitations here in the U.S. is not coming to Gethsemani because Dom J. does not want him. This is hard to believe – one would think a visitation pro forma would be arranged, to keep up appearances. The visitations of Dom Columban are a pure formality – mere flattering of Dom J.
Religious weakness of the community: it becomes all the more dangerous in proportion as Dom James stubbornly imposes his idea of order and strength. Curious intuition – starting from the Bible idea of God not only as “supreme being” but the God of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob. God reveals himself to “the people” as their God. God “for them.” It suddenly occurred to me that this is most important, this relation of choice – choice of a society, of a communion open to God who is “for” the community. Now in a certain sense my love for M. brings us together in openness to and dependence on a God who is for us, who gives our love, who blesses our commitment. On the other hand, there has been a growing sense in the community that the God-image subtly imposed by Dom James is a projection of his own personality which the community consciously rejects. Consequently, momentous and terrible thing, the abbot has his own private God which the community distrusts as an idol, and instinctively rejects. How this affects the whole fabric of obedience! If this is true, what can we expect? Fortunately it is not absolutely true. Or how could I go to concelebrate today? There is the God who is present in the announcing of the word and the breaking of the bread and this is not the abbot’s little idol, or his private possession, the support of his power. But who really trusts Him? Distrust of the abbot has brought on a profound distrust of any concept of Fatherhood and of authority. Yet they desperately seek a God who will be “for” them.
“The Word” (of God) is “a flood which breaks the dam.” This from a Babylonian source, but in Spirit of O.T. [Old Testament] – and of Marxism for that matter. But basic. One senses this in our community to some extent. Uneasiness, anguish, dis-ease, because something is building up to break the dam and this “word” is inscrutably different from the comforting platitudes of the Superiors. But this sense pervades all society – is resisted by those who erect their word in to a dam and are determined to “hold” it at any price.
December 2, 1966
Advent weather – grey – 28, – probably snow again soon.
Early morning – reading Faulkner’s The Bear. Glad the time has come for me to read this. Shattering, cleansing, a mind-changing and transforming myth that makes you stop to think about re-evaluating everything. All great writing like this makes you break through the futility and routine of ordinary life and
see the greatness of existence, its seriousness, and the awfulness of wasting it. And how easy it is to waste and trivialize it. Seriousness of my own solitary vocation. Eschatological witness of Ike McCaslin. To know what it means that Boon kills the head Bear.
Wednesday over at Thompson Willett’s with Jim Wygal. Illegally or independently if you prefer. I had qualms of conscience – but don’t know precisely where the guilt came from. Anyway, shouldn’t have been there. Yet should have too. Curious experience. A beautiful big old Southern house. Nice kids. Huge bar. Lovely old kitchen with an open fire for cooking (once). We drank some of his whiskey and talked. Because he has a boy in Vietnam he hopes it’s a holy war and I didn’t have the heart to argue. Conversation – bits and pieces of suggested ideas. Something comes up, is noticed, then delicately left aside as if we tried out five hundred things and really touched nothing. Wedding pictures. Football. All things I can’t develop much! With Alice in her plaid dress and black stockings. I got to liking her and she stood on her head for me in secret, revealing a lovely little navel. I was trying to call M. and couldn’t get her. Coming home in the early nightfall with the cold dark day streaked in copper over the ragged woods. Yet Bardstown is part of me and I am part of it. My winter rites. The lovely evenings. Sense that B. is somehow a lonely place. My operation in 58 at Flaget (or 57??). My arrival there in 41 on my way here. It is good to know Thompson, who is in many ways a devoted supporter (the Merton Room etc.).
December 3, 1966
What a contrast between Faulkner and Sarraute. The clever aridity of the Frenchwoman and the passionate myths of the Southerner – the “driving complexities of the heart” – the love of truth, the need to be free – the need to understand why we are not. Biblical Faulkner. I could write a book on The Bear as a basis for contemplative life. The true kind. Theoria. Freedom. One truth.
Everything looks different when you are reading something like this. The curious insubstantiality of what is trying to go on in the monastery, the reality and dignity conferred by past sufferings and mistakes of the Trappists. The meaning of those woods and hills. The meaning of my coming home. The true desert – the Southern curse! How real a wilderness it is! I want to talk about it to the novices if I can do it without choking on tears. It is a great, great story.
December 6, 1966
Great appetite for Faulkner now. The Bear can be read as a perfect tract on the monastic vocation, i.e. especially poverty. Though it is not “monastic.” Merely Christian!! Merely. The Bear is a key to everything in America too. I am talking about it in the Sunday conference. How important to see our monastic vocation in this light. As against all the secular city naiveté that is floating around. A genuine and serious eschatology! There comes a point where compromise is simply impossible. Either the curse exists or it doesn’t. To embrace the “system” and plunge into it is to say there is no curse and never was and man can by his own ingenuity fix everything just by acting as if there were nothing wrong; and the indifference to humanity which is built into the society he lives in, is accepted as “love.” Things just become what you call them. Murder goes on? You have to learn not to see it, I guess!! Solidarity? with what? Murder! Just call it love, that makes everything OK in the secular city and next week there will be a better word for it, “love” not being quite acceptable.
December 10, 1966
Two days ago, F. of the Immaculate Conception, Joan Baez was here – memorable day! Ping Ferry had called the abbot and arranged it (Ira Sandperl had written before and had been refused. I sent Joan a book and a note last July). Wire said they would come sometime in the morning. I waited around, and they drove up around 12:30. Were here all afternoon.
