Learning To Love

by Thomas Merton

  Communication last week with Dom Simeon, Superior of the Chinese Cistercian community at Lan Tao. He is disillusioned with the American houses and foresees trouble for the whole Order. I agree with him. At the same time I think the restlessness is not fully warranted. One way or another, people are using the present situation to justify their own instability. I can tell because I have so often tried it myself in the past!! Dom S. spoke of Fidel Taparra, who was my novice (a Hawaiian), one of the first – who went to Vina, then to Lan Tao and left. Is now in the Navy.

  Burial of Bro. Paul this morning under a grey early sky, with the huge crane the builders of the Church are using hanging over the cemetery. The Church is still wide open to the winds and work goes slowly. Mass on third floor and a complicated procession through the South wing, winding down the stairs, through the guest house etc. At the funeral I suddenly saw Bro. Ralph, who left surreptitiously a couple of weeks ago – maybe more – with no money, in his work clothes, hitchhiked to Bardstown before dawn and then wired his home for money – went to Florida – was home almost before anyone knew what had happened to him. He was absolved, but for some reason the Abbot has made him come back and work things out so he can leave again legally – probably to avoid a black mark on the house in Rome? R. looked terrible at the funeral and I pitied him. He was evidently deeply depressed when he left and more so now he is back. I felt the abbot was in a way trying to “use” the funeral as an emotional cudgel on R. Did he perhaps look at him in one of the hellfire prayers? They were too far away. But Ralph was right by the coffin where the Abbot was.

  Rahner speaks of the devotion and love of a mother for a child as a possible example of a Christian charism, “a gift of the Spirit and of his unselfish love.” I wonder if M.’s nursing is not something like that (a gift which is being rather cruelly frustrated now by hospital organization!). Anyway R. says of these gifts:

  “Ultimately the whole Church is only there so that such things may exist so that witness may be borne to their eternal significance, so that there may always be people who really and seriously believe that these gifts here on earth are more important than anything else.” (p. 66)

  Charism of Christian artist, p. 67.

  “Ultimately only one thing can give unity in the Church on the human level: the love which allows another to be different even when it does not understand him ….” (p. 74)

  “A charism always involves suffering. For it is painful to fulfill the task set by the charisma, the gift received, and at the same time within this one body to endure the opposition of another’s activity which may in certain circumstances be equally justified.” (77)

  That is pure gold and especially important for now. And for the years that are coming. He does not mention also the opposition of those who are not of the Church – that is taken for granted. But they too may have gifts – divine gifts – by which they oppose us. Was there perhaps a hidden charismatic element in the “prophetic” work of Camus?

  K.R. goes on to say one must not “build a little chapel for himself inside the Church to make things more tolerable …” etc. (78)

  October 13, 1966

  So many things have happened in the last ten days or so. The death of Fr. Stephen under the tree by gatehouse on the 4th. I was among the little group kneeling in the grass to pray by him as he died. Then sat with Fr. Flavian saying psalms by his body in the post office before he was taken up to the third floor chapel. He was buried on the 5th with much singing of birds on a bright morning.

  On the evening of the 6th – Jacques Maritain, John H. Griffin, Penn Jones and Babeth Manual arrived. A wonderful visit. On the morning of the 7th they came to the hermitage (bright, cool). I read some poems for them. In the afternoon we went out to the woods. Late Mass for them all in the temporary exterior chapel which I liked. It was a beautiful mass, which as a matter of fact, to please Jacques, I said all in Latin and all in the old way. He was delighted. Began then reading his book – the new one – which he gave me in page proofs, Le Paysan de la Garonne [The Peasant of the Garonne]. It is perhaps a bit self-conscious: he is very aware of himself as “Le vieux [the old] Jacques” and half apologetic, but says I think some very telling things about the novelty hunters and the superficial advocates, change in a naively progressive way (“anything is good as long as it’s something new”). The morning in the hermitage was good because they liked the bits of “Edifying Cables” I read to them. That was encouraging. Jack Ford and Dan Walsh were also there, and they came in the afternoon too.

