Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  One thing is certain: if I merely look upon solitude and “eremiticism” as a culminating monastic ideal, I will find only the delusions that are so frustrating everywhere else. The last thing in the world I want is to “be a hermit.” The image of the bearded man half-blind with tears, living in a cave, is not enough. (The grace of compunction which this figure is supposed to typify is something else again!) I come into solitude to hear the words of God, to wait in expectation of a Christian fulfillment, to understand myself in relation to a community that doubts and questions itself, and of which I am very much a part. I come into solitude not to “attain to the heights of contemplation,” but to rediscover painfully for myself and for my brothers the true eschatological dimension of our calling. No easy solution is permissible. This is a hard way and a way of faith, in which I must struggle to come into the right relation of obedience to the words of God constantly present in my heart, and rest in God who moves in the ground of my being, to make me grown in Him.

  “Haec dicit Dominus: State super vias et videte et interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona et ambulate in ea et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris.” [“Thus says the Lord: Stand on the roads and see and inquire concerning the old paths, which may be the good road, and walk upon it and you will find refreshment for your souls.”] Jeremiah 6:16

  “Probatorem dedi te in populo meo robustum et scies et probabis viam eorum.” [“I have given you as a sturdy tester in my people and you will know and test their path.”] Jeremiah 6:27

  Whole areas of my life meaningless–lava–not incorporated with any scheme–fighting for expression. Verbalizing won’t do, it is pretense–or not the verbalizing I am in the habit of. Try some other! Try to anyway maybe. Why? Perhaps the Zen way is better–(silence until the whole thing breaks and then there is one enigmatic word for all of it).

  I want to be = honest–simple–non-aggressive–pure in heart. Why I am not? Because I feel myself threatened. How?–I am vulnerable, insufficient, I need help, but if I ask for it as I need it, I will be rejected–another form of “help” will be offered, “they” will offer “help” at a price: pseudo-help. Granting of favors. Quid pro quo. The kind of help you get in a whore house. (Maybe that’s what I want.)

  The self-revelations of others: you see they are exerted and embarrassed by things that do not merit all that energy. Same with this? Yet in fact I feel it.

  Alan Ginsberg–I had his name corrected in the piece for Harper’s. Is what he says he feels so important–even to him? Is there any meaning to it? That’s what I mean about myself. Actually, the search is bogging down in individualism, “no issue.” You can search for 100 years and never come up with anything but more crap. (Diarrhea–a dynamism of helplessness. Acting out my despair.) (What is this despair? I don’t know.)

  What one needs to do. To find the place where prejudice is falsifying interpretation of life, is imposing a fiction and blocking real relationship, love, honesty.

  Too much emphasis on purity of conscience can result in corruption of consciousness. Begin first with consciousness–and this means foregoing self, and manifestation of life. Direct vision.

  Business and Madame Tadié. Sense of being obliged to play a game in which I have no interest, the rules of which I do not know–a game which is also very ambiguous because of the mentality of Marie Tadié. There are really two games. One the game of business itself. The other the game of her megalomania, her concept of her relationship with me (which is not clear to me), etc. Very annoying to be dominated by this woman. I am extremely sorry for her husband now! What hell he must go through. This second game, she herself does not fully know she is playing it. She puts it all into business and acts out. God deliver me! Chief ambiguity: under pretext of “helping” me she is exploiting me ruthlessly. The purpose of “the game” is to enable her to do this with a good conscience. I am afraid to tell her this because it would cause a typhoon. I want to break the whole thing off and can’t because after all she has been a “good agent.” I want to put all business in the hands of the publishers, and she does not want to have this happen–which looks fishey to me. The publishers have got to handle it. They are at least interested and that can give them a reason for putting up with all this stupid trouble.

  Why is it an impasse to me? Very much anxiety? Perhaps because there is something I want that I can’t let go of? I can’t think what!! Something is keeping me from acting with full detachment and freedom in this, however.

  Things come to the one who is open. If I am blocked it is because I block myself–i.e., am not open to what is “coming” (and perhaps unavoidable–but it brings my greatest good). What matters is not that “things come” independent of my volition, but that I can choose to be open or not. I can receive it or not.

  The willfulness of Marie Tadié collides with and arouses my own willfulness. If there were nothing there…Now is the time to learn. Probably a great deal of it boils down simply to monastic poverty, detachment from the world, etc. All this is too ambiguous now with the new tendencies. I listen to these too much perhaps.

  Tadié again–she is extremely sensitive to and looking for signs of (personal and emotional) rejection. Sin provokes rejection and it is by clamping on to and accusing evidences of it that she maintains and strengthens her hold, in so far as I am not in a position to drop her completely after all the admittedly good work she has done (and in which I am not that interested). A peculiar sado-masochistic tangle. I must learn to handle it by insight, objectivity, not just evasion. That is one of the things she desires and fears—evidence that I am fed up, want nothing more to do with her. And that is precisely what I “want” her to feel, provided I can cover it up nicely. That is what I have to get along without.

  There is no evading the fact that I am in solitude for real purification and this is no easy matter. It is not simply that occasions of sin and sinful wishes are removed (they are not totally removed), the wishes themselves have to be rooted out. This is inescapable. Unless it is faced, there is no remaining in solitude. Only with special grace can this work be done.

