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“God acted as a father who has two daughters”

A theological rationale for the conquest of the Americas

       Writing 1571 in opposition to Bartolomé de las Casas’ advocay for indigeneous citizens of the Americas, an unnamed Spanish church official in Peru penned the following parable as a theological rationale for conquest:

       "God acted . . . as a father who has two daughters: one very white, full of grace and gentility; the other very ugly, bleary-eyed, stupid and bestial. If the first is to be married, she doesn't need a dowry, but only to be put in the palace and those who want to marry her would compete for her. For the ugly, stupid, foolish wretch, it isn't enough to give her a large dowry, many jewels, lovely magnificent, and expensive clothes. . . .

Diego Rivera, 1951, Palacio Nacional in Ciudad de México

       "God did the same for us. Certainly we were all unfaithful, be it Europe or Asia; but in their natural state they have great beauty, much science and discretion. Little was needed for the apostles and apostolic men to betroth those souls with Jesus Christ by the faith of baptism.

       "These other national creatures were God's but they were ugly, rustic, stupid, incompetent, bleary-eyed, and needing a large dowry. And therefore he even gave them mountains of gold and silver, fertile and beautiful lands, because there was hope that there would be people, by God, who would want to go to preach and evangelize and baptize them so they could be the bride of Jesus Christ.

       "This is what I say about these Indians, that one of the means of their predestination and salvation were the mines, treasures and riches, because we clearly see that where they are, the Gospel goes quickly and competently and where there are none but the poor, it is a means of damnation because the Gospel never gets there, as we can see that in the land where there is no dowry of gold and silver, no soldier or captain wants to go, not even a minister of the Gospel." —Toasts with the Inca: Andean Abstraction and Colonial Images on Quero Vessels by Thomas B. F. Cummins

Witness to villainy

An excerpt from Bartolomé de las Casas’ documentation of Spanish conquest in the Americas

       If you want to read about a European pioneer on Columbus Day, learn about Bartolomé de las Casas. His story is one of unfolding repentance over the course of his life in regard to treatment of the indigenous population of the Spanish conquest of the “New World.”

        Born in 1484, Las Casas first traveled to the island of Hispaniola in 1502 along with his father, a Spanish merchant. Initially he participated in and profited from Spain’s enslavement of the population. In 1510 he was the first priest to be ordained in the Americas.

Right: Statue of Bartolomé de las Casas in San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Mexico.

        That same year a group of Spanish Dominicans arrived in Santo Domingo, and they were appalled at the injustices. Specifically, the Dominican Fray Antonio de Montesinos expressed public outrage, which had a significant effect on Las Casas and, in time, prompted him to become an equally outspoken opponent of the conquest.

        Initially, one of the strategies Las Casas employed was to argue in favor of the African slave trade as a means of protecting the indigenous population of the Americas. He later regretted this course of action, writing in his History of the Indies, “I soon repented and judged myself guilty of ignorance. I came to realize that black slavery was as unjust as Indian slavery… and I was not sure that my ignorance and good faith would secure me in the eyes of God." (Vol II, p. 257)

       The following is a grisly account of the Spanish atrocities from Las Casas’ book A Short Account of the Devastation of the Indies (written in 1542, published in Seville, Spain, in 1552):

        “And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them.

        “They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.

        “They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike.

        “They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, 'Boil there, you offspring of the devil!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

        “They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victims, feet almost touching the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.

Left: Depiction of Spanish atrocities committed in the conquest of Cuba in Las Casas's "Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias". The rendering was by Joos van Winghe and the Flemish Protestant artist Theodor de Bry.

        “To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, 'Go now, carry the message,' meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains.

        “They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them….”

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Another world is possible

Introduction to "We Are the Socks," Dan Buttry's new book

by Ken Sehested

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood
and assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them
to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

            What Dan Buttry does in We Are the Socks is what he does better than anyone I know: Write vivid, easy-to-read narratives that are hopeful but not sentimental, honest but not cynical, revealing without being voyeuristic, personal without being self-serving, sometimes humorous but never silly. And the people he writes about, in these few selected episodes out of literally dozens of others from his global work, are not drawn from self-selected elites—the morally heroic or intelligent or ingenious. Mostly they are commonplace folk, drawn from every sort of circumstance, typical admixtures of hope and doubt, compassion and malice, vision and blind sightedness. Not your stereotypical candidates for sainthood. In other words, folk like us, like the ones in our churches and neighborhoods and families.

            What distinguishes the characters in this book is, first, they have experienced the blunt force of repression of one sort or another; and, second, they hold out hope for miracles, for the things that make for peace.

            Not miracles in the manner of Cecil B. DeMille movie-marvels or Stephen Spielberg special effects. And not miracles in the sense of abrogating the laws of nature. Miracles in the sense of utter surprise, of the completely unexpected, the hardly imaginable, coming to pass—joyously so, for those of low estate; horrifyingly so, for the high riders. The awe required for miracle-minders is the expectation that one day, in one form or another, the sum of our work will be greater than the parts. It will arrive, seemingly, out of nowhere. As the Prophets often noted, a way will emerge from no-way.

            “Peacemaking is not a matter of social engineering,” Dan writes, nor is it “ a technique to be practiced,” but is “an art in which turning points come through some action and words spoken that are completely unplanned.”