Out on the tobacco farm – grey skies, cold wind, Joan running down the wide field alone in black sailor pants with her long hair flying. Ira and I talking about everything and drinking beer. They want me to leave and come with them. “Someone has to talk to the students and you are the one” etc. I can’t fully explain why I don’t. I mean I can’t explain to them. This solitude is God’s will for me – it is not just that I “obey” the authorities and the laws of the Church. There is more to it than that. Here is where my roots are.
So we came back to the gatehouse. Joan met the abbot and disliked him – saw through him at once and he was visibly upset at the way she looked through him.
We came up to the hermitage and spent the rest of the time here. Played one side of her new record, “Noel.” Lit a fire. Sat on the floor, talked. Grey rugs spread out. Sitting around, lying around. Fr. Chrysogonus was here, entranced. Then he left and went down. Joan sat on the rug eating goat-milk cheese and bread and honey and drinking tea, in front of the fire. Lovely!
She is an indescribably sweet girl, and I love her. I know she loves me too – she said she had discovered prayer in reading my books and she and Ira seem to have read and liked most of my recent work, great openness, warmth, support. Talked a lot about Bob Dylan – how he is destroying himself, and becoming mean, stupid etc.
She is a very pure and honest girl, stays away from dope, everything, is rightly regarded as a sort of saint in the peace movement, and her purity of heart is most impressive. A precious, authentic, totally human person; the thing I sense most, for some reason, is a kind of mixture of frailty and indestructibility in her. Here is this sweet living child and she is on earth for now, for the time being, with a kind of visible evanescence in her reality, solidity, truth. A manifestation given us for a while. Yet right close, available, open, “given” in the realist sense. “Here I am.” A sort of epiphany of what we most need.
She was talking about their non-violent institute – the people who come to it, what they think and do – (they can’t be convinced she isn’t using pot etc.). The meditation – the periods of silence worry the neighbors. She is a person who needs much silence, a kind of bride of silence, a listening person, who when she speaks comes out of silence with a lot of love and care for everything. Love for all kinds of creatures. In close union with the Mother, is the Mother.
Most of the talk (Ira) about books, people, ideas, events. Granada, Mississippi, Martin Luther King – etc. They don’t go for the “new politics” (moving toward Marxism) etc.
We talked of my love for M. and I read some of the poems and Joan was ready to drive ninety miles an hour through the rain to Cincinnati so I could see M. when she got off at the hospital (11:30 p.m.). So we went to Bardstown and called M. But then they could not get their reservations changed to a convenient time. Just as well I did not go!! Would have been totally exhausted. Tired enough after driving with them to the airport and then coming home with Jack Ford after watching a bit of the Glass Menagerie at his house. Guilt next day for this wild impulsiveness, this night ride.
December 14, 1966
Yesterday I thought it would snow – skies have been grey and even black for over a week. Clouds of birds gathered around the hermitage. Twenty robins or more, a dozen finches, jays, many junkos (including one I found dead on the porch), other small birds and even a couple of bluebirds – I had not seen them around in the winter. Yesterday morning about two I heard something scampering around in the house and found it was a little flying squirrel. I have no idea how he got in. I thought for a moment of keeping him and taming him, but opened the door and turned him loose. At least let the animals be free and be themselves! While they still can.
I am still reading Faulkner. Nothing impresses me as much as The Bear. I suppose I need to get Light in August. Perhaps write on The Bear and Requiem for a Nun – “Faulkner’s Saints.” My “Day of a Stranger” is accepted by The Hudson Review – for next summer.6 That news came in on the 25th anniversary of my entrance into the community. Re-read the ms. and it is OK. It comes close to being real. Still questions about “Edifying Cables.” The typed ms finally got back from Eileen Curns but I have more to do. Maybe the writing is worth while – or let me say – maybe it goes in the right direction.
The Archbishop wants to ord
ain Dan Walsh and Dom James is dubious, suspicious, negative, etc. etc. Dan, innocent and receptive – is amazed.
Atmosphere of Dada and happenings in the Peace Movement. Provos. Yellow submarines, Flutes. Why not? Does it mean anything? As much as any other happening I suppose.
A man wrote an article in America on the vernacular liturgy. “If the Church wants to sweep the world like the Beatles …” With this mentality, what can you expect? But I am afraid that is the trouble. The Church is conscious of being inferior now not only to the Communists but to four English kids with mops of hair (and I like them OK). More and more I see the importance of not mopping the world with the mops, Beatle or liturgical. I am glad to be marginal. The best thing I can do for the “world” is stay out of it – in as far as one can.
I ought to have more compassion for the Abbot. He does not know that he loves the habit of command and can no longer live without power and that everything he does is probably governed by this in some subtle way – though he sincerely tries to make it otherwise. But his judgments of others are made in relation to his own power hunger – and how they affect his security. He is really a tragic person and has no idea of it. And the monastery will have to feel the effects – indeed does. I wonder if all our abbots have not been tragic in somewhat the same way. But as a result of this the community is poisoned by futile resentments and petty complications. And you see the same thing throughout the whole Church. Mere request for “due process” ([John] Courtney Murray) will not cure it. But what would happen if his power were suddenly taken away? That too must be considered. The evil in monasteries where abbots have been forced to resign. The danger of hubris in a young idiot like Du Bay, who is utterly convinced that he is a radical Galahad.
Learning To Love Page 22
