Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  Outside–great confusion and tension. The Peace movement people are burning draft cards on T.V. This has shocked and unnerved the public so that, for security, they are beginning to support the Vietnam war and there are ugly signs of hostility and pressure against the Peace Movement, especially the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and the Berrigans–this in the national press. I am afraid the CPF is too anxious to be a Catholic CORE, in peace movement. Good or bad? I can’t judge. It seems to me burning the draft cards is a bit aggressive and provocative and will do no good, only solidify hatreds and hostilities, without communicating a real message. It is not genuine non-violence.

  October 30, 1965

  Brother Alberic got (rare) copy of [John of] Ford’s life of Wulfric of Haselbury [Wulfric of Haselbury, 1933] from the Library of Congress and, having finished, passed it on to me. I find it very rich indeed. Must work on it. Will get pictures of parts of it. A great theology of mystical life–and solitary life–fine, balanced, optimistic, Biblical. How much I need it!

  I find more and more the power–the dangerous power–of solitude working on me. The easiness of wide error. The power of one’s own inner ambivalence, the pull of inner contradiction. How little I know myself really. How weak and tepid I am. I need to work hard, and I don’t know how–hence I work at the wrong things. I see that in the first two months I got off to a nearly false start with too much excited reading of too many things, and my life has been grossly overstimulated for a solitary (in community, all right). Especially I worked too hard, too obsessively on the book, too frantic a pace for a solitary (again, in community solitude seems crowded and hopped up to me). Everything has meaning, dire meaning, in solitude. And one can easily lose it all in following the habits one has brought out of common life (the daily round). One has to start over and receive (in meekness) a new awareness of work, time, prayer, oneself. A new tempo–it has to be in one’s very system (and is not in mine I see).

  And what I do not have I must pray for and wait for. Also need of fasting (though I know I must watch out!). Stomach has been at times wildly upset, usually after going down to monastery for Mass and dinner-particularly if I talk to someone (Father Abbot, Dan [Walsh], etc.). Yet it was very pacifying to talk to Cardenal, Hildegard Goss-Mayr, etc. There is still great conflict in me, more than I thought. Hence the need for real silence and peace. Use the early hours for it. (But mere keeping still does not do it.) Have put breakfast later, meditate longer (hour and a half) with some Bible before eating. Reading slower and less. Writing fewer letters, though letters are not a problem now. (Except that awful business with Tadié. She is being good and patient now.)

  November 1, 1965. All Saints

  It has been a splendid and poignant feast, one of the greatest I can remember in my nearly twenty-four years here. The concelebrated Mass was, for the first time, what I think the new liturgy means to be. Lots of new changes–all that was sung was in English except the canon. For the first time I felt that it was a real success, that everybody was really caught up in it, that it was a real celebration in which everyone was involved. If this is what they will have every day, then I think it will be excellent. Daily concelebration begins Wednesday, with a new schedule, but this does not affect me in the hermitage. I will continue to say Mass at 10:30 in the Library chapel and concelebrate on Sundays and big feasts. Some of the melodies seemed first rate to me. Brother Chrysostom as “Psalmist” was excellent. It was a great celebration. Everyone was lifted up by it. The community was really united, I thought.

  A brilliant, cool afternoon. I climbed the Lake Knob then went down into that quiet, pine-filled hollow I have always liked, read a little, sat in the sun, meditated, chewed. The woods were half bare, but the last maples were splendid. Everything was very silent, and I saw no one whatever except a novice in the distance, on the road, as I came back past the waterworks and cut back into the woods to the empty, very silent hermitage.

  November 3, 1965

  The comet! I heard about it yesterday in the monastery, went out to see it this morning, and went just at the right time. It is magnificent, appearing just at the ineffable point when the first dim foreshadowing light (that is not light yet) makes one suspect the sun will rise. Precisely the point vierge [virgin point]! This great sweep of pure silent light points to the sun that will come–it takes in a good area of sky right out over the valley in front of the hermitage. I walked down the path to see it well. It was splendid. I interrupted reading Isaac of Stella’s Fourteenth Sermon on God’s light and His joy in His creation.

