Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  November 2, 1964. All Saints

  There was sunlight and haze for the procession in the cemetery and Brother Ephrem taking photographs over the wall with a ladder. And as the procession rounded the corners of the cloister I thought it looked spiritless, as if the monks were going through it all merely with resignation. They were tired from the longer office, and so on. Brother Canice, extremely introverted, left today.

  I am going on with Ellul’s prophetic and I think very sound diagnosis of the Technological Society. How few people really face the problem! It is the most portentous and apocalyptical thing of all, that we are caught in an automatic self-determining system in which man’s choices have largely ceased to count. (The existentialist’s freedom in a void seems to imply a despairing recognition of this plight, but it says and does nothing.)

  A titmouse was swinging and playing in the dry weeds by the woodshed. A beautiful small, trim being! A quail was whistling in the field by the hermitage, in the afternoon. What a pure lovely sound! The sound of perfect innocence! A tiny shrew was clinging to the inside of the novitiate screen door, trapped. I took her up and she ran a little on to my sleeve and then stayed fixed, trembling. I put her down in the grass outside and she ran away. But what of the wasp in the hermitage that I killed with insecticide? I was shocked to find it an hour later in great agony. It would have been simpler to kill it with the flyswatter.

  Last night in bed here (at the hermitage) I fell asleep thinking of the Avergnon valley at Bruniquel. There is no longer any train, now (I remember all those little stations!). Father Chrysogonus went to St. Antonin and wrote me a long letter about it–Father’s house [The Villa Diane], etc.

  Victor Hammer finally wrote. I had been worrying about his health. He tires easily but is working. The operations on his eyes were successful and he can see well, he says.

  November 3, 1964

  Four o’clock. I went out on the porch to see the starlight and the cocks were crowing, at Andy Boone’s near at hand and then up the road and then off in the east and south where I did not know they were close enough to be heard. The bell for Lauds of St. Malachy had just rung briefly at the monastery. I had been reading Chapters 3 and 4 of Ezekiel. During meditation, looking at the fire, I suddenly remembered this was election day.

  November 4, 1964

  Yesterday, before dawn, wrote a four-line Latin poem at Victor Hammer’s request–a thanksgiving for the return of his sight, so that he works again and he wants this for an inscription. One thing saddens and embarrasses me–that he will be shocked at my exhibition of drawings or calligraphies or what you will. There is no way to explain this to him, and in a way I am on his side, on principle. And yet they have a meaning, and there is a reason for them: an unreasoned reason perhaps. I feel like writing to him and saying: if you heard I had taken a mistress you would be sad but you would understand. These drawings are perhaps worse than that. But regard them as a human folly. Allow me at least, like everyone else, at least one abominable vice, etc.

  Went over to vote with Matt Scott and George Reiter just when all the children were coming to school. No one at the polls. I ended up voting for Chelf when I didn’t mean to–pulled the party lever by mistake and got the whole bunch of them!

  In the afternoon, lots of pretty little myrtle warblers were playing and diving for insects in the low pine branches over my head, so close I could almost touch them. I was awed at their loveliness, their quick flight, their hissings and chirpings, the yellow spot on the back revealed in flight, etc. Sense of total kinship with them as if they and I were of the same nature, and as if that nature were nothing but love. And what else but love keeps us all together in being?

  I am more and more convinced that Romans 9–11 (the chapters on the election of Israel) are the key to everything today. This is the point where we have to look, and press and search and listen to the word. From here we enter the understanding of Scripture, the wholeness of revelation and of the Church. Vatican II is still short of this awareness, it seems to me. The Chapter on the Jews has been woefully inadequate. It was naturally cautious, I will not say to the point of infidelity, but it was obtuse. It went nowhere. And in its inadequacy it is itself a providential sign, a “word.” So we must look harder and further into this mystery. A “contemplation” that is wide of this is simply a waste of time, vanity and vexation of spirit.

  November 6, 1964

  The other morning before Prime there was a notice in the Little Cloister saying Johnson had won the presidential election in a landslide. After that I went to Louisville to see the skin doctor, and bought a Coleman lamp and stove. I got the stove filled and working yesterday, and the lamp this evening. It gives a brighter and better light to read by for long periods than the other one does.

