I have been talking up a good fight about solitude, but the fact remains that I do not know how on earth I am going to live without ever seeing you, talking to you, being with you, loving you warmly and directly, pressing you to myself and kissing you. It will have to be, but I do not know how it is going to be, or how I am going to stand it: you too, I know. I suppose a lot of the abstract thinking in these pages has just been a ruse to quiet my anguish about this: when I stop thinking, the naked anguish comes back to the surface. Then I think, once again, maybe I was wrong, maybe I ought to have made some more drastic choice … Yet I do not believe, cannot believe such a thing either. But I want you to know how I really feel. Do not think that because I keep saying I can make it in solitude and even be happy, because I know it is what I am supposed to do, that I am not lonely for you. I am terribly lonely, in a deep anguish of loneliness and desolation without you. I need your love and your presence as I need light and air. How can I live without all that? Yet I have to, and you have to. God alone can give us the strength to do it.
(Friday Evening)
Since it is a feast day (St. John Baptist) I went for a walk in the afternoon. It was like walking in a furnace. I tried several places, and most of them were airless, burned, baked dry. Finally I ended up again at the place where we had the picnic Derby Day: it was relatively cool and all quiet, empty, lonely, with nothing going on at all except a wood thrush singing perfectly in the tall trees. Somehow I feel at peace in that place, and closer to you, and closer to myself, without too many cares.
On the way back, thinking about the last lines I must write on these pages before I come to town tomorrow, I wondered if there were some things I had to say. For instance, that though I will always love you, I want you to know you are free as far as my love is concerned. I do not want to hold you or possess you for myself. I cannot demand that your heart belong only to me. I know you will always have a special love for me, but though you have told me not to say this, I will say it anyway because I have to: I cannot possibly consider you committed in any way solely to me. That would really be an injustice and an absurdity. I want only your happiness and if that happiness means marrying and loving another, it is just what I want for you. Only one thing I ask: that all our life we consider each other most faithful, most loving and most special friends, united by a deep and unique bond that was made by God rather than by ourselves. It is on this level that I will always love you, always think of you, always want to know how you are and how things are going with you always be ready to help you if I can and if they will let me. I do hope we will never drift apart even though our communication may be rare and unpredictable. I don’t say I want to get sick or have operations all the time, but I certainly hope God will bring me once again into a hospital where you are. And perhaps in the future the superiors will ease up a bit and let me see you and receive letters from you again. I hope so. It would only be fair. Don’t lets get out of touch if we can help it.
And now for my own part, I do have to get down to my job of solitude. Though when you look at it too close it gets confusing, and there are no real blueprints for it. Still I have a feeling that I should measure up more to the traditional demands. God knows, I am solitary enough. Who knows what it means to be so utterly alone before God with decisions and choices that no one else agrees with or approves of, yet which conscience dictates. That is a much more frightening desert than one of rocks and sand where one is living an “approved” monastic life. But there is no use my talking about it. Even you do not agree with me on this, I guess. Nobody quite does. I have to find my own way, and it really is lonely. I can imagine how much more so it will be now, without you. But since it is what I have chosen and since it is the way in which I know I must travel, I don’t ask anyone to pity me or feel sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I just hope I can make it safely without too much folly. God will help. Pray for me darling. Your prayers will keep you with me.
It is usually a joy to finish a book. I am not able to finish this one and am not going to. Anyway, who says this is the end of it? I don’t. And if I make a point of “finishing” this – which does not need to be finished – it will look too much like good-bye. I don’t want it even to look like that. I do not even want to think of that. Let us just say that our friendship and or love have gone into a new phase …
I find myself back at the beginning. It is exactly three months since the operation. (Tomorrow is the 25th and the operation was on the 25th of March.) I will never forget that morning of March 31st. I will never forget that Wednesday in Holy Week, that rainy night when you came in before going to Chicago, and when we were too tongue tied to say what we almost knew. And the night after that when I lay awake and realized that I loved you. And that Good Friday when I decided to leave a note for you to write to me. (How glad I am that I did that.) And your first letter, with its “opening.” And my letter, impulsive and “intense” that began everything. How glad I am that all these things took place. How glad I am that they led to such wonderful days together. Such beautiful letters from you. And all the phone calls that finally got me in trouble, as I expected. What about the future? Who knows? But I cling to one hope: that future morning in heaven which the morning of March 31st “prefigured.” That is the beautiful day I live for. The rest is nothing but time to pass until the real morning comes. I am not patient. I don’t expect you will be either. Meanwhile, we have to both make it there. That is the important thing. And by the mercy of God we will.
Between now and then I will obey my nurse as best I can. I have got some barrels of fresh water here (there has been no rain, and this water is actually clean). The hermitage is relatively sanitary. I killed a wasp in the bedroom and sprayed it all with a bug bomb.