  Last Thursday the Pope promulgated several Council Documents–on Bishops, Education, Priestly training, Non-Christian religions, Religious. I have not seen all the latter, only excerpts, but they are disappointing. Have not read the one on Bishops yet, which is important. Non-Christian religions–satisfactory I think. Certainly good that it clearly says we accept whatever is true in Buddhism, for instance.

  November 4, 1965

  Turned in Wulfric of Haselbury yesterday. There were fine things in it, and I want pictures of some of it. On the other hand this business of skipping through miracles with a suspended judgment and an eye open for historical sidelights is emptying and deadening. And I am not up to a completely devout and credulous acceptance of all in a medieval saint’s life on its own terms. The battle over his body (with the Cluniac monks breaking down the walls of his anchorage and tossing out the corpse) is enough indication that this was a different world, and one in which we certainly no longer live (for better or for worse).

  Today, a few quotes from Heidegger got me back on a serious and contemporary track. I cannot go long evading our contemporary confrontation with what is beyond logic, and my task is in this. However, in Isaac of Stella one feels a certain awareness of the “ontological reality” of the void and the nihil (nothingness out of which we are made is more than a mere logical supposition).

  Cloudy this morning. No comet.

  November 5, 1965

  Old fashioned idea: that the solitary life and indeed the Christian life is a struggle with invisible powers. All this is discussed even by monks. Yet is the Bible so far wrong? I think I experience it more and more: as to what these powers are, who can clearly say: but one experiences their persuasion, their use of our weakness to prompt us to choices which, if followed out logically, would wreck us totally. So much more than mere “prudence” is needed–and infinitely more than simple “personal responsibility–autonomy–authenticity,” etc. A superficial existentialism can be a disaster. I see it in my writings, once they are printed. Just my arrogant tone, and then extreme statements that could do harm, faults of perspective perhaps, and how can I complain if I am criticized? Yet I am often criticized for not being radical enough. Obviously I am a complex, alienated person myself and this can upset everybody. I must meanwhile go on seriously working out my own problems, but without seeking the transient satisfaction of laying down the law. That is why I am most satisfied with the article on the “Council and Religious Life” in New Blackfriars. There is no question that I am writing too much and this is the source of the trouble. And part of this is my inability to say “no” to those who request articles, reviews, prefaces, blurbs, etc. However, I do say no sometimes, I admit. But not as often as I should.

  Riches! The comet. I went out and though there was mist I saw it as it first began to appear. Later it became more definite and quite bright (what I am seeing is the reflection of the comet’s tail for it is now past the sun). A most beautiful and moving thing this great spear in the sky pointing down to the horizon where the sun will not appear yet for an hour and a half. As I watched, under the oaks, with acorns dropping around me, the bell rang in church for the preface and consecration. Three meteorites flashed across the sky in fifteen minutes. Two army transports growled and blinked across the comet’s path, and the stag cried out in the dark field beyond my hedge. Riches! I recited Psalm 18, coeli enarrant [the heavens proclaim]–with joy.

  November 7, 1965r />
  Jim Douglass sent a letter with a clipping in it about a pacifist who burned himself to death in front of the Pentagon–it must have been last Tuesday, All Souls’ Day! It was a protest against the Viet Nam war. They will probably try to write him off as a nut, but he seems to have been a perfectly responsible person, a Quaker, very dedicated. What can one say of such a thing? Since I do not know the man, I do not know that his motives were necessarily wrong or confused–all I can say is that objectively it is a terrible thing. Certainly it is an awful sign, and perhaps there had to be such a sign, but what if a lot of really pathological characters now do the same and confuse it, making everything merely another mish mash of absurdities. Certainly the sign was powerful because incontestable and final in itself (and how frightful!). It broke through the undifferentiated, uninterpretable noises, and it certainly must have hit many people awful hard. But in three days it becomes again contestable and in ten it is forgotten. O God, what a tragic world we live in! Meanwhile the Catholic Workers are all burning their draft cards…

  I went out on the porch before dawn to think of these things, and of the words of Ezekiel (22:30). “And I sought among them for a man that might set up a hedge and stand in the gap before me in favor of the land that I might not destroy it, and I found none.” And while I was standing there quails began to whistle all over the field and in the wood. I had not heard any for weeks and thought sure they were all dead, for there have been hunters everywhere. No, there they are! Signs of life, of gentleness, of helplessness, of providence, of love. They just keep on existing and loving and making more quails and whistling in the bushes.