  Penn Jones has been working on the Warren Commission report and his book [Forgive My Grief: A Critical Review of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 1966], though hard to read – a mass of material without much form – clearly shows the commission neglected to investigate some very important things. Apparently this is now more generally advocated. It appears very probable that Oswald was not the only assassin – that he did not know the others – and that some very powerful people may have been behind it all. I read all this in one sitting Sunday morning, with rain falling on the hermitage – a drab day.

  Monday I had to go to the proctologist. It was a beautiful day. Raymond was along to see some other doctor. I found some good things in the U. of L. library – old articles on Camus from the immediate post-war years (1946–). And some [Gregory] Corso, R[obert] Creeley and others not so good (I still can’t read Charles Olson). I very much doubt whether I can or should get involved in this kind of poetry – or at least not with the people who want it. I’ve had enough with the pontifical Cid Corman. Maybe they all want to be gurus as well as poets.

  Downtown Louisville at the bar of the Brown Hotel in mid afternoon, drinking bottled beer and finishing a letter to M.

  Dan Berrigan arrived by surprise Tuesday – I was not expecting him until the end of the week. We concelebrated twice – once in the regular present rite, and today, with a new Mass he found somewhere which is very fine and simple. I don’t know how legal we were. It was a very moving simple English text (Canon and all). I think it was composed by Anglicans and has been used by them. Contrast to the Mass I said for Jacques, old style, last week. That was very sober, austere, solemn, intense. This very open, simple, even casual, but very moving and real. Somehow I think the new is really better – and is very far from anything we will be permitted here for a long time. I have nothing against the old.

  The gas heater was put in the other day, and it works all right, but smells bad. I prefer the wood fire – but can’t count on keeping it supplied. No bursitis at the moment because I have not tried to chop any wood.

  October 14, 1966

  Letter from Catherine Meyer at Harper’s magazine yesterday. My “Apologies to an Unbeliever” was to have been in the “Editor’s Easy Chair” (!!) for November, but was cut out for something else. Then she wrote:

  But there was a happening. There was a moon shot a couple of weeks ago, which did not make it …. General Dynamics, which had planned a two-page ad in Harper’s and other magazines based on the assumption that that particular shot would land properly, canceled. So poorer in money but richer in goods for the reader, Harper’s switched things around and placed the Merton piece in a just-beginning department called “How it is –”

  A dark October morning with clouds. Extraordinary purple in the North over the pines. Ruins of gnats on the table under the lamp. The letter preface to an American school edition, L’Étranger (preface of Camus himself) has things to say on truth and silence which have deep monastic implications. I must refuse all declarations and affirmations of what I do not fully and actually know, experience, believe myself. Not making statements that are expected of me, simply because they are expected, whether by the monastery (or monastic life) or by the peace movement, or by various literary orthodoxies and anti-orthodoxies or routine rebellions. If I renounce all that, there will be precious little left to say. But above all (as Maritain and I agreed) to steer clear of the futilities of �
�Post-Conciliar” theological wrangling and image making.

  October 16, 1966

  Three small harlequins – two sweetgums and a maple – stand bright against the dark background of pine and cedar. Dim brilliance of the woods on a grey day. [ … ] I am full of obscure lonely happiness because of her and because of the miracle of her existence. I tried to write a poem for her about it but the poem could come nowhere near. What finally started me off was this from Camus (in his Notebooks II – 274):

  Quand on a vu une seule fois le resplendissment du bonheur sur la visage d’un être lu’on aime, on sait qu’il ne peut pas y avoir d’autre vocation pour un homme que de susciter cette lumière sur les visages qui l’entourent …. [When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no other vocation than to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him ….]

  It is one of the most beautiful passages in all Camus and so well expresses my own deepest belief. One of the things that best justifies my coming to Gethsemani is the “light” I have seen on her face when we have been happy together – and the happiness that others had too because I am here. And what about my own happiness because she is who she is and she is there?

