In dreams there is only one great day to be celebrated. Its only reason is the other. You and I together make one holiday. Together we create the light of this day for each other. This is love’s Genesis, always beginning and never ending. We are at all times in the first day of creation.
I will no longer burn your wounded body. We do not need to weary ourselves grasping anything, even love: still less the bloody jewel of desire.
Why has God created you to be the center of my being? You are utterly holy and to me you have become a focus of inaccessible light. Suns explode from the light you spread through my guts and torn with love for you my cry becomes a hemorrhage of wild and cool stars. I wake with the knowledge of my whole meaning which is you. Our luck is irreversible. We are the chosen winners of sleep whose secret light is now clear to us after five or six explorations.
So yesterday, Ascension Day, was beautiful. She came out driven by another nurse in a light blue Ford, who came back to pick her up in the late afternoon.
We walked off into the woods at the foot of Vineyard Knobs, carrying things for a picnic, she with a bag of food dripping from the ice that was cooling the sauterne. Because of the dripping ice we could not go far – not to the place I had thought of, but just went off into the bushes and probably it was just as well because we were completely hidden – there was no special beauty to it and no one was likely to come there! It was good that we were hidden and totally alone!
We ate herring and ham (not very much eating!) and drank our wine and read poems and talked of ourselves and mostly made love and love and love for five hours. And though we had over and over reassured ourselves and agreed that our love would have to continue always chaste and this sacrifice was essential, yet in the end we were getting rather sexy – yet really instead of being all wrong it seemed eminently right. We now love with our whole bodies anyway and I have the complete feel of her being (except her sex) as completely me. Yet it seemed right because we do really belong to each other in our love (bad argument – it could justify anything!). Of course the grave thing is – this solemn and beautiful thing – that we are doing what lovers perhaps rarely do today – we are moving slowly toward a complete physical ripening of love, a leisurely preparation of our whole being, like the maturing of apples in the sun – and I suddenly realized I had never permitted this before – had always in my youth been in a hurry, and thought about it too much and tried to precipitate everything before its time. No wonder I was unhappy.
Now yesterday was this slow, gradual new stage of ripening, and the grip of this deep warm sexual love disturbing me and flooding through me, shaking my whole being from the heart (not just genital excitation) – and it was as yet only a little! But this is awfully serious, because here in spite of all we were wanting and saying, nature placidly and inexorably said something more profound and perhaps irreversible.
Yet I refuse to be disturbed by it. I am flooded with peace (whereas last Sunday the mere idea that this might happen tore me with anguish and panic). I have surrendered again to a kind of inimical womanly wisdom in M. which instinctively seeks out the wound in me that most needs her sweetness, and lavishes all her love upon me there. Instead of feeling impure I feel purified (which is in fact what I myself wrote the other day in the “Seven Words” for Ned O’Gorman).10 I feel that somehow my sexuality has been made real and decent again after years of rather frantic suppression (for though I thought I had it all truly controlled, this was an illusion). I feel less sick, I feel human, I am grateful for her love which is so totally mine. All the beauty of it comes from this that we are not just playing, we belong totally to each other’s love (except for the vow that prevents the last complete surrender).
And always in the end there is this enormous, unthinkable problem of my vow and my dedication which really come first and make the whole thing absurdly impossible. Yet she insists that she is totally mine and will never love anyone else. I have stopped trying to argue her out of this. And I know we will have to suffer terribly. But now I just don’t think of it, I cannot. There is all the reality and peace and beauty of yesterday. And I find that if my love for her is in a way less ideal, more incarnate, it is also more ideal. To have body and earth more in it is to have a better grip on what supports the true ideal (as in the poem “Proverbs Arise out of Dreams”).
Anyway, I love her more deeply than ever, and just can’t think about the future. It will have to take care of itself. God will take care of it.
Afternoon. Nevertheless, as always, I end up impatient of sex, backing away from domination by it, suspicious of its tyranny, and this afternoon I am turning with all my being toward freedom. I love her but do not want to think of her. I want to get to work, to write my conference for Sunday, to read, to meditate, to get the heaviness of passion off my mind. Once again too I want to eat, I have an appetite for the first time in two months – though I don’t expect it will get very far. Try some herring left over from yesterday perhaps, later!
May 21, 1966
Yesterday as time went on I saw more and more how foolish we had been and what a dangerous game we were playing and that it had to stop. The great wave of that love subsided slowly and left a rather stark expanse of mud-flats!!
In the evening to get away from it, began reading Walker Percy’s new novel [The Last Gentleman] and then finally called her from the Cellarer’s office after 8 when everyone was in bed.
She was writing me a letter, had been disturbed and was worrying herself and was badly wanting me to call. I was glad I did, because it was a long healing conversation in which we agreed that it had not been “bad” in itself but was clear[ly] contrary to what we are supposed to be doing and to what our love is all about. Both of us see clearly that to yield to sex would just wreck our love – we would have to break it up! There is no alternative. So we comforted one another. I saw she was afraid. She saw how grim I had become. But we renewed our love and joy. The only solution to our problems is to turn to each other and find strength [in] our love and start on our way again. But it is hard to love in this way, with all the gruesome, untidy contradictions with my monastic life and all the immense possibilities of all kind of trouble. Yet we are completely connected to each other; I reread M.’s last letter (17th) and it is heart rending in its beauty, its total gift of herself to me in God’s love, her sense that our two destinies are completely intertwined. This is an awful trust and it cannot help radically changing my whole life and outlook even though I remain here a hermit, even if we were never to see each other again.