            This reminds me of an experience my wife had in her work as a maximum-security prison chaplain. One of her weekly duties was to accompany the Native American group outside for their prayer circle and passing the sacred pipe. (In a tobacco-free institution, this particular religious affiliation had become a popular choice.) On one occasion two of the men had sat outside the circle, talking, as the ceremony progressed. Afterward, Nancy pulled them aside as the group returned to their cell blocks, quietly reminding them that, first, their behavior was disrespectful and, two, that it was against prison policy (aimed at reducing coordinated gang activity).

            Juan went off, enraged, yelling and threatening. Some of the inmates heard and came back, making counter threats. The escalating rage stopped just short of a riot. (It doesn’t take much to reach a boiling point in prison, full as it is of daily humiliations that accumulate like metal shavings to a magnet.)

            Afterward, Nancy called Juan to her office. He arrived face still flushed with vindictiveness, ready for a confrontation. Without pause, Nancy asked him, “Juan, what is your favorite song?”

            “Huh?” he asked, not from lack of hearing but from surprise. So Nancy simply repeated the question. “What’s your favorite song?”

            The look on his face was incredulous, but he managed to say, “’Imagine” by John Lennon.”

            Now it was Nancy’s turn to be surprised, but that didn’t slow her. She immediately got on her computer and called up a YouTube recording of the song and hit “play.”

            What happened next was a 3-minute transformation of biblical proportions, all because of the improvisational skills of a conflict transformer (of diminutive size) who took a surprising initiative to counter “the realism of resignation to violence” (as Dan describes the work of one of his co-trainers, Boaz Keibarak, during a workshop in a conflicted area of Kenya).

            “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived,” the poet Maya Angelou wrote, “but if faced with courage [and imagination!], need not be lived again.”

§  §  §

            In my decades of work starting and sustaining faith-based peace and justice organizations I was occasionally approached by students wanting advice on how to take on this sort of career. I learned over the years to be blunt, saying that three-fourths of the work I did was not unlike what any small nonprofit administrator has to do: manage volunteers, craft and implement appropriate financial development strategies and project planning, maintain accountability structures, sustain communication tools.

            In other words, much peacemaking work is thoroughly unglamorous. And measureable success is hard to come by. The successes are often fragile and subject to cracks, even collapse. For instance, the mediation work among the Nagas of Northeast India, which Dan mentions in this work, is in its 20th year and still far short of the hoped-for transformation. Luckily, in that region are people who practice what German theologian Dorothee Sölle called “revolutionary patience,” a kind of patience that is not passive, that remains expectant amid the lulls of productive activity, that knows the engines of change can also run in reverse, that is not overly wrought when hopeful breakthroughs stall not far out of the gate, that is not so distracted by the lack of progress that they keep their eyes and ears alert to some moment of leverage easily overlooked amid the routine headlines and day-to-day tedium.

            Or, to switch metaphors, what is needed to sustain effective social change is what the Brazilian theological movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, in the context of a brutal military dictatorship, articulated as permanente firmeza, roughly translated as “relentless firmness (or resolve).” Whether referencing an explicit religious orientation or not, this characteristic can only be sustained by a vision of the future that does not sit waiting for us to arrive but is actively pushing its way through the crowded onslaught of history in our direction. Only those touched by this beatific vision know the truth of what Walter Brueggemann notes: “The empire always wants to limit what is possible to what is available.” Peacemakers are those forged in the fiery vision that “what is promised is more than what is possessed” (Brueggemann).

            Effective peacemakers are by necessity a durable lot, with scars—emotional and sometimes physical—as verifiable evidence of having counted the cost. Those on the Way of Jesus know the secret of success pulses in this line from the writer of Hebrews who wrote that Jesus, “for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross” (12:2). There is a saying in the Philippines, “Those who would give light must endure burning.” Being soaked in this joy is the only way to endure the flames of defeat, desertion, betrayal, and despair.

§  §  §

            To create an effective movement for redemptive engagement, reflective work must be integrated with affective learning in the context of a community of conviction. Mind and imagination must be addressed, and these must be tethered to disciplines of concrete and communal commitments.

            But, of course, the peace that must be made is not always way over yonder. (Dan deals with this in the “Where’s Our Chicken?” chapter.) The bloodless violence we commit in much more pedestrian and familiar relations is different in scale but not in substance from the enmity that sparks war. My vote for the most blistering text in the Newer Testament comes from James:

            “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed, but no once can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (vv. 5b-8).

            The most intimidating piece of peacemaking work I’ve undertaken wasn’t in a war zone. It was in my own home.

            It was late. I was tired. I’d not come near finishing urgent work prior to leaving town. I didn’t start packing a suitcase until midnight preparing for a pre-dawn flight. Nancy was up late, too, and similarly preoccupied and stressed. Something came up. I honestly don’t remember what. In a few short words we found ourselves pinching each other’s emotional sciatic nerves. We went to bed with our backs to each other.

            A few hours later I was in a state of deep unrest sitting in the airport waiting to board—knowing what I needed to do but dreading it more than a root canal. But finally I did. I went to a nearby pay phone [see Wikipedia for definition], dropped in a quarter, dialed our number and heard Nancy’s voice.

