August 14, 1967. Vigil of the Assumption
Said Mass quietly at the hermitage and fasted in the morning. (In the evening made too much rice and creole and am weighted down with it. No matter!)
Yesterday I went to concelebrate, under the impression that it might be the last Sunday Mass to be concelebrated in the 3rd-floor temporary Chapel. But after the Mass Fr. David, questioned by signs, said that no it would be a month or so yet before we moved into the renovated Church.
At the concelebration I was tense and depressed. I don’t exactly know why, except that I wished I were not there.
Tonight, I realize that I have too much let myself be influenced by people who are bad for me, and Dom James is one of them. There are plenty of others, perhaps worse, but he is the one who has the most decisively bad effect in some ways. Yes, it is probably counteracted and compensated for by the grace of the visitation. But he is a depressing and deadening force in my life, sickening, negative, sterile. I suppose I can still adapt to it and neutralize it. Rosemary Ruether says the most Christian thing I could do with Dom James would be to tell him to go to hell. She means I should leave. And yet I really have no desire to leave. Nor anywhere else I really want to go – except I think I would gain by getting out of this atmosphere and going somewhere to get a new perspective and maybe learn a few things I need to know. To get out of this stagnation.
But my own feeling about it is that I can be more really solitary here, and more careful about the things, people and ideas I open myself to here. The point of solitude is to preserve myself from a certain type of mental contagion. And of course I know a lot of the people I have been seeing are also not good for me either. On the other hand I do seem to be able to give them something. I don’t know. The whole thing is very deceptive.
August 15, 1967
Expressed myself poorly in yesterday’s notes. “Let myself be influenced …” I have always resisted any real influence from Dom James and reacted against it. But I let my life be controlled by him – as my vows in any case demand – but in so doing I am submitting to a dead and sterile conception of the Church and of monasticism. He is in “good faith” and is a “good administrator” but the situation is corrupting. One cannot avoid being harmed by it – and I am vulnerable anyway. Yet now I see I can’t leave here. And I don’t take credit for this as virtue. I have invested too much of myself in this place for better or for worse. And there is perhaps really nowhere else to go – to Ernesto Cardenal perhaps, but I am not for the Tropics at this stage of the game, with my vulnerable intestine, am close enough to dysentery here at times.
It is a bad situation but I am sure the way out is in the life of prayer and contemplation themselves. Not in sleep but in awakening. Not in death but in resurrection.
More notes from Dom Leclercq on his trip to Vietnam, Indonesia etc. Utterly frank and uncompromising observations on the corruption of the Church, of monasticism etc. – and all of it intensified by the Vietnam war and the American presence there. Sense that the Vietcong will win, and the results will be brutal, and that the people are simply and mindlessly making the best of the American glut while it lasts. And they are rotting in consequence.
But hope in the young, there as everywhere.
A young Redemptorist student read a statement on “poverty” which included the following:
“Surtout au Vietnam les religieux catholiques sont regardés par tout le monde chrétien ou non-chrétien comme une classe de bourgeois de villes … conservateurs et étrangers du monde actuel. Alors au lieu d’être dans le monde sans être du monde, l’église, ou plutot nous, nous sommes du monde sans être dans le monde?” [“Especially in Vietnam the Catholic religious are regarded by everybody, Christian and non-Christian, as a class of bourgeois of the towns … conservators and strangers of the present world. Instead of living in the world without being of the world, the church, or more particularly, we ourselves, are of the world without being in the world?”]
Pretty well put!
Hence the vow of poverty is no longer a sign of anything. “Le signe n’est plus un signe puisqu’il ne dit plus rien.” [“The sign is no longer a sign since it no longer says anything.”]
August 16, 1967
Faulkner’s judgment of the writer who continues to do only what he knows he can do well …
August 20, 1967
Andy Boone says that if you watch the wild turkeys flying South and see them in formation spelling out W-A-R – it means etc …. Fortunately there are no more wild turkeys. Or if there are, they seldom get together in large enough numbers to fly in formation.
Letter from Fr. Timothy. Because he was one of whose who protested against the air-conditioning in the new Church, he has been relegated to a couple more years in Rome – to study moral theology.
The Church will be reoccupied in two weeks, Sept. 3. The archbishop will bless the altar then.
Finished a piece on Auschwitz for Peace News. Deeply disturbing and depressing. Everything has been depressing lately. Perhaps also I haven’t been getting out enough. Yesterday was a grey afternoon, and rain threatened, but anyway I went out for a walk – after getting a haircut at the monastery and picked up my laundry bag (all the laundry bags have been renewed). Went out past the cowbarns to the lake at St. Bernard’s field. Everything lovely, silent, peaceful. I watched the green-brown water, rippled by steady wind, the red Virginia creeper on an old tree, listened to the quiet. Then walked back through the field saying Vigils for the Feast of St. Bernard. Felt a lot better. Deeper sense of prayer returned. On target again. I have been worrying too much about the “unhealthy situation” here. And of course it is unhealthy and my reaction to it is also unhealthy. The thing to do is find the slow, patient, delicate way of extrication which leads again to interior liberty, true liberty. I have that, but I realize I am far from being as free as I should be. There is a mental contagion here, to which I have been too much exposed and so I am sick, or let’s say allergic. My reaction to things is really an allergic one – a sweat and snot and life-stinging, breaking out, itching sort of reaction – especially to Dom James. Every time I see him now – and I have to see him once a week – ! – I come away with this psychic allergy. I have absolutely nothing to say to him – except formalities. Yet some talk is made and I feel we are not talking to each other but to people who aren’t there. We talk to our own obsessions. It is miserable. Thursday – with his usual beating around the bush – he talked at some length about some Indian bishop who was here. Wanted to see me. “Oh you know! Can’t I see Thomas Merton? Just curiosity etc. etc.” That I didn’t see him hardly mattered. The point of it all apparently was to get in a dig about celibacy. The B. had said the Hindus respected the Catholic clergy for their celibacy. Get it? He’s a year late, however. I was rather amused.