  But what are the real wishes?

  “Dedisti metuentibus te significationem ut fugiant a facie eius.” [“You have given significatio to those that fear you, that they may flee from his face.”] For St. Athanasius this significatio is insight.

  I am much more stable and peaceful when I read the Bible and the ancients, and not too much modern stuff, or exclusively that. The coherence of Isaac of Stella for instance, and the solidity of Latin and the modes of thought imposed by Latin. In modern books the mind runs ahead of itself, is crowded with images and information, is excited, incoherent, the result of agitation without depth–roots not solid.

  “The will can be bent to evil; that is natural to it by nature of its origin from Nothingness.” St. Thomas, De Veritate, A 22, 6 ad 3

  Importance of this principle of faith: “we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead,” II Corinthians 1:29. Must think this out more deeply and make it more truly the cornerstone–especially the last part. For if I have in mind the resurrection (rather than simply trusting God as Creator, Providence, etc.) much new light and strength comes from this in particular.

  This morning I got up eager to pray and then could hardly pray at all (October ’65).

  Monastic Peace

  Monastic Vocation and Modern Thought

  Climate Monastic Prayer

  Obedience and Monastic Renewal

  Eremiticism

  Baroque Monasticism

  Revise–Notes on Prayer from P.W.

  Work–Fall 1965. Winter 1966.

  Isaac of Nineveh

  Celtic Monasticism

  Book = other pieces to go with “Climate of Monastic Prayer” article–for Katallagete.

  When I see how few acknowledged a book I am less guilty about not answering when total strangers send their “works.”

  Need to resist glut of reading in early morning, stimulated
by coffee, etc.

  –Prolong meditation and deep reading before taking any drink or food and then read less and more quietly.

  Cross of sensitivity around sunrise–Lauds demanded this!

  Problem of over-defensiveness manifesting itself in disease.

  Question of the need to feel “justified” in the eyes of men. Value of my life called into question by someone who really has no sympathy for this sort of thing, thinks it a waste and an evasion–and in calling into question my solitude, calls everything else into question also. So I have to “be questioned” like this. I am subject to “examination,” and this implies, in its mild way, something analogous to an official torture–“examined” on a little rack of someone else’s objectivity, taken apart by him, etc. It is natural to want to explain and try to get him to see what he does not see, and does not want to see probably: the value of it for me as subject. That is first the question. It is not the authenticity of this value that is being really examined, but whether it is just for anyone to enjoy such a thing (the answer being “no” before the examination begins, so that guilt is a foregone conclusion).

  (In the night blessing of orthodox liturgy) “La journée vécue se présente d’emblée comme une parcelle de l’Histoire Sainte, de l’économie divine du salut où l’homme a accompli sa tâche a lui confiée par Dieu.” [“The day one has just lived is seen without qualification as a parcel of Sacred History, of the divine economy of salvation, where man has accomplished the task entrusted to him by God.”] [Paul] Evdokimov

  Directory–for Cardenal

  office–Night vigils–anticipate evening before?

  In any case–important to have Lauds at sunrise (begin before sunrise so Mass will start around Sunrise).

  Charity and organization. Illusion of setting up an organization first instead of letting the ground work be done by authentic and a total charity (i.e., forestalling problems that would test and incite to charity–that charity which can alone prove the group worthy of survival). (Institutional idolatries in those breaking away to make new foundations on their own lines.)

  Making others willing to see other and vital perspectives–and let go of obsessions and illusions with a merely partial view. Patterns of meaning–how held and how lived (background of philosophical struggles–existentialism vs. positivism).

  Contrast non-violence in civil rights with non-violence in peace movement.

  Creative Protest.

  1. Non-violence to be used not as a mere tactic–to gain publicity, to create an image, etc. nor as apocalyptic demonstration (pathology enters into both).

  2. Witness to living alternatives which are depreciated and which are in fact essential for the survival of a society.

  3. Spirit of response and dialogue. Reaction is not response. (Reaction to objects–response to persons.) Response awakens dormant truth in the other, perhaps a truth of which he has despaired. Response awakens hope in the other, not mistrust. Hope in the validity of the alternatives we offer.

  4. There will certainly be disruption, etc., because of fear of the consequences of accepting this. But where it is clear that the “witness” is creating only hatred and mistrust, then it is failing.

  5. Problems of non-violence in America. What is the fear of the squares? Weakness of non-violence protest in its “best” aspect. (Fear of being overwhelmed with weakness that destroys identity–war as an identity builder), fear of self-destruction.

  6. Doubtless, entirely new approach needed in peace movement.

  These notes written during argument with pacifists of FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation), etc., after Roger Laporte burned himself to death outside the U.N. (November 9 or 10) and Jim Douglass was upset–asking me to write about the peace movement–while I was not able to get information. Thought of resigning as sponsor of Catholic Peace Fellowship–realizing always that the way to shut up is to stop talking: recognize when it becomes incontestable evil to do so (no more explanations required by charity!).