            “I’m sorry for last night,” I said.

            “Me, too,” came the response.

            We didn’t talk long. We didn’t analyze the conflict. We just raised affection-laced truce flags, implicitly admitting that the channel connecting our lives needed dredging. Acknowledging the murky water was the key to repairing the flow.

            I’m not suggesting that strategies for maintaining a good marriage are similar to negotiating a nuclear arms treaty with Iran. And there are a host of conflicts between these spectral poles needing attention, all of them requiring customized analyses and creative engagements.

            What each shares with the others is the requirement of risk, a risk powered by a realism admitting the possibility of miracle, plus the kind of fidelity that sustains patience in the face of seemingly impossible odds. John Paul Lederach, considered the pioneer of conflict transformation theory and practice, urges us to mobilize “moral imagination as the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”

            The future is not fated. Another world is possible.

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Reprinted with permission of ReadTheSpirit, publisher of Dan Buttry's new book.
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Allahu Akbar

A litany for worship inspired by Psalm 104

Let blessings leap from your lips, you People of Mercy!

For the One who saves is the One who serves.

Bring all that you are to this holy abode. Take off your shoes and lean into God’s breath.

Bring your heartaches and your hallelujahs; your disconcerting fears and your delightful fiestas.

Bring your grinding disappointment and your grandest dream; your seething sorrow and your side-splitting laughter.

Whatever you have, bring it here, lay it down.

For the One we adore is great beyond measure: Allahu, Allahu, Allahu Akbar!

 Clothed with majesty, the Blessed One lingers.

Awash in radiant light, God’s chariot rides the clouds, descending on winded wings, anchoring the earth to its bedrock of hope.

Come, joy; come sorrow, every day and every morrow, every vict’ry and defeat now embraced at Mercy’s Seat. Allahu, Allahu, Allahu Akbar!

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Background: “Allahu Akbar” is an Arabic phrase commonly translated as “God is great.” Many Middle Eastern Christians use “Allah” as their term for God. Others, especially in Egypt, tend to use “Al Rab” meaning “the Lord.” In 2014 Malaysia’s highest court made it a crime for non-Muslims to use “Allah.”

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

1 October 2015  •  No. 40

Special Edition
Quotes from Thomas Merton

Introduction: A special issue of “Signs of the Times” devoted to Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 – 10 December 1968) quotes was already in the works, to mark the centennial of his birth. But when Pope Francis, in his historic address to a joint session of Congress, lifted Merton's name for special recognition (along with three other Americans), it seemed timely to move up the schedule. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s "Introduction." For links to resources listed at bottom, go to this edition of "Signs of the Times.")

§  §  §

§ Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.

§ The flight from the world is nothing else but the flight from self-concern.

§ Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if earthly creatures were rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached form ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.

§ Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

§ To say “God is love” is like saying, “Eat Wheaties”. . . . There’s no difference, except . . . that people know they are supposed to look pious when God is mentioned.

§ Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see everyone and everything in the light of God.

§ I drink beer whenever I can lay my hands on any. I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.

§ The beginning of the fight against hatred . . . is not the commandment to love, what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commitment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.

§ The humble receive praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass. . . . Humility is the surest sign of strength.

§ What is the use of postmarking our mail with exhortations to “pray for peace” and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles. This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls “mocking God”—and mocking God far more effectively than the atheists do.

§ We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them.

§ Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.

§ Few Christians have been able to face the fact that non-violence comes very close to the heart of the Gospel ethic, and is perhaps essential to it. But non-violence is not simply a matter of marching with signs under the eyes of unfriendly police. The partial failure of liberal non-violence has brought out the start reality that our society itself is radically violence and that violence is built into its very structure.

§ Merely to demand support and obedience to an established disorder which is essentially violent through and through will not qualify as “peace-making.”

§ The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

§ Solitude that is just solitude and nothing else (i.e., excludes everything else but solitude) is worthless. True solitude embraces everything, for it is the fullness of love that rejects nothing and no one, that is open to All in All.

§ If war propaganda succeeds it is because people want war, and only need a few good reasons to justify their own desire.

§ Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await divine mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer.

§ Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

§ There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs: activism and over-work.  The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help every one in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

§ It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

§ Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the Jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go over on the far side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before. . . . It has been raining heavily. All the roads were deep in mud. It took me some time to discover the front-wheel drive. I skidded into the ditches and got out again, I went through creeks, I got stuck in the mud, I bumped into trees. . . .
        I drove the Jeep madly into the forest in a happy, rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and I said, "O Mary, I love you," as I went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushing madly into the underbrush and back out again.
        Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stern to stern. Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the Jeep out again.

§ A tree gives glory to God first of all by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be, it is imitating an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.

§ God has the most annoying manner of showing up when we least want; of confronting us in the strangest ways.

§ Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

§ If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God you have found.

§ The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all. To some, peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others, peace means the freedom to rob neighbors without interruption. To still others, it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

§ Where abstract thought and concrete existence enter into conflict, the mark of true contemplatives is that they are on the side of concrete existence.

§ The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.