  Yesterday I was reading [Eugene] lonesco’s Bald Soprano and laughing myself silly behind the forage boxes packed in the woodshed.

  I think Ellul is perhaps too pessimistic. Not unreasonably so–but one must still have hope. Perhaps the self-determining course of technology is not as inexorably headed for the end he imagines. And yet certainly it is logical. But more is involved, thank heaven, than logic. All will be brought into line to “serve the universal effort” (of continual technological development and expansion). There will be no place for the solitary! No man will be able to disengage himself from society! Should I complain of technology with this hissing, bright green light with its comforts and dangers? Or with the powerful flashlight I got at Sears that sends a bright hard pole of light probing deep into the forest?

  Tonight the new moon was shining in the west. And really new! Although men have seen the same for more than a million years I suppose. That is one of the good things about being in the woods–this living by the sun, moon and stars, and using (gladly) the moonlight–which should now be available for some three weeks, on clear nights, at the beginning or at the end. But I am surprised how easy it is to follow a familiar path even by starlight.

  November 7, 1964

  The election campaign was hot and dirty. One of the disturbing things about it was the quasi-religious character of the zeal for Goldwater. I am surprised he did not get more votes. For many people apparently Goldwaterism was Christianity or is. Because I don’t think we have done with it!

  Reading Ezekiel 6. This is about our idolatry as well as Israel’s. Idolatry is the basic sin. Therefore that which is deepest in us, most closely related to our final sin, most likely to deceive us under the appearance of true worship, or integrity, or honesty, or loyalty, or idealism. Even Christianity is often idolatrous without realizing it. The sin of craving a God who is “other” than He who cannot be made an idol–i.e., an object.

  November 8, 1964

  Marie Tadié continues to write angry and demanding letters at the rate of one or two a week. After she began to sell books in Italy and Spain even though I asked her to stop, I began to think of dropping her entirely even as agent in France. Now, though I am willing in view of her past service, to let her continue to handle major hooks in France, she demands to have all my business in her hands, even down to the material I want to be free to dispose of to religious orders without a money transaction This will have to stop, and I don’t know a good, effective and humane way to reasonably settle it as she is entirely unreasonable. Very trying.

  November 10, 1964

  This morning I went down to the monastery earlier than usual because I had forgotten my glasses and could not read comfortably in the hermitage. But I was not unaware that it might have been better to meditate in the dark until six, rather than read. I settled the case because I “might be needed” in the novitiate. Nevertheless the question of using the darkness and limited light of the early hours in the hermitage is not to be ignored. Is this one of the limitations providentially intended for me? Why should I automatically suppose that because it is possible to have electricity and read more, it is therefore necessary to do so? Still there are other considerations. And it was certainly profitab
le to read Balthasar and Gordon Zahn’s little book on the objector [Franz] Jägerstätter, which is surprisingly good [In Solitary Witness, 1964]. Also if I had not gone down I would not have corrected the letter to Ramparts (on their policy towards Cardinal McIntyre) and decided to send it.

  Yesterday a large group of Baptists from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville were here. I enjoy talking to them, but I don’t know if I will continue next year. It is obviously fruitful and meaningful. But you can’t have everything.

  The exhibition of drawings at Catherine Spalding College is to open next Sunday. A private showing will be held on Friday (Feast of All Saints of the Order). Already everyone seems very interested in it. Apparently there was something in The Courier Journal about it, which I did not see. Some excerpts from this Journal are in Sewanee Review (had proofs the other day).4

  Finally, last Saturday, Msgr. Moore, who instructed and baptized me (twenty-eight years ago this Sunday), was here briefly with Jack Ford Saturday afternoon. It was good to see him again. Not much changed, fatter, in better health–has been chaplain at West Point twenty-five years.