  November 8, 1965

  There has been no rain for almost three weeks. The woods have been getting very dry. And I have been told of the monotonous succession of bright, hot days, walking among the stiff, paper leaves. I have been hoping and praying for rain. So this morning when I went out at dawn and saw the sky dark with clouds I was very happy. The air smelled wet and the pine needles in particular smelled strong and sweet. There may have been a light rain in the night. But at the end of the morning there was a good rain, while I was saying Mass (no server showed up so I said it alone in joy, with pauses where I felt like pausing). Then another good rain in the afternoon after I got back to the hermitage. The misty valley and wet woods filled me with joy.

  I have been preparing Raids on the Unspeakable for printing. A collection of short pieces some of which I am mostly rewriting. But today I wrote a few letters instead–to Eshelman in Peru, for example, and Sister Pascal in Haiti. The proofs of the Postulants’ Guide came and I was pleased with them–another innocent reason for contentment. Ping Ferry says there is a true air of war fever out there. I do not doubt it–but I hear only very little news. At Santa Barbara five of the drawings (signatures) were sold at the exhibit in the Museum.

  November 11, 1965. St. Martin

  A sad day. Learned this morning, again by special delivery letter from Jim Douglass (a day late) that a kid from the Catholic Worker [Roger Laporte] burned himself alive in front of the U.N. Building. This is fantastic and horrible. He was an ex-seminarian evidently. I cannot understand the shape of things in the Peace Movement or the shape of things at all in this country. What is happening? Is everybody nuts? This took place last Monday.

  I am so disturbed by the events, and especially the suicide at the U.N., that I sent a telegram to Dorothy Day and this telegram to Jim Forest of the Catholic Peace Fellowship.

  “Just heard about suicide of Roger Laporte. While I do not hold Catholic Peace Fellowship responsible for this tragedy, current developments in Peace Movement make it impossible for me to continue as sponsor for Fellowship. Please remove my name from list of sponsors, letter follows.”

  This thought came when I was asking Father Abbot permission to send the telegrams and naturally he was much in favor, but afterwards I wondered if I had been too hard on Jim and the Catholic Peace Fellowship. But with things as crazy as they are I cannot let my name be used by an outfit as unpredictable as that is, with kids likely to do anything at any moment. The CPF is right in the middle of the draft card burning and now this. Five from Catholic Worker burned their cards. One burnt himself. Totally awful, the suicide at least.

  Yesterday Dan Walsh said a newspaper man in Louisville was trying to get in contact with me–perhaps it had something to do with this affair. Sometimes I wish it were possible simply to be the kind of hermit who is so cut off he knows nothing that goes on, but that is not right, either.

  The world has never been so sick. Demonstrations. Counter-demonstrations. And all of it in the realm of signs and gestures, agitation–meaning what? The war in Viet Nam goes on and the only effect of the demonstrations is that the general run of people get scared and accept the war because at least it is familiar!

  At supper–read a few pages [in Les Grandes Amitiés: Souvenirs, reprinted 1965] of Raïssa Maritain on [Ernest] Psichari and his conversion. His delight at his progress toward Catholicism in the desert. All that is so familiar and comforting. Before World War I, written during World War II when all the issues were clear. And now nothing is clear–and as for Psichari himself, his love of the army and so on–it is seen to be an illusion. Was all that was clear equally an illusion? It is so comforting to read of him coming back to Mother Church, and to the continuity of centuries of Christendom. But where is all that now? What a void! We need a grimmer faith than he did!

  November 12, 1965

  This morning in my lectio came to Chapter 32 of Ezekiel–again the wonderful and awful solemnity of those scenes as all the kings go down into the abyss uncircumcised and killed by the sword. Is there some key to the mentality of our country and of our time? If there is I wish I had it and could open up something of a new understanding. It is badly needed, because the first thing we lack is insight. The most obvious and terrible thing about us is that we have almost infinite power and we are completely blind. The judgment of God hangs over us and we cannot understand.