§ A 1963 letter to French philosopher Jacques Maritain: I am putting into the mail a mimeographed copy of my "unpublishable" book on "Peace in the Post Christian Era." Unpublishable because forbidden by our upright and upstanding Abbot General who does not want to leave Christian civilization without the bomb to crown its history of honor. He says that my defense of peace fausserait le message de la vie contemplative [would falsify the message of the contemplative life]. The fact that a monk should be concerned about this issue is thought—by "good monks"—to be scandalous. A hateful distraction, withdrawing one's mind from Baby Jesus in the Crib. Strange to say, no one seems concerned at the fact that the crib is directly under the bomb.

§ Do not be too quick to assume your enemies are savages just because they are your enemies. Perhaps they are your enemies because they think you are a savage. Or perhaps they are afraid of you because they feel that you are afraid of them. 

§ It seems to me that we have little genuine interest in human liberty and in the human person. What we are interested in, on the contrary, is the unlimited freedom of the corporation. When we call ourselves the “free world” we mean first of all the world in which business is free. . . . It was only when money became involved that the Negro demonstrations finally impressed themselves upon the American mind as being real.

§ [T]he Negro problem is really a White problem.

§ The “death of the old man” [in the history of Christian thought] is not the destruction of personality but the dissipation of an illusion, and the discovery of the new humanity is the realization of what was there all along.

§ Buddhist “mindfulness,” far from being contemptuous of life, is extremely solicitous for all life. It has two aspects: one, the penetration of the meaning and reality of suffering by meditation, and two, the protection of all beings against suffering by nonviolence and compassion.

§ Be still: / There is no longer any need of comment. / It was a lucky wind / That blew away his halo with his cares, / A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

§ I don’t feel that I can in conscience, at a time like this, go on writing just about things like meditation, though that has its point. I cannot just bury my head in a lot of rather tiny and secondary monastic studies either. I think I have to face the big issues, the life-and-death issues: and this is what everyone is afraid of.

§ There has generally been no conception at all that whites had anything to learn from the Negro. And now, the irony is that Negroes are offering us a “message of salvation,” but we are so blinded by our own self-sufficiency and self-conceit that we do not recognize the peril in which we have put ourselves by ignoring the offer. . . . [Negroes] are offering us the occasion to enter with them into a providential reciprocity willed for us by God.

§ Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

§ The word of the Gospel is understood only when it is obeyed. It is known to those who strive to practice it.

§ The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.

§ When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.

§ When all the men of war are killed / And flags have fallen into dust / Your cross and mine will tell men still / He died on each for both of us / That we might become the brothers of God / And learn to know the Christ of burnt men.

§ The Negro spirituals of the last century remain as classic examples of what a living liturgical hymnody out to be, and how it comes into being: not in the study of the research worker or in the monastery library, still less in the halls of curial offices, where human being suffer oppression, where they are deprived of identity, where their lives are robbed of meaning, and where the desire of freedom and the imperative demand of truth forces them to give it meaning.

§ A white detective in Birmingham, watching the children file by the score into paddy wagons, gave expression to the mind of the nation when he said: “If this is religion, I don’t want any part of it.” If this is really what the mind of white America has concluded, we stand judged by our own thought.

§ In the end contemplatives suffer the anguish of realizing that they no longer know what God is . . . because “God is not a what” . . . but a “Who.”

§ At the close of what turned out to be his final talk, at the December 1968 interfaith conference of monastics held in Bangkok, Merton quipped: So I will disappear from view, and we can all go have a Coke or something.

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Have a Merton quote or anecdote or other resource to share? Offer it below in the reader comment section.

RESOURCES

Video resources on the web

Biography

  • There are more than two dozen Merton biographies. Of the ones I’ve read, Jim Forest’s Living With Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton (revised edition, 2008) is far and away the best. (While you’re at it, Forest’s biography of Dorothy Day, All Is Grace, is also my favorite in that collection.)

  • For an essay-length overview of Merton’s legacy, see Jim Forest’s “Thomas Merton’s Advice to Peacemaker,” Jim Forest

Also of interest. Bellarmine University in Louisville is home to the Thomas Merton Center. Their site also has a brief biographical sketch along with an extensive Merton bibliography.

Alas, I cut nearly three-fourths of my collection of quotes to maintain the parameter of “Signs of the Times.” That extra material is posted in this “More Merton quotes” file.

Special note on language edits. When alteration of the above quotes for gender inclusivity is relatively simple, I have done so. When such changes would generate awkward sentence construction or the piling up of words, I have left existing language in place. When language ceases to be transparent, calling attention to itself rather than the ideas being expressed, it fails. These are, of course, subjective choices. Unfortunately, there is no unadulterated language. (As Merton might say, this is why the deepest level of prayer goes beyond words—or as the Apostle Paul knew, some things require expression in “sighs too deep for words.” —Romans 8:26)
        Gender inclusive language itself is hardly sufficient, given its reliance on anthropomorphic imagery for God. And Lord knows what else. But that’s a discussion for another time. —Ken Sehested

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More Merton quotes

Supplement to the “Signs of the Times” special edition (No. 40) on Thomas Merton

§ It may be true that every prophet is a pain in the neck, but it is not true that every pain in the neck is a prophet. There is no more firmly entrenched expression of the false self than the self-proclaimed prophet.