I am not yet ready to face all the implications of this. They stagger me. Once again this is no game. This is deadly serious and we are playing for keeps, life and death are at stake, our salvation itself is involved, and immense suffering may come to be part of it.
It is in this way at last that God has finally cornered me into an inexorable gift of myself and I see once again that I want to evade it – or half evade it. I will certainly never take back my interior commitment to her. The problem is – the conflict between my monastic rules and my gift to her. This is agonizing already and we have to face it too. As yet, I simply cannot. But I have to get ready to do it – with honesty and the capacity to seek original solutions – but not just perpetual improvisation.
May 23, 1966. Monday
Called her again Sunday morning, but Sunday night moved up to the hermitage to sleep and the wonderful night made me feel more myself. The birds falling silent, then fireflies, then Scorpio coming up over the trees – deep silence. Today, the long early morning hours, reading, a little manual work (though my back hurt). There is no question at all that this is right for me. I am a solitary and that’s that. Sure, I love M. but can never interfere with my main purpose in life – and that is that. God knows! This aloneness, this freedom, this being without care, unconnected, with nothing to gain and nothing to lose! Nothing to explain.
Tonight finally some pictures of her that I had taken on May 5th and 7th came. They were charmi
ng but I did not spend much time looking at them. Our love is on a certain level serious … but there is something more serious yet, and that is this freedom from all special danger, all particular project. I called her in the evening, plans for her coming on May 30th seem to be falling through and I said, “Well, let’s skip it!” She said “What do you mean?” True it would be a whole day, but – so many complications and yet I do love her.
May 24, 1966
Lay awake a long time last night: what was that other call? She left the phone very hurriedly for something – evidently another call she had been expecting. That was a jolt and a liberation, and I was glad of it, though it was painful. And yet she is obviously sincere in saying she loves me more than anyone else, etc. etc.
Truth of the matter is that she needs me to need her. And that is exactly the last thing in the world I need: to be here in solitude with a “need” for someone else!! From the beginning I have been telling myself I wanted to help her with my love and I really do – on the other hand there is this involved and complex machinery of love one has to get into, with all its wheels within wheels, this leading to that and that implying this, etc. A wearying, delightful, endless involvement that spurs on and on and onwards itself and puts out threads that become inextricably tangled. What do I want with such a snarled up ball of string! All because of need. I suppose I want her to need me too. And I do want to help her if I can, not hurt her. If I drop her (and I suppose in a way I must – at least eventually), it must be gently and lovingly and not with pride (not seeking any kind of revenge!) and not flatly and forever. We will always be friends, and will always, I know, have a certain special love for each other, in our hearts. But all this business of phone calls, letters, visits, especially illegal visits and long periods dangerously alone in the woods – all this has to stop. Last night I thought: I could ask her to come Saturday instead of Monday, but will not.
The thing is that we do not meet completely in our love: it is partial, not whole. There are aspects of ourselves, sides of ourselves that come together, are in harmony, respond deeply. But there are other sides which do not. And where we do meet we try to pull ourselves wholly together and fail – each tries to envelop the whole self of the other – and this is where my own ambiguities come into play. My deepest self evades this and is jealous of absolute freedom and solitude. Hers too has its reservations – the freedom to love others and perhaps this is why we both protest so much about our love, the wholeness of it, the totality of it. Have any two people ever sworn to each other such total and unending love? I guess all lovers do. But do we really mean it? Are we in a position to mean it? I think we are desperately trying to persuade ourselves and failing. Why do we think it necessary to persuade ourselves in the first place?
May 27, 1966
All week I have been struggling with myself over M. The fuss Monday night turned out to be absurd. The long distance call was from her mother. And I was really looking for a pretext to get loose, which is very bad of me and not honest. I was ashamed of my tantrum, and we cleared it all up. Yet there is no question that I have got myself in a much more difficult situation than I realize. We got ourselves quite aroused sexually last Thursday and since then I have suffered a great deal of confusion, anguish, indecision, and nerves. There is no question that I cannot let this become a sexual affair, it would be disastrous for us both. It simply must not happen. Also she is too curious about all that – and too passionate for me (her body to tell the truth was wonderful the other day, ready for the most magnificent love). In calls and letters since we have agreed again that our love has to be chaste, and I know she means it and wants it, so do I, but we are not safe with each other, and I am disturbed about our meeting alone out here. We should not do it. Fortunately several occasions have fallen through and I cannot see her again until the 4th in Louisville. We will be safe enough there. I think, however, I cannot even be so free about kissing her etc. It is all lovely and healthy, yet it is not for me. I am a priest, twenty-five years a monk. I have given up this kind of joy, and now I see that I have been wrong to let this get as far as it has.