  A quotation that needs no comment. “The truth about the nature of risk of thermonuclear war is available. The reason why it is not embraced is that it is not acceptable. People cannot risk being overwhelmed by the anxiety which might accompany a full cognitive and affective grasp of the present world situation and its implications for the future. It serves a man no useful purpose to accept this truth if doing so leads only to very disquieting feelings which interfere with his capacity to be productive, to enjoy life, and to maintain his mental equilibrium.” LeGuinsporre, Peace News, November 6, 1964

  November 12, 1964

  Reading proofs of Zahn’s book on the Austrian peasant Jägerstätter, executed by Hitler for conscientious objection. It is an excellent job. Moving above all are the notes of Jägerstätter himself, his “commentaries” on the war. Their lucidity and accuracy are astounding, and so much greater than that of so many bishops and scholars, and commentators at the time. Here was a simple, barely educated man who saw things clearly and stated them as he saw them! One thing strikes me above all. The Catholic Church in Germany and Austria, having condemned Nazism before it came to power, and having afterwards collaborated with it when in power, was surely aware that Nazism was irreconcilably opposed to the Church–just as much as Communism. Why did the Church support Nazism and never compromise with Communism? Perhaps because the Nazis were more pragmatic in offering a means to compromise. But also, basically, because of property.

  November 16, 1964

  Twenty-sixth anniversary of my baptism. Warm and dark coming down from the hermitage. Warm wind and stars. Moon, nearly full, had set. They have harrowed the cornfield in the bottom by the sheep barn, and it will be rough to walk through when they shall have ploughed it.

  Brother Antoninus [William Everson], tall, bowed, gentle, benevolent, given to quiet laughter was here from Friday to Sunday. We had some good talks and he spoke to the novices and juniors of the “poet’s presence,” his aura, tone, his ear, imagination, the sovereign intellect, the compaction of images. He reads poetry more attentively and intelligently than I do. Told me I [Emblems of a Season of Fury] was well reviewed by [Haydn] Carruth in the Hudson Review. I had vaguely heard of this but not seen it. Brother Antoninus did not like [Robert] Lowell’s new book. Offended by its destructiveness, its desiccation, and Lowell’s obsession with destroying that in himself that might save him. But for my part (less compassionate no doubt) I liked its hardness (For the Union Dead).

  Technology. No! When it comes to taking sides, I am not with the beati [blessed ones] who are open mouthed in awe at the “new holiness” of a technological cosmos in which man condescends to be God’s collaborator, and improve everything for Him. Not that technology is per se impious. It is simply neutral and there is no greater nonsense than taking it for an ultimate value. It is there, and our love and compassion for other men is now framed and scaffolded by it. Then what? We gain nothing by surrendering to technology as if it were a ritual, a worship, a liturgy (or talking of our liturgy as if it were an expression of the “sacred” supposedly now revealed in technological power). Where impiety is in the hypostatizing of mechanical power as something to do with the Incarnation, as its fulfillment, its epiphany. When it comes to taking sides I am with Ellul, and also with Massignon (not with the Teilhardians).

  “La bénignité des apôtres de ces techniques, qui asservissent le spirituel au tem-porel, souillent la vie à sa source, avec une saveur d’hypocrisie que nous ne pouvons pas ne pas dénoncer.” [“The kindness of the proponents of this technology, which puts the spiritual in bondage to the temporal, taints life at its source, with a flavor of hypocrisy that we cannot fail to denounce.”]

  (Massignon, Opera Minora [1963], III, 802)

  November 17, 1964

  Abbé [Jules] Monchanin was convinced of the great importance of his prayer for “all the dead of India” as part of his mission to India, as part of the “convergence” of all mankind upon the Christ of the Day of Judgment.

  Massignon and Foucauld—both converted to Christianity by the witness of Islam to the one living God. Someone wrote of Foucauld (and his devotion to the dead of Islam): “Mais pour un mystique les âmes des morts comptent autant que celles des vivants; et sa vocation particulière était de sanctifier l’Islam éternel (car ce qui a été est pour l’éternité) en lui faisant donner un saint au Chris-tianisme” [“For a mystic the souls of the dead count as much as those of the living; and his particular vocation was to sanctify the eternal Islam–for that which has been is forever–in helping it to give a saint to Christianity”] (quoted by Massignon, Opera Minora, III, p. 775). “L’ascèse n’est pas un luxe solitaire nous parant pour Dieu mais la plus profonde oeuvre de miséricorde: celle, qui guérit les coeurs brisés par sa propre brisure et blessure” [“Asceticism is not a solitary luxury preparing us for God but the most profound act of mercy: that which heals broken hearts by its own breaks and wounds”] Massignon, Opera Minora, III, 804.