  I have been working I think successfully on “Edifying Cables” in the last few days. Reading some Milton. Got into Robert Desnos yesterday. Though he is less superb than Char he really moves me more immediately. Basil Bunting found for the first time yesterday – very fine, rough, Northumbrian, Newcastle stuff of the Kingdom of Caedmon. A letter from Gary Snyder says he may come here. He read 7 Storey Mountain, he said, when he was hitchhiking up the coast to a logging operation in British Columbia, some years ago.

  [John Crowe] Ransom’s exegesis of “Gerontion” [Sewanee Review 74 (Spring 1966)] is good but I think he has missed much of it – the acedia, the “night.” It is not mere indifference and falling away, or perversity.

  October 27, 1966

  Last week I went to St. Anthony’s Hospital for some X-rays (stomach). Had a room in the splendid new wing – a room filled with pure sunlight all morning. But it was a trial. M. was in Louisville for some exams – all her class of nurses had come back for them – she came to the hospital a couple of times, but I did not see her as much as I wanted. It was good to see her as much as I did (especially a week ago tonight, Thursday, when she came in a little late and everything was quiet). Still I had hoped and planned to see more of her – she missed her bus Wednesday afternoon when she could have had several hours free – and in the end I came back frustrated and disappointed – and aware that I can’t go on depending on much consolation in seeing her and communicating with her. And really, for the first time since April, I can see that the affair is no longer so intense, and I feel much freer. Yet I hate it to stop – I have depended on it so much. On the other hand it is time to get back to real solitude and out of this senseless contradiction that has made everything so wacky for seven months. I know we will always love each other but …

  Tonight walked up and down on the cool clear evening, in the full moon, meditating, enjoying the quiet, the peace, the cool silence of the valley, and the freedom. All I have ever sought is here: how foolish not to be content with it – and let anything trouble it, without need. True, the moon did make me think of May 5th at the airport – and that was something else again!! I can’t regret it. It still seems so obviously to have been a gift of God. But I can see I cannot make such things happen again by my own desire. It is utterly pointless to think that I can find for myself some happiness in loving M. or any other woman. Clearly that is out of the question, and I know it now, barely! I can love her for her own sake without demanding anything from it.

  Finished a preface to Nhat Hanh’s new book [Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, 1967], which is clear and interesting and ought to be widely read. Harper’s is publishing it – soon.

  October 28, 1966. Sts. Simon and Jude

  When I was in the hospital – last Friday – Jack Ford came over in the evening and we went to [Pier Paolo] Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to St. Matthew. Pasolini supposed to be a Communist etc. The actors – all ordinary Italian people, but with extraordinary faces. That is to say ordinary Italian people. Some of it was unforgettable. A Passion play on the screen, done very movingly and with a lot of verve and dignity – visual quality of Tuscan painting at times (without the color). But above all the faces! Anyway here was a certain truth, and not the phoniness of Hollywood.

  Reading Chateaubriand’s life of Rancé. This too is a fascinating work of art. Beautiful in its aberrations. A kind of harmony and order in its eccentricities. Power of his imagination forming all this into a credible and acceptable world. And I can’t help being moved, and remembering the spirit that was here at Gethsemani when I entered. A bit fantastic, manichaean perhaps, yet there was a certain rugged truth about it. Sure, there is another kind of truth here today. But the air conditioning in the new Church (right under the sanctuary!) is embarrassing. Of two kinds of falsity maybe the aberration of Rancé is preferable. I wonder if Gethsemani has any real future.

  And of course I have to face the falsity of my own life with shame. Not with drama. But obviously I have not been on the right road. The only thing that has kept me from much worse error is the protection of God – invisible and undeserved.

  Have more or less finished “Edifying Cables” but can’t say I like it. It is disturbing and false in many ways. It is not myself and I don’t know who it is. A glib worldly spirit. Empty voices. Still, as an exercise in writing (that’s all it is) I suppose it can go. I sent it off to be typed by Eileen Curns as I can’t get a typist here now in the cheese season. Monday five more left for Chile – I talked to Fr. Roman Sunday evening.

  October 31, 1966

  This weekend – momentous visit of Sidi Abdesalam, from Algeria. He came with Bernard Phillips from Temple U[niversity] and with a disciple (Sidi Hadij) and the latter’s wife who translated, as Sidi A. speaks only Arabic.