And I washed my feet good, and cut my toenails – straight.
APPENDIX B
Some Personal Notes
January 1966 – March 1966
Beauty and necessity (for me) of solitary life—apparent in the sparks of truth, small, recurring flashes of a reality that is beyond doubt, momentarily appearing, leading me further on my way …. They lead further and further in that direction that has been shown me, and to which I am called.
March 6, 1966
[Editor’s Note: Merton wrote on the right page of this small spiral notebook, occasionally adding quotations or notes on the opposite page. These quotations and notes are indented below and precede the entries they may elaborate.]
7 words:1 Death
Theology
Divine
World
Ethics
Purity
War
Work. January 1966.2
/ Text for Gethsemani picture book. [checked off and crossed out]
“Descent” for Der Xt in der Welt [The Christian in the World].
for Katallagete [checked off and crossed out]
Directory for Cardenal.
Monastic Spirituality for Hermits [checked off and crossed out]
Monchanin [checked off and crossed out]
Eremitism for Mon[astic] Studies
7 words for N. O’Gorman by May 1 [circled]
Preface for Cardenal [checked off and crossed out]
(?) Conscience, Church and World
for C[atholic] P[eace] Fellowship
Revise Peace and Protest for Continuum. [checked off and crossed out]
Notes on Rilke (summer perhaps)
Preface for [John C. H.] Wu.
/ Preface for [William] Johnston.
(Notes on Myst[icism] – Eck[hart] for R.B.S.
/ Franciscan Eremitism for Cord
/ Pref[ace] Jap[anese] Trans[lation] of Thoughts in Sol[itude]
[checked off]
/ Christianity and Humanism – for Journal do Brasil
by August 1.
(send July 15.)
A retreat is a kind of “cramp” in time – a paralysis induced by arbitrary and sterile reflection, a concentration on “yes” and “no” without motive,
but with greater deliberation and insistence. An act of force! Not this.
Perhaps the real function of a retreat is to help one appreciate time differently – by removing routine, but not seeking to replace it with some other special set of experiences.
i.e. not trying to experience oneself as making a “very good use of time” – that is by eliminating certain contradictions, or a feeling of contradiction, of being contradicted, of contradicting oneself.
Artificiality of retreat – special “awareness” of time created. The beginning – the middle days – the final day – and “what we are doing.” This is a help in so far as it creates tension (then relaxation). But tension for what? Merely for relaxation?
Retreat begins today January 18.
I do not have to go to conferences etc.
Hope to read more, reflect more, do no writing, certainly not letters anyway!
Perhaps change afternoon schedule – take a couple of afternoons off in the forest.
Perhaps reflect on some Spanish-American material – Nishida – Isaac of Stella – Desert Fathers (already too much, or and not and).
Time is measured by the awareness of something else, not just by a supposed “self-awareness of (the self in) time.” Time is quality not quantity.
Time in the affluent society: the instant is when one is real, realized by a pleasure, by a “taking possession.” (Neurotics become upset by this instant, and if they can’t possess themselves by “taking possession” – if it no longer means “reality” – they panic. For they see the void.) Art of living – art of moving from pleasure to pleasure, from intense moment to intense moment (dexterously using the gaps in between to keep the right momentum).
Is time-consciousness the product of our self-awareness at work? (Nishida). We take stock of ourselves as “formed” and “forming,” as “makers,” as changing our environment and ourselves. Our time sense is related to our work and where we are in it.
Value of retreat – realizing how much one “escapes” from “time” by activity. How much our work can be simply a desperate expedience for reassuring ourselves that we are “using time” well; “giving a good account” of ourselves etc. “Value” (?) of time is not in time but in clarity of thought: the moments when we see through time and everything else, and see our way “through” everything. Time is valuable only for the moments that cut across and through it vertically.
Yet these moments must not be sought and exploited only to reinforce a sense of absolute validity in our own ego-self. (For then they are not authentic.) They are to be moments of obedience to Him who wills to love in us (not separate from us but identified with us).
This means regarding poetry as more essentially my work (instead of an accidental pastime) in working. Poetry – includes Journal and poetic prose – records of poetic (creative) instants.
Modern man becomes aware of himself as “timed” and so working. To increase his self-awareness he systematizes his work – and complicates it too and multiplies activities which can be timed. His infinite ways of watching himself in movement (Slow motion movies, tape-recorder, etc.).
Yesterday p.m. (January 19) realized importance of a definite relationship of response to my Latin American friends, poets etc. Whether I ever go to Solentiname3 is accidental.
1. Answer letters. – Answer more letters in Spanish.
2. Read the books that are sent. Read many of them entirely, cover to cover.
3. Read important articles.
4. Use the dictionary for precision – don’t just get the general drift of the more universal language. (Yesterday – in good poems of Enrique Sanchez.)