Later.
On my way down to concelebration went to the cloister round through the ravaged cemetery and the new almost finished Church. Stood in the empty nave (why two organs for God’s sake?) and it was beautiful. Quiet, calm, neat, simple, tall, airy, the old beams looking good, the sanctuary OK, mysterious with its window, but I suppose artificial light will do away with that. It is a good Church and what is good about it is due mostly to William Schickel and Br. Giles. I am glad it is finished. Some things I dislike: black granite ambo too aggressive, etc.
Then up to 3rd floor for concelebration, trying to resist the inner feeling of alienation, rebellion etc. Not very successful. But at least ashamed and knowing I was wrong. No point in all this self-pitying complaining stuff – only add more poison to the spiritual climate, which in fact is so much better than before the Council even here. Everything was much more human and relaxed. It was OK. What is there to be moody about? “Judge not,” I tell myself, “judge not, judge not!” But that is the trouble with capital “R” Religion: the juices of the medicine men get acting. There are shamanic secretions that do not accord well with the Eucharist. Even mine perhaps, but certainly some others. And one
feels all this being used for power, drama, “feeling,” “impact.” It upsets my stomach.
Evening.
Going down for conference. I looked again at the new altar in the evening light, close at hand. It is monstrous. A perfect Aztec altar for the sacrifice of the heart. Or a block for Druidical immolations. Black, squat, large, “tragic,” grim, black. No unbloody sacrificial meals here! This is for the real thing! And the throne – narrow, rigid, terse, fierce, for a presbyter with his fists on the two arms ready to spring up and grab the knife and rush at the victim. For a judge ready to bound up with a yell and pronounce sentence. Strangely it revives all the old grim and implacable spirit of the former Chapter Room throne – that of Dom Edmond and probably the other bloodthirsty ones before him. It makes me shiver.
Tonight I find myself half voluntarily wondering – and very uneasily – if perhaps I should not take thought in case – just in case – it might become suddenly necessary for me to leave here in a big hurry one of these days! A strange and dreadful thought in a way and yet it may not be altogether beyond the bounds of reason. There is a strange kind of madness in the air … or is it only my madness? Somehow I feel more lucid than usual, but that may be the ultimate deception.
August 21, 1967
What I wrote last evening was really crazy. But no matter. I wrote it and it needed to come out. Though I sat up late wondering about the idea, I don’t think it was serious, except as another indication of my inability to really fully identify with this place as an institution – and a realization that it is perhaps in some way slowly destroying me. Perhaps that is exaggerated. But I can see the day coming when I will probably be a semi-idiot in the infirmary, frustrated, stupefied, taking refuge from it all in a kind of defensive torpor, with occasional bouts of futile and hopeless arrogance.
On top of all that, today comes a letter from Rome – from the Abbot of Frattocchie [Dom Francis Decroix] who has just had lunch with Pope Paul at Castel Gandolfo, with one of his monks who has been a friend of the Pope’s in Milan. The Pope spoke of me – and that was very nice, sent a cordial message etc. etc. All very nice. Then the Pope spoke of the contemplative life, how much he expects of the contemplative orders, and now he wants a message from the contemplatives to the world. Some men in our Order are working on it and I was asked to contribute my ideas. On first reading I misunderstood: thought the Pope was going to send the message to contemplatives. Oh no! Contemplatives are going to send a message to the world for we are “the aviators of the spirit” (his phrase!!). Then the whole thing began to dawn on me! Such a nice idea of the dear Holy Father! But in what relation to reality? What am I doing in this mess? Let some Abbots get together and piously urge everyone to pray, fine. The interior life is a wonderful thing. Certainly contemplatives should teach the rest of the Church the ways of interior prayer. But the illusion that we are somehow specialists, know “secrets of the interior life,” and can easily formulate them in a document that will make sense – and be “safe” at the same time. A dreadful predicament. Not knowing what to do and having to answer fast, I put down the first things that came into my head, probably absurd and totally non-acceptable, a kind of Christian existentialist mishmash which will please no one and which they probably won’t even understand. Tomorrow maybe I’ll get down some notes on prayer.