§ The twofold weakness of the Augustinian [just war] theory is its stress on a subjective purity of intention which can be doctored and manipulated with apparent “sincerity” and the tendency to pessimism about human nature and the world, now used as a justification for recourse to violence.

§ While we learn to be humble and virtuous as individuals, we allow ourselves to commit the worst crimes in the name of "society."  We are gentle in our private life in order to be murderers as a collective group.  For murder, committed by an individual, is a great crime.  But when it becomes war or revolution, it is represented as the summit of heroism and virtue.

§ In the old days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blest fire home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as lamps came on in the windows of the farm houses, one by one. Even so the glory of God sleeps everywhere, ready to blaze out unexpectedly in created things. Even so God’s peace and order lie hidden in the world, even the world of today, ready to reestablish themselves, in God’s own good time: but never without the instrumentality of free options made by free people.

§ True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us only as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

§ The real freedom is the freedom to be able to come and go from that center (essence of you, spark of the soul), and to be able to do without anything that is not immediately connected to that center. Because when we die, everything is destroyed except this one thing, which is our reality and which is the reality that God preserves forever.

Left: Merton with the Dalai Lama, 1968

§ In the spiritual life there is no such thing as indifference to love or hate. That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable. It is hate disguised as love.

§ Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days—until you fold up and collapse into despair.

§ That is why pilgrimage is necessary, in some shape or other. Mere sitting at home and meditating on the divine presence is not enough for our time. We have to come to the end of a long journey and see that each stranger we meet there is no other than ourselves—which is the same as saying we find Christ in them.

§ I am sick up to the teeth and beyond the teeth, up to the eyes and beyond the eyes, with all forms of projects and expectations and statements and programs and explanations of anything, especially explanations about where we are all going, because where we are all going is where we went a long time ago, over the falls. We are in a new river and we don’t know it.

§ The real focus of American violence is not in esoteric groups but in the very culture itself, its mass media, its extreme individualism and competitiveness, its inflated myths of virility and toughness, and its overwhelming preoccupation with the power of nuclear, chemical, bacteriological, and psychological overkill. If we live in what is essentially a culture of overkill, how can we be surprised at finding violence in it?

§ God does not give divine joy to us for ourselves alone, and if we could possess God for ourselves alone we would not possess God at all. Any joy that does not overflow from our souls and help others to rejoice in God does not come to us from God.

§ Propaganda makes up our minds for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of those who have made up their own minds. And in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to.

§ Few of us have actively and consciously chosen to oppress and mistreat the Negro. But nevertheless we have all more or less acquiesced in and consented to a state of affairs in which the Negro is treated unjustly, and in which his unjust treatment is directly or indirectly to the advantage of people like ourselves.

§ For [French theologian Gabriel] Vahanian, biblical religion shows us once for all that humankind’s basic obligation to God is iconoclasm. That sounds wild, but it is only a reformulation of the first two [of the 10] commandments.

§ Life is not to be regarded as an uninterrupted flow of words which is finally silenced by death. Its rhythm develops in silence, comes to the surface in moments of necessary expression, returns to deeper silence, culminates in a final declaration, then ascends quietly into the silence of Heaven which resounds with unending praise.

§ You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

§ Too ardent a desire for contemplation can be an obstacle to contemplation, because it may proceed from delusion and attachment to one’s self.

§ You cannot be a person of faith unless you know how to doubt. You cannot believe in God unless you are capable of questioning the authority of prejudice, even though that prejudice may seem to be religious.

§ God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of God’s own Self.

§ To work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls “working out our salvation,” is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears.

§ People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

§ It’s a risky thing to pray, and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. If saying your prayers is an obstacle to prayer, cut it out. The best way to pray is: stop. Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not. This means a deep awareness of our true inner identity. It implies a life of faith, but also of doubt. You can’t have faith without doubt. Give up the business of suppressing doubt. Doubt and faith are two sides of the same thing. Faith will grow out of doubt, the real doubt. We don’t pray right because we evade doubt. And we evade it by regularity and by activism. It is in these two ways that we create a false identity, and these are also the two ways by which we justify the self-perpetuation of our institutions.

§ It is the love of my lover, my neighbor or my child that sees God in me, makes God credible to myself in me. And it is my love for my lover, my child, my neighbor, that enables me to show God to each.

§ When protest simply becomes an act of desperation, it loses its power to communicate anything to anyone who does not share the same feelings of despair.

§ Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

§ The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

§ Love is our true identity. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves along—we find it with another.

§ To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

§ The racial crisis in the US has rightly been diagnosed as a “colonial crisis” with the country itself.

§ “Freedom” cannot retain its meaning if it continues to be only freedom for some based on violent repression of others.

§ We live in a society that tries to keep us dazzled with euphoria in a bright cloud of lively and joy-loving slogans. Yet nothing is more empty and more dead, nothing is more insultingly insincere and destructive than the vapid grins on the billboards and the moron beatitude in the magazines which assure that we are all in bliss right now.

§ If for some reason it were necessary for you to drink a pint of water taken out of the Mississippi River and you could choose where it was to be drawn out of the river—would you take a pint from the source of the river in Minnesota or from the estuary in New Orleans?

§ Quoting Simone Weil: What is called national security is a chimerical state of things in which one would keep for oneself alone the power to make war while all other countries would be unable to do so. . . . War is therefore made in order to keep or to increase the means of making war. All international politics revolve in this vicious circle.