To really know Latin American lit[erature] – poetry, history etc, in reparation for the incomprehension, one-sidedness of U.S. relations with L.A. I do know something of it – not nearly enough.
5. Purity of motives. (esp[ecially] as concerns imagination).
Another conviction: great importance of poetry in my life now. My “attention” must be total on the level of meditation, but also must be free for poetic awareness outside time of meditation: that is, less preaching, less editorializing.
Note where God revealed Himself and when.
After man had been a million years on earth or more.
After millennia of relatively peaceful, agricultural existence, village existence.
After the growth of the big valley cultures and the beginning of cities.
Where empires began to face each other in competition to dominate their “world” (Assyria – Babylonia – Egypt – Persia).
At the point where the clashing empires would often meet.
At the time of their clashing.
The word of God came to the people of Israel who were conscious of being drawn out of Ur and out of Egypt, speaking to them in terms of wars and cataclysms that were really not their affair, in which they were not to be actively involved …
Saying that it was the time of the end, the time of reckoning, conclusions.
God reveals Himself in the middle of conflict and contradiction – and we want to find Him outside all contradiction.
Too suspicious of poetry all along because of the narcissistic, romantic image of the poet having “special experiences”
Translating can be helpful here I guess. Not simply trying to respond more fully to life etc. (which is good) but also technically deepening awareness of the capacity of words, speech, “idioma” to be real (Octavio Paz). This not only in English but in French, German and Spanish. Particularly Spanish.
(January 20)
“The world where innumerable individuals, negating each other, are united, is one simple world which, negating itself, expresses itself in innumerable ways,” Nishida [The Unity of Opposites]. Importance of contradiction: the contradiction essential to my existence is the expression of the world’s present: it is my contribution to the whole. My contradiction and my conflict are my part in the whole. They are my “place.” It is in my insight and acceptance that the world creates itself anew in and through my liberty – I permit God to act in and through me, making His world (in which we are all judged and redeemed). I am thrown into contradiction: to realize it is mercy, to accept it is love, to help others do the same is compassion. All this seems like nothing, but it is creation. The contradiction is precisely that we cannot “be creative” in some other way we would prefer (in which there would be no contradiction).
Here N[ishida] is talking only of our historical self in the world of action – history (“from the formed to the forming”).
not – our physical being
biological self. (no creative freedom, no action – intuition).
“The individual is individual only in so far as it participates in the forming of the world.” 191
“Intuition separated from action is either a merely abstract idea, or mere illusion.” 208
But the acceptance means also work.
(Poiesis – artistic creative intuition)
“Our true self is there where our consciousness negates and unites [the singular acts].” Nishida
Yet the consciousness is not the whole self or the true self. The point is that the True Self neither is the conscious “I” nor is it the “not-I.” But it is not elsewhere than the “I” (which would make it “not-I”). The true self is, acts, is expressed in the meeting of “I” and “not-I.” But the “I” seeks to be the True Self by being, acting, expressing itself where there is no “not-I.” Yet where there is no “not-I,” there is no “I” for the “I” is aware of itself by negation as well as by position.
Frank acceptance of negation (nothingness out of which I am “created” – so that I “am” nothing in so far as I am only “I”).
I need the “not-I.” I need to reject the “not-I” in order to have distance from it, to “be.”
I need to eliminate this distance, in view of fruitful polarity.
This polarity is a work entrusted to me, which in many ways seems fruitless and irrelevan
t.
Hence I try to dispense with it altogether – but this means pure nothingness and is impossible (i.e. a nothingness “outside” and utterly “apart from” any reality).
It is the “nothing” in my being that must be accepted.
The acceptance – in God’s love – becomes pure creativity, insight, etc.
“action”
Obviously a duty of charity to help with the Collectanea, to give the weekly conferences asked of me in the community – but this is not really “work” and can be done in stride.
Mail – I can give preference to Latin American mail where possible, though more difficult.
Professio te eremitam devotio faciet evangelistam. [Your profession will make you a hermit, and your devotion, a spreader of the Gospel.]
– Peter [the] Ven[erable] to Gilbert. PL 189. 98.
What was said about L.A. poets, poetry, etc. above was too active, too busy. Certainly I will maintain friendly contacts and do some reading, keep informed. This human side of my life is important.
A hermit is essentially a man who has renounced an earthly future and plans – projects. Even Solentiname is no plan of mine and I think seldom and little of it.
January 29
Useless to simply substitute the “experience” of oneself as hermit for the “experience” of oneself as active, as a “monk,” as a “writer” etc. The same error is repeated in a new way. In reality the hermit life does imply a certain attrition of one’s identity. In context a word that implies “loss of” identity. This must also be resisted, one does not live alone in order to become a vegetable. Yet the resistance does not take the form of asserting a social and evident identity of one who is going somewhere or doing something special. A curious kind of identity, then: “In God.”
Learning To Love Page 45