  Today: FOR [Fellowship of Reconciliation] group coming for retreat. A. J. Muste, Jim Forest, J[ohn] H. Yoder, Dan and Phil Berrigan, John Olivier Nelson, etc. Paul Peachey can’t come, had to fly to London at last moment to replace John Heidbrink, who is having an operation on his spine. Tom Cornell, editor of the CW[Catholic Worker], and Tony Walsh from Montreal also coming, and W. H. Ferry. Maybe also Bayard Rustin, I am not sure.

  November 19, 1964

  This FOR retreat has been remarkably lively and fruitful. Sessions in the gatehouse mostly (because of rain) but we got to the hermitage yesterday afternoon. Ping Ferry has been very helpful (he and I talked a lot at first about Ellul), then Yoder spoke well this afternoon on protest from the Mennonite viewpoint that is biblical. Revelation of technology to the “principalities and powers” of St. Paul (not at all akin to the mind of Ellul, whom he in fact quoted-a lecture of his). For personal intensity and sincerity I have also liked very much the remarks of Elbert Jean, a Methodist from the South–was a minister in Birmingham and was fired for his integrationist ideas (“Desegregation can be brought about by anyone, but integration only by the Holy Spirit”). A. J. Muste is impressive in real wisdom, modesty, gentleness. He is like Archbishop Floersh in a way, and yet much more mild and without cramps and compulsions.

  Today as we were beginning our session Brother Simon [Patrick Hart] gave me twelve copies of Seeds of Destruction, for the retreatants. Motive also came with three of my letters in it.5

  Dan Berrigan said a way-out Mass in the novitiate chapel yet it was beautiful too. We had two ministers (Nelson, Muste) read Gospel and Epistle. Dan’s celebration of the sacrificial liturgy was simple and impressive. All in English and “uncanonical” even to the extreme point not only of Communion in both kinds but Communion to the Protestants!! I suppose it will be the same again tomorrow–in the old juniorate chapel, where the altar is better suited for standing around in
a circle.

  Last night–my dream of the Chinese “princess” has haunted me all day (“Proverb” again). This lovely and familiar archetypal person (no object! and how close and real, yet how elusive!) who comes in various mysterious ways into my dreams! She was with her “brothers” and I felt overwhelmingly the freshness, the youth, the wonder, the truth of her–her complete reality, more real than any other, yet unattainable. Yet the sense of understanding, of her “knowing” and loving me, yet not merely in my individuality and everyday self, as if this self were utterly irrelevant to her–(not rejected, not accepted either).

  Now–rainy night, I sit writing this in the green technological light of the Coleman lamp at the hermitage. They will leave tomorrow.

  The material of medieval contemplatives on “quies” [literally, “rest”] seems so dated, so innocently complacent, so much part of a vanished social order. [Charles Pierre] Péguy’s poem on Chartres, earthy and strong in the wonderful new Chartres book from La Pierre qui Vire. It moved me strangely in the small hours of the morning.

  November 22, 1964

  After the rain, yesterday, the Presentation (which we are still, to my surprise, celebrating as a Feast of Sermon), it got cold and bright. Very cold in fact. It must have been about twenty when I went up to the hermitage to sleep–and apparently it was down around five or ten this morning. And now though the sun has been up for hours the grass still shines with thick frost. I observed the whiskers of frost on the dead cornstalks and on the creosoted gateposts. I walked out to the little pond in the ravine that goes through the knobs to [Herman] Hanekamp’s old place, and walked about praying psalms on the dry salty place on the rise, where small pines are coming back in. Wasted, perhaps, time and film photographing an old root with inexhaustibly interesting forms, constructions and textures, in the weak sun.