  I can’t begin to put down everything, I was so moved by the visit. This is a true man of God, also a man of an ancient and very living (Arabic) culture, and authentic representation of the best in Islam etc. etc. (all that one says sounds stupid – cannot touch the reality). His simplicity, humaneness, directness, friendliness, generosity, warmth etc. Overwhelmed me by repeatedly expressing a high opinion of me as a person, as one who has “arrived” etc. Which is a bit confusing and unnerving. How to account for it? What to do about it?

  Before he came I had a sense that he came as a messenger from God. He too had this sense. Perhaps the formal “message” crystallized around the fact that, having reached completeness and the “glass being full to overflowing,” it was wrong for us to be kept here “in prison” and that I was supposed to go out – to meet people (in his own way – the small groups, the individuals here and there – not organized conferences etc.). We both agreed there was nothing for me to do about it in the way of challenging authority. He just said Dom James would probably die or retire within a year – as if he were half joking. We’ll see! Later, reflecting on the visit alone in the warm October sun, out by St. Edmund’s field – I realized I had no desire whatever to go out or travel and my own preference would be to stay here in silence and peace. Maybe he’s wrong – all I can say is that if it is clearly God’s will for me to go out, I will go gladly. And God himself will make it clear when, where, how. It seems to me my call to solitude will make any traveling rare, exceptional, and semi-secret. No publicity etc. and very restricted contacts only. I don’t trust even this! And I have no intention of thinking about it for a minute or planning on it.

  All I can do is jot down points at random about A.’s visit –

  He said I am very close to mystical union and the slightest thing now can so to speak push me over the edge. (Felt it [at] Mass yesterday.)

  Fear of this on my part.

  His approval of what I said about the “New Law” and loving as a f
riend of God etc. Trust in God’s friendship – guided by the spontaneous norms of friendship.

  Sense of strong bond of friendship between us – I mean him and myself. “Sacramental” quality of simple friendship in our group, 5 of us, sitting in the grass on top of St. Joseph’s hill. A real experience of Sufism. I now see exactly what it is all about. Close to monastic spirit. Very close indeed in simplicity, spontaneity, joy, truth. Almost carried out of myself by last words of Gospel of Christ the King yesterday. Sense of blinding light, helplessness, overwhelming joy. My own nothingness, goodness of God to all.

  Optimism of Sidi A. not perturbed by state of this world as if there were a very special crisis. Things are what they are. See them in God.

  Sense of God present in us, with us, in friendship.

  He believes in importance of dreams. The dreams that impress one, not just the “gout dreams.” I spoke of my habitual dream of having money and being about to go somewhere. “Money is the scourge of man.”

  Above all, importance of knowing and following the voice of one’s own heart, one’s own secret: God in us. Deepening contact with source. Through a friend etc. who understands. Certainly this visit had that effect. A deepening, a clearing of the wells.

  Realism of his spiritual doctrines as exposed to the small group that came out to talk with him in gatehouse.

  I sense that he is a remarkably free man and he praised and encouraged my own freedom. Yet I do not feel perfectly free. Still hampered by too many fears. Including a mistrust of his high praise of me. Certainly he is sincere. But is he misled? Am I misled? etc.

  At the same time, some concern about M. I know we are slowly breaking up and that is as it should be. To try to keep up an intense intimate love affair when always so far apart – artificial and constrained, inevitably. I still love her deeply but it would be too much to say I need her. Even that I need to keep contact with her. On the other hand I suspect a change in her, a falling back into superficiality and ambiguousness. This troubles me. She is a mixed-up person with many conflicting trends and also a kind of triumphant selfishness that can knit all the conflicting trends together and direct them in the sense of some perverse interest of the moment. And there is ambivalence in her love for me. And there is in me a tendency to drive others in the direction I least want … Hence a feeling that I must be careful. I am not perfectly at peace about the situation. We could suddenly and with no good reason became destructive toward each other. That would be an immense shame, and I certainly don’t want it to happen. I pray that I may not do anything myself to bring it about.