§ In Vietnam the US has officially adopted the policy that the best way to get across an idea is by fire and dynamite.

§ The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

§ Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

§ The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach each one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely "tradition" and not news, it has not been preached or not heard—it is not Gospel. . . . If there is no risk in revelation, if there is no fear in it, if there is no challenge in it, if it is not a word which creates whole new worlds, and new beings, if it does not call into existence a new creature, our new self, then religion is dead and God is dead.

§ And though the age is confused, it is no sin for us to be nevertheless happy and to have hopes, provided they are not the vain and empty hopes of a world that is merely affluent.

§ In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in God and to do whatever God wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of God’s reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.

§ I can come up with no better choice than to listen very seriously to the Negro, and what they have to say. I, for one, am absolutely ready to believe that we need them to be free, for our sake even more than for their own.

§ Prayers and sacrifice must be used as the most effective spiritual weapons in the war against war, and like all weapons they must be used with deliberate aim: not just with a vague aspiration for peace and security, but against violence and against war. This implies that we are also willing to sacrifice and restrain our own instinct for violence and aggressiveness in our relations with other people. We may never succeed in this campaign, but whether we succeed or not, the duty is evident. It is the great Christian task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends upon it.

§ Those who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on others, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and others who have less than they, or nothing at all.

§ We have to recognize that a spirit of individualism and confusion has reduced us to an ethic of “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” This ethic, unfortunately sometimes consecrated by Christian formulas, is nothing but the secular ethic of the affluent society, based on the false assumption that if everyone is bent on making money for themselves the common good will automatically follow, due to the operation of economic laws.

§ The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction. One is content with what is. One does what is to be done, and the more concrete it is, the better. One is not worried about the results of what is done. One is content to have good motives and not too anxious about making mistakes. In this way one can swim with the living stream of life and remain at every moment in contact with God, in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment with its obvious task.

§ The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

§ If I insist on giving you my truth, and never stop to receive your truth in return, then there can be no truth between us.

§ What is the place of Christians in all this? Do simply to fold our hands and resign ourselves to the worst, accepting it as the inescapable will of God and preparing ourselves to enter heaven with a sigh of relief? Should we open up the apocalypse and run out into the street to give everyone our ideas of what is happening? Or worse still, should we take a hard-headed and "practical" attitude about it and join in the madness of the warmakers, calculating how by a "first strike," the glorious Christian West can eliminate atheistic communism for all time and usher in the millennium? . . . I am no prophet and no seer but it seems to me that this last position may very well be the most diabolical of illusions, the great and not even subtle temptation of a Christianity that has grown rich and comfortable, and is satisfied with its riches. What are we to do? The duty of Christians in this crisis is to strive with all our power and intelligence, with our faith, hope in Christ, and love for God and humankind, to do the one task which God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for total abolition of war.

§ What we have to be is what we are.

§ Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

§ Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. . . It is in these that Christ hides, for whom there is no room.

§ When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.

§ Nonviolence must simply avoid the ambiguity of an unclear and confusing protest that hardens the warmakers in their self-righteous blindness. This means that in this case above all nonviolence must avoid a facile and fanatical self-righteousness, and refrain from being satisfied with dramatic, self-justifying gestures. . . . Christian nonviolence . . . is convinced that the manner in which the conflict for truth is waged will itself manifest or obscure the truth.

§ When ambition ends, happiness begins.

§ The whole meaning of the spiritual life is to be sought in love.

§ The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. . . . The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do God’s will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand.

§ The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference

§ When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes prayer.

§ Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

§ When we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

§ We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!

§ Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

§ There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion. It is the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily.

§ We have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of the truth when it is used as a weapon, and since it can be the deadliest weapon, we must take care that we don't kill more than falsehood with it. In fact we must be careful how we “use” truth, for we are ideally the instruments of truth and not the other way round.

§ Nonviolence seeks to "win" not by destroying or even by humiliating adversaries, but by convincing them that there is a higher and more certain common good than can be attained by bombs and blood.

§ What a relief it was for me, now, to discover not only that no idea of ours, let alone any image, could adequately represent God, but also that we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied with any such knowledge of God.

§ How crazy it is to be “yourself” by trying to live up to an image of yourself you have unconsciously created in the minds of others.

§ Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

§ If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved. And this cannot be done by forcing ourselves to believe in some illusion, saying that we are loved when we are not. We must somehow strip ourselves of our greatest illusions about ourselves, frankly recognize in how many ways we are unlovable, descend into the depths of our being until we come to the basic reality that is in us, and learn to see that we are lovable after all, in spite of everything!

§ It often happens, as a matter of fact, that so called “pious souls” take their “spiritual life” with a wrong kind of seriousness.

§ In March 1958, while in Louisville on Abbey business, Merton had an epiphany which would profoundly shape the rest of his life and dramatically reorient his understanding of contemplative life: In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.

§ We must approach our meditation realizing that “grace,” “mercy,” and “faith” are not permanent inalienable possessions which we gain by our efforts and retain as though by right, provided that we behave ourselves. They are constantly renewed gifts

§ Contemplatives are not those who takes their prayer seriously, but who takes God seriously, those who are famished for truth, who seek to live in generous simplicity, in the spirit. An ardent and sincere humility is the best protection for the life of prayer.

