When Gethsemenai had finally agreed to amend the order by building a small cinderblock hermitage atop a hill for Merton to live in solitude, the saint was overjoyed, but slightly cautious, and even apprehensive that he might survive the danger of being alone.

And so one night he confessed to feelings of being swept away by the sea of solitude. He fell apart.

"I talk to myself, I dance around the hermitage, I sing. This is all very well, but it is not serious, it is a manifestation of weakness," he wrote.

But perhaps not. Or, if weakness, the right kind of weakness, the right king of "interruptability" and awareness...

Merton continues his confessions another day:

"I confess that I am sitting under a pine tree doing absolutely nothing. I have done nothing for one hour and firmly intend to continue to do nothing for an indefinite period...I have taken my shoes off. I confess that I have been listening to a mockingbird...I confess furthermore that there is a tanager around her somewhere..."

I love this (particularly the confession of having taken off his shoes). Here is a life set free, beyond the suspicions and words, the "manifestations of weakness," into the great delight of Being, the open fields of fun and adventure!

Reading this today gives me the urge to go and play, to find some friends and gather up some wiffle ball with time eternal, an indefinite period!

The "Issue" of Faith

A "faith" that merely confirms us in opinionatedness and self-complacency may well be an expression of theological doubt. True faith is never merely a source of spiritual comfort. It may indeed bring peace, but before it does so it must involve us in struggle. A "faith" that avoids this struggle is really a temptation against true faith.
-Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, ps.105-106


I wonder what informs me. Churning over media reports, documentaries, books, voices of family, friends, so-called-experts, the whole crowd -- what fixes my convictions, my Truth worth dying for?

I'd have to confess that each voice, regardless of how erudite, fades into nothingness, is dissolved into forsaken memory at some point. The most passionate of causes it seems, always has a counter-argument.

Have I fallen prey to relativism? Have I been so perplexed by the gray matter that the vacuum has suck me in? Perhaps.

But I would make another conjecture: like you, my brothers and sisters, I seek truth, and I am composed by the need to survive and thus the need to know myself and thus the ultimate need to be honest with who that really is. And so, the best theological claim that I can make, that I can stand on, is also the most subject to doubt, to vacillation, to criticism...

I am made of love. I was created to nourish the pilgrim souls of you, my brothers and sisters, even as you hold me in the best of your hopes. The only cosmic law is not my burdensome opinion of justice and righteousness but the explosion of every man-made dam that clogs up the greater anticipation, the endless resources of love that have waited patiently for every eternal second to cascade into our hearts.

I know this deep in my bones, with all of my heart and intellect, because this is my song of innocence and my song of experience -- and the chorus is the same: you are loved.