  Today–fasted, chopped wood (pungent smelling hard red oak logs down by the stile, where leaves are thick on the path).–Finished [Sacheverell] Sitwell on Monks, Nuns and Monasteries and wrote a review for the Critic.9 I find more and more in Rilke, a very rich poet whom I barely looked at years ago when I was supposed to be reading poetry. Did I even in fact ever read much poetry in those days? It was cloudy, misty, sun coming and going. The trees are bare. The landscape begins to get ready for winter. It is deer season but I hope it will soon be over.

  November 13, 1965

  This morning where I was saying Prime under the pine trees in front of the hermitage, I saw a wounded deer limping along in the field, one leg incapacitated. I was terribly sad at this and began weeping bitterly. And something quite extraordinary happened. I will never forget standing there weeping and looking at the deer standing still looking at me questioningly for a long time, a minute or so. The deer bounded off without any sign of trouble.

  Victor Hammer got permission to come and see me, and he and Carolyn and I had a very pleasant visit sitting in the sun by the pine wood in St. Malachy’s field. They came by the new turnpike that just opened two weeks ago (that really was a fast job!). Spoke of a big blackout (power failure) in New York. I can’t seem to get much information about the comet. He is still working on his Resurrection picture. He looked very well in fact. Deliberately did not talk of peace movement and the Viet Nam War. We spoke of [Lewis] Mumford, who has a new book out. Victor is writing some autobiographical notes. Talked of da Vinci, etc.

  November 15, 1965. Feast of Dedication

  Pleasant afternoon yesterday (Sunday) going no further than the brow of the hill a hundred yards before the hermitage and looking out on the valley or down to the dim monastery in autumn shadow, through the bare trees.

  I continue with Rilke (and talked to novices of him yesterday)–often I can’t stand his mental climate when it is too adolescent. But when he is out of that, above it, beyond it, he is a great arti
st. Also it falls often short of the real depth and clarity of vision. He is blocked by cleverness, by emotion, by clogging sensuality, from really mystical apprehension (except perhaps in some lines of the Duino Elegies–but I am working on the Neue Gedichte). When he is objective (in his own way of being objective), he is great. Perhaps at his greatest in his Olive Garden poem–the agony of Gethsemani, which Catholics have probably read with severe displeasure as a denial of faith. Is it, though? Is it perhaps not a deeper realization of the loneliness of Gethsemani and a key to Rilke’s “unchristian” spirit, or a pointer to a solution–that he obscurely could not have a Mediator “outside,” he had to be completely identified with Christ, all is not perfectly “pure” but it is nevertheless all the more true. Did not Christ take upon himself the utter, inadequate forlornness of the unbeliever? But I admit I am getting into the tone and music of Rilke, and sensing the differences of mood and intonation (v.g., in “Gesang der Frauen an den Dichter” [“Song of Women to the Poet”]–lovely and funny).

  Evening–The concelebration was happy and beautiful for today’s feast. At dinner they are reading the Council’s Constitution on Pastoral Duties of Bishops which is very fine. I went for a walk to St. Malachy’s field–windy, grey skies, meditation. In the evening read of Psichari’s conversion and death in Raïssa Maritain. Tomorrow is the twenty-seventh anniversary of my own baptism. There is nothing more important than the gift of Catholic Faith–and keeping that faith pure and clear. Psichari had this. Today it is Péguy with his problems and ambiguities who is more popular–and people like Rilke who will not hesitate to sacrifice the purity of faith for an aesthetic effect. I do not underestimate the sincerity and difficulty of those who have problems of faith, for whom God is so easily “dead” all at once. But for my own part, the gift has been too great to be trifled with. The faith is not something that can be set aside while one is putting on a display of cleverness. One feels that this purity of faith suffers much more than it did then–there is a lot of good will; idealism, but much confusion and a sort of “why shouldn’t I believe this if I want to?” attitude. You pick your faith like your clothes!!