§ There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

§ What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.

§ Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving—born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way. Convention is simply the ossification of social customs.

§ The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

§ It is by desiring to grow in love that we receive the Holy Spirit, and the thirst for more charity is the effect of this more abundant reception.

§ The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous “talk,” or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep wills.

§ All who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of their natural appetites for pleasure and reputation and power, cut themselves off from that charity which is the principle of all spiritual vitality and happiness because it alone saves us from the barren wilderness of our own abominable selfishness.

§ If we wait for some people to become agreeable or attractive before we begin to love them, we will never begin.

§ If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

§ [I]t is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

§ Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

§ It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity.

§ Hell was where no one has anything in common with anyone else except the fact that they all hate one other and cannot get away from each other and from themselves.

§ As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them.

§ There is an absolute need for the solitary, bare, dark, beyond-concept, beyond-feeling type of prayer. Not of course for everybody. But unless that dimension is there in the Church somewhere, the whole caboodle lacks life and light and intelligence.

§ Writing about Boris Pasternak, Russian poet and novelist, after he refused the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958: On the whole our reaction was to admire Pasternak with fervent accolades: to admire him in the courage and integrity we lack in ourselves. Perhaps we can taste a little vicarious revolutionary joy without doing anything to change our own lives. To justify our own condition of servility and spiritual prostitution we think it sufficient to admire another man's integrity.
        Cold War addendum: In 2014 declassified documents reveal the US Central Intelligence Agency mounted a massive campaign in support of Pasternak’s nomination for the Nobel Prize, including buying and distributing thousands of copies of his novel, Doctor Zhivago.

§ [T]he conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion:  the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being, pseudo-angels, “spiritual beings,” people of interior life, what have you.

§ If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.

§ The last thing the salesperson wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our affluent society unless you are always just about to grasp what you never have.

§ When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and she saw that, in containing Him, she contained the world besides. The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres.

§ We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

§ Buddhism refuses to countenance any self-cultivation or beautification of the soul. It ruthlessly exposes any desire of enlightenment or of salvation that seeks merely the glorification of the ego and the satisfaction of its desires in a transcendent realm. It is not that this is “wrong” or “immoral” but that it is simply impossible.

§ The truth of the matter is that you can hardly set Christianity and Zen side by side and compare them. This would almost be like trying to compare mathematics and tennis. And if you are writing a book on tennis which might conceivably be read by mathematicians, there is little point in bringing mathematics into the discussion.

§ They [referring to participants in a walk from San Francisco to Moscow plagued with many difficulties] are all concerned about the fact that their own human failings and incompatibilities came out a bit. That is all right, though. It has to be that way. Another form of poverty that we have to accept. We have got to be instruments of God and realize at the same time that we are very poor and defective instruments. It is important to resist the feelings of resentment and impatience we get over our own failings because this makes us project our faults onto other people, instead of bearing their burdens along with our own.

§ Vocation does not come from a voice out there calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice in here calling me to be the person I was born to be.

§ Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when we deliberately turn our back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing ourselves to be lost . . . Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God. . . . But those who are truly humble cannot despair, because in a humble person there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

§ As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.”

§ To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

§ Peace demands . . . greater heroism than war.

§ Only those who have had to face despair are really convinced that they needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness.

§ If in loving [others] we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them

§ All forms of taking pride in ourselves have a dangerous potential in the spiritual life. If I make anything out of the fact that I am Thomas Merton, I am dead. And if you make anything out of the fact that you are in charge of the pig barn (a dubious distinction which I had recently received and which I considered to involve some kind of promotion in status) you are dead. The moment you make anything out of anything you are dead.

§ Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

§ War represents a vice that humankind would like to get rid of but which it cannot do without. We are like alcoholics who knows that drink will destroy them but who always have a reason for drinking. So with war.

§ We can no longer afford to equate faith with the acceptance of myths about our nation . . . [or] to equate hope with a naïve confidence in our image of ourselves as the good guys against whom all the villains in the world are leagued in conspiracy.

§ [In World War II] God was drafted into all the armies and invited to get out there and kill Himself.

§ We are in fact an adolescent society—a society that likes to play “chicken” not with fast cars, but with ballistic missiles.

§ Christmas, then, is not just a sweet regression to breast-feeding and infancy. It is a serious and sometimes difficult feast. Difficult especially if, for psychological reasons, we fail to grasp the indestructible kernel of hope that is in it. If we are just looking for a little consolation—we may be disappointed.

§ We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves.

§ Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affectation of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent.

§ Contemplation cannot be taught. It cannot even be clearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized. The more objectively and scientifically you try to analyze it, the more you empty it of its real content, for this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization.

§ We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from God, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

§ The bad writing I have done has all been authoritarian, the declaration of musts and the announcement of punishments.

§ I have learned that an age in which politicians talk about peace is an age in which everybody expects war: the world’s leaders would not talk of peace so much if they did not secretly believe it possible, with one more war, to annihilate their enemies forever. Always, "after just one more war" it will dawn, the new era of love: but first everybody who is hated must be eliminated. For hate, you see, is the genesis of their kind of love.