Yet the truth is we do love each other deeply, but that is no real excuse or justification. And there is still plenty of chance for illusion. I have to face it. She is a lovely, sweet person and in the depths of my heart I love her true self, for I think I know her well now, and she is a most precious person, to whom I am attached with all the power of my heart. But precisely because our love is so deep we can ruin each other, if not by sex, then just by nerves and anguish and sorrow at being torn apart, etc. I can see it is going to be a terrible cross for us both, and the only thing is to face it all honestly if I can. I am very aware of the temptation of easy, abrupt, dishonest solutions now. If authorities step in brutally and cut it all short that may be merciful in the long run, but I want to spare her suffering if I can and try to do this easily and lovingly – but sooner or later we will have to cut it down to a few letters, calls and visits if any very rare!
But at this moment we are deeply, terribly attached and in love and very concerned with each other. I doubt if I have ever loved any one so deeply or ever been loved with so much passion. The poems and letters I have written have only intensified all this.
I can see that it is going to go on like this now with questioning, anguish, moments of passion, joy, then more anguish. Better settle down wisely and peacefully to a long struggle in which we sweat out our passion and (if possible) simmer down to a peaceful, loving, lasting friendship that will sustain our affection for years to come. That is what we both want. I must really pray for wisdom and guidance. But I do love her deeply!
Actually, as I wrote her today, the only answer is sacrifice.
If we are willing to love each other in a spirit of true sacrifice, our love will endure and deepen and will be consecrated to God. If we fail, our love will soon be lying in ruins and we will both be very hurt, frustrated and ashamed. My objective now should be to prevent this happening at all costs!
May 28, 1966. Vigil of Pentecost
A bright, beautiful morning. Bro. Frederic is cutting grass in the next field with the whirlybird. They are going to build a hermitage for Fr. Flavian at the far end of the hill.
Today M. was going to come out and spend the day (illegally) alone with me in the woods but she did not get transportation, so went home to Cincinnati instead and I cannot help thinking it is very good she did not come. It would have been disruptive and would have led to more anguish. Too much stirring up of sex. What strikes me most of all is the wastefulness of spiritual energy that all this gets me into. I believe deeply in our love and I know that the spiritual upheaval is basically good and healthy, but I get all kinds of warning signals. I know not only full sexual consummation would be wrong and harmful, but also even the more or less “licit” lovemaking we have indulged in. It leads to an upheaval and a wasteful division of spiritual energy and ultimately to false and deceptive spiritual experiences (at the highest level), not to mention the plain nerves and anguish one has to go through physically. I must give everything I have to my real task. Love for M. is not incompatible with that task but it has to be left on a certain level. One on which both of us are helped, taught, grow, deepen, and do not merely squander ourselves absurdly, as we tend to do.
If our love can teach us this, then we will certainly gain by it immensely!
(Evening.) Spent a long afternoon alone out on the edge of St. Edmund’s field in the sun and for the first time since going to the hospital felt that some of the old peace and freedom – the sense of having no worries in the world and nothing to take too seriously because I don’t have to take myself seriously. Clearly M. is an occasion of taking myself seriously as well as her. But today I thought that if I really loved her as a totally full man, I would take neither one of us too seriously. Certainly not with all the silly anguished seriousness of the past few days, which is in reality no seriousness at all!! But I know again that I can be free, that freedom is
right there if only I want it, and believe me, I want it! And to want it without too much crazy need is to realize you have it, and that the things you worry about are pure illusions.
Today I see I have been a very great damn fool even more than usual. This is not M.’s fault – she just loves me, but that is a significant reason for me to be a damn fool, I suppose. But I should never have got in love in the first place. That too is the statement of an idiot, because this love had to be, and because I do not handle it right, I have to be foolish about it. To love with complete simplicity and freedom and not worry about consequences (trivial ones at least) would be much more sane. No, I have to worry and see all the problems. And I suppose they are not entirely illusory either! But they could be simpler if I were simpler.
This evening – John Heidbrink is bringing a Buddhist from Vietnam [Thich Nhat Hanh]. I go down to supper with them now.
Saturday night.
One thing I have got to realize. The extraordinary character of this love between myself and M. We really seem to be psychic, or to respond to each other in fantastic ways at a distance. Today she was in Cincinnati worried and lonely and feeling she had to some extent “lost” me, as I felt about last Tuesday. It turns out that Tuesday she was indeed very upset because a certain person was there, and he upsets her (past incidents). This communicated itself to me in some way and that was what I sensed, but I responded wrongly! In fact cruelly. She needed me and I started to reason out ways of delivering myself from this. She did not need me to need her. She desperately needed my love. And today too. When I start trying to free myself she feels it. I have got to realize that. I can’t trifle with this – we are too deeply involved in each other. It is a love too great for my pettiness and yet I have to measure up to it. A most poignant, distressed, loving phone call and I am so glad I made it, in violation of everything – also I am so glad of all that I have gone through this week even though I have been wrong.
Learning To Love Page 10