August 22, 1967
A beautiful day. F[east] of the Immaculate Heart. Early Mass at hermitage. Reading on “Bantu Prophets,” i.e. the Nativistic Church split-offs in S. Africa. But above all Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying – certainly his finest work, far and away – a great work of art, on the highest level, perfectly put together, and with immensely important implications. To my mind one of the great works of all literature, comparable to the best in any field. Today I read the central part, the crossing of the river, and the chapter on Addie, which gives the key to everything, and was simply floored by it. I don’t remember when I have read anything with such admiration – it is so full of insight, irony and a whole view of language and reality that is so exact and pertinent to our time that it is breathtaking. And the roots of myth, the solemnity of it. Then the following chapter, the contrast, the little wordy minister hurrying to her death … The most completely damning pages on Southern Christianity in all Faulkner, not excepting Hightower and the other Church people in Light in August. This is so sharp, so exact, so final! This is a book I must study to write about. I have never seen anything written on it that came anywhere near being an adequate appreciation.
Toward the middle of the morning Bro. Maurice brought up drinking water. Then I went off to the other end of the field to see what is coming off with that bizarre construction of Bro. Odilo’s. (I can see the roof among the trees from my place and consider it an intrusion.) I suppose the best thing is to let the woods grow back and take over the top of that field so it will be hidden eventually.
In the afternoon after writing a couple of necessary letters, went for a walk halfway up Vineyard Knob. Read a little on Poverty in Sufism. The woods are pleasant but this year there are many gnats: they fly into your ears and nostrils and your eyes too if you don’t keep glasses on.
Anyway, today I am much less depressed, and had a peaceful meditation in the evening looking out over the valley from the field outside my gate where, apart from the road up, the weeds are in some places higher than I am.
“The man who has his mind set on enlightenment …”
Such a one does not need to worry about Abbots, commissars, etc. etc.
August 28, 1967
Last Thursday a letter came from Rome that in reality I was supposed to write the “message of contemplatives.”17 I should have finished it long ago I suppose, but I have had a bad attack of flu and spent most of yesterday in bed. A miserable weekend. Managed to write about half the “message” on Saturday. Then a Belgian Dominican, P. Walgrave, came and I talked with him a bit on Sunday, but was feeling quite ill. Monday it was very hard to get down to the Abbey and back, and when I got back to the hermitage I just went to bed. After I had slept a bit I made some tea, but was mostly unable to read – or think – or do anything except lie around and cough. A dry cough that simply shook my bones without breaking up any of the congestion in my lungs. Looked at a little book of pictures of Japanese tea ceremony bowls etc. sent from Asia House and was very moved by them – so I was still capable of human feeling. At that point things began to get better. Went to sleep again around six, and slept on and off for eleven hours, sweating constantly, and having some interesting dreams. (I was in Harlem – looking for a Subway to get back downtown and scared of being beaten up – but visit interesting places – a church – a white girl who was afraid of me when I asked the way to the subway – etc. Before that a curious “party” where the highball glasses were all on long chains so they could not be stolen! I am trying to fix a highball for a Negro friend with whom I went to Harlem eventually etc.) Very curious, vivid dreams.
Evening. It is quiet and cool. Sounds of locusts in the dark and voices of children playing over at Boones’. It is their bed time and mine.
This afternoon I finished the “Message” – and very early. I was surprised that it went so smoothly. I had been very anxious about it, especially since getting sick. Now, relieved, I feel much better.
I sit here and drink Linden tea before bed. It is still one of the best things I know of for flu, and I am glad I still have some left. Something I need always to have around!
The sickness has taught me something: first that I am perhaps too obsessed with reading and work – and I know the pressure of letter writing is too heavy. This morning, saying Mass later than I usually do, when the sun was up, I realize I have been losing – in a way – some of the best of the day with my nose in a book.
August 30, 1967
It has been a serious day.
The Church now being finished there is no more noise of machines from the monastery. The woods are once again beautifully quiet. Last night I slept badly for some reaso
n. Perhaps the pressure of working on that “message” and my own conflict about it. Today I read [George] Orwell’s fine essay Politics and the English Language [Evansville, IN, 1947]. How much the same trouble is found in my “message”! Semi-officialese.
I am more and more oppressed by the mail that comes in. So much of it is fakery or manipulation. People trying to get something on me or use me for something, even with the most “religious” of intentions (like Joel Orent and his insistent badgering about “fellowship”). So much of the mail shows the kind of moral brutality that is everywhere latent – and comes out so clearly in Vietnam.
Then there are the people who simply tell me to get my pants on and leave this place. Dungarees today. Clayton Eshleman. In a word I am bombarded by beggars, fakers, con-men, business men, and operators and good enough people who want to talk me into something I am absolutely not interested in.
Today I came to the conclusion that I am thoroughly sick of all of it. I am not going to let myself be opened to all that by any playing around in the general games. Once again – I feel the falsity of the statements, reflexes, reactions I have foolishly given out in the last few weeks. Certainly glad Martin Marty (NCR) changed his mind about my ideas on the race situation. (He said this summer’s riots and the whole reaction proved I had been right after all in “Letters to a White Liberal.”) Still was it necessary for me to reply? Maybe so. But perhaps in the future I’ll do a lot less of that. It would be better.
Learning To Love Page 36