§ Is faith a narcotic dream in a world of heavily-armed robbers, or is it an awakening? Is faith a convenient nightmare in which we are attacked and obliged to destroy our attackers? What if we awaken to discover that we are the robbers, and our destruction comes from the root of hate in ourselves?

§ Suppose that my "poverty" be a hunger for spiritual riches: suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience—what then? . . . If my prayer . . . seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer will be my greatest potential distraction.

§ Christ is born to us today, in order that He may appear to the whole world through us.

§ One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politicians pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves.

§ It is not sufficient to forgive others: we must forgive them with humility and compassion. If we forgive them without humility, our forgiveness is a mockery: it presupposes that we are better than they.

§ If you want to know what is meant by "God's will", this is one way to get a good idea of it. "God's will" is certainly found in anything that is required of us in order that we may be united with one another in love.

§ Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

§ To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.

§ If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.

§ Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity. . . . I listen [to the rain], because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. . . . As long as it talks I am going to listen.

§ A Brother asked one of the elders: What good thing shall I do and have life thereby?  The old man replied:  God alone knows what is good. However, I have heard it is said that someone inquired of Father Abbot Nisteros the great, the friend of Abbot Anthony, asking: What good work shall I do? and that he replied: Not all works are alike. For Scripture says that Abraham was hospitable and God was with him. Elias loved solitary prayer, and God was with him. And David was humble, and God was with him. Therefore, whatever you see your soul to desire according to God. Do that thing, and you shall keep your heart safe.

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Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

The quotable Thomas Merton

Introduction to a "Signs of the Times" collection of Thomas Merton quotes

by Ken Sehested

My favorite definition of God is Thomas Merton’s:
God is “mercy within mercy within mercy.” —Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB

A special issue of “Signs of the Times” devoted to Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 – 10 December 1968) quotes was already in the works, to mark the centennial of his birth. But when Pope Francis, in his historic address to a joint session of Congress, lifted his name for special recognition (along with three other Americans), it seemed timely to move up the schedule.

Brother Louis, as he was called in his Trappist community at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, is likely the most influential American Catholic of the twentieth century. His bibliography exceeds 60 books, hundreds of poems and articles, some translated into at least 15 languages.

He is most widely known for one of his first books, The Seven Storey Mountain, which has sold over one million copies. Acclaimed for his work on prayer and contemplation, he also wrote passionately on civil rights, militarism, and nonviolence.

In rereading some of his work, I marvel, especially, at the way he identified the frailty of white liberal response to our ongoing racial trauma. (“Religion and Race in the United States,” a chapter in Thomas Merton: Selected Essays, is thankfully available online. See The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University for a biographical sketch and a complete bibliography of Merton’s published writings.)

Pope Francis’ choice to publicly name Merton along with Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln is stunning in a number of ways. Two were assassinated, one of them a Baptist pastor, the other who presided over the first contentious step in unraveling our nation’s brutal racial history. No surprise two others were Roman Catholics, but neither were ecclesial leaders. In fact, both gave fits to church hierarchies when they were alive.

In a 25 September 2015 “Democracy Now!” interview, Robert Ellsberg, editor of Orbis Press, the imprint of the Maryknoll order, expressed his own surprise.

        “[Pope Francis’ mention of Thomas Merton in his speech to a joint session of Congress] was the surprise for me. Just 10 years ago, the American Catholic bishops decided to remove his name from a list of exemplary Catholics to be included in a catechism for young adults, because they felt uncomfortable with him. He was a prophet. He was a man on the margins, who didn't fit into any kind of prefab Catholic Churchy kind of idea of holiness, although he was a Trappist monk and a priest through most of his life. . .

        “His own Trappist order censored him and wouldn't allow him to publish on those topics for some years. And he became, in some ways, a kind of a renegade, a kind of troublesome figure. He said, ‘I want my whole life to be a protest against war and political tyranny. No to everything that destroys life. Yes to everything that affirms it. . . .’

        “I'm sure there were a lot of people in the House [of Representatives, where the joint session met] who were scratching their heads at the mention of this Trappist monk. . . . It was interesting the way [Francis] used Merton as a figure of dialogue, of somebody who overcomes polarization.” (The interview and transcript are available at “Pope Francis Compares Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day to Lincoln and MLK”)

At least some in the US Catholic Church leadership are still leery of Merton’s influence. As Rose Berger wrote in a 25 September 2015 Washington Post article, just recently “the Northern California chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society attempted to host a talk by a Merton scholar and well-respected theologian on the topic of Merton’s interreligious dialogue. But the bishop asked the local Catholic Church to host it off-site.” (“What Pope Francis can teach the US Catholic Church about Thomas Merton”)

The great paradox of Merton’s life lay in the tension between his being, on the one hand, a cloistered monk, with a vigorous commitment to silence, and on the other hand a prolific writer. Initially, after making his final vows, he swore off his writing habit in favor of his Cistercian vow of silence. That resolve didn’t last, and in fact his superiors encouraged him to see his writing on prayer and contemplation as part of his monastic duties.

Merton’s attention to the life of prayer eventually did what genuine prayer always does—coaxing attention to God’s intention for a bruised and battered world. “Prayer does not blind us to the world,” he wrote, “but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