  Difficulties I have had to face this last month (mid-October to mid-November 1965) are mostly due to things I have said. A degree of absurdity in this. And yet not. That a solitary should be tried by the consequences of speaking–and speaking in public. (And by the consequent inner struggle to determine whether or not I was justified in speaking.) Was I justified in saying all I said? Obviously no. Some of it was imprudent and emotional (telegram and letter to the CPF, etc.). These consequences must now be met and accepted with humility and realism–and difficult exercise of judgment. Acceptance of dialogue, obviously–this has imposed itself. I have opened a “conversation” that is in some respects bitter (Heidbrink). I trust Jim Forest to respond intelligently anyway: but there is this question of their interest in using my name, and to this they will cling mightily. (Calling me a traitor for withdrawing.) Yet the withdrawal on my part is dictated by the needs of my life. I can’t be a militant in the peace movement and a hermit at the same time. Especially since I can’t agree with all that various members of the CPF and CW (Catholic Worker) are doing or may do–if I am called to account for them. Meanwhile–I have motives to appreciate the value of shutting up, and will have to get there by talking. Absurd. But it has to be done.

  Jacques Ellul on the “contemporary” political man. “Il a la conviction de vivre en homme libre précisément parce qu’il vit dans l’instant…. Obéir au moment semble être la liberté. Prendre parti brusquement dans la dernière querelle c’est la vocation politique du citoyen le plus libre. Etonnante confusion, ne pas voir à quel point l’obéissance à l’instant, la reaction a l’actualité sont les plus radicales né-gations possibles de la liberté.” [“He has the conviction of living as a free man precisely because he lives in the present instant…. To obey the present moment appears to be freedom itself. Taking sides abruptly in the latest quarrel is defined as the political vocation of the freest citizen. What astonishing confusion, not to see to what extent obeying the moment and reacting to the latest events are the most radical possible negations of freedom.”]

  L’Illusion politique, 63–64 (December 10, 1965)

  I understand a dream I sometimes have–of having to play a role in a play–and not being prepared, not knowing the lines. Do I foolishly choose these roles?

  Need for distance, for the development of a new unexplored consciousness, which has nothing directly to do with the strategies of active movements and the proving of an activist conscience–yet is not akin to their struggles. Direct and militant participation is supremely ambiguous. Maybe if I am involved in agony of my choice the ambiguity will be fruitful. I have plenty of pains of my own.

  Psychosomatic symptoms, expressing perhaps doubt and reaction instead of secure faith and trusting response.

  My need for genuine interior freedom is now urgent. Yet this is something I am helpless to enter except through the Cross, and I must try to see and accept the Cross of conflict–to renounce myself by renouncing “my” answers and by restraining the urge to answer, to reply–in order that I may silently respond, or obey. In this kind of obedience there is never a full understanding of what one has to do–this does not become clear until the work has been done.

  Victor Frankl’s point that in the camps the prisoners who wanted to keep human had to take on their suffering itself as a task (individually and together) in order to give it meaning.

  Even when writing the inadequate “statement” on Peace and Protest, realized the big hole in it. The short version ok for public, says little. But I realize that I don’t know what to say. Actually it is clear to me that the philosophy, if any, behind most of the peace movement is exactly the sort of thing I am protesting against–the rationalistic and utilitarian spirit, the Bertrand Russell type of humanism. What does it end in? The drab valuelessness of the welfare life: (admittedly better than the Fascism and fanaticism, say, of racist areas). Of course one can’t generalize and I don’t know what the younger ones are thinking. Anyway, I see that my job is to get loose from the
mental tangle I got in by wanting too much to identify myself with a particular movement and with groups in it. They are not my dish–the mode of operation is not my way and there is all the nonsense in it that I am always declaiming against.

  I have used a lot of existentialist terms. I can already see how nauseated I will be with them when they become vulgar currency (Commitment, authenticity, etc.) and they are already vulgar. I am nauseated by the Secular City syndrome. But forget it–in a year there will be another nausea. What is the use of being in the silence of true words and letting in this noise? Yet I do not see quite how to manage the situation. With patience, it will arrange itself.

  For me–the betrayal I have to look out for is that which would consist simply in attaching myself to “a cause” that happens to be operating at this time, and getting involved, and letting myself be carried along with it, simply making appropriate noises from time to time, at a distance.

  The world embraced in the monstrous benignity and youthfulness of the American consciousness–a consciousness infinitely proliferated through its machines. Proliferated rather than identified. Does the horror of everyone amount to a recognition that all can easily be reduced by this mysterious persuasion? Who knows–maybe it will succeed, and the world will actually be American in ten years’ time. Then indeed we will have new problems.

  Drugs and the expansion of the “American” consciousness. Now the optimism is psychedelic. The drugged smile, the plenteous myth and witticisms. The eager irresponsibility. The cautious filing away of records. (CIA experimented with drugs but did not tell.) The American psychic orgasm. Now available to all. For a limited time only. Clip coupon and send.

  Points for Ernesto Cardenal January 1966

  1. Question of dysentery, etc.: to be further studied; see it stomach can be completely cured by time.

  2. Book to finish for Doubleday.

  3. Need for more time here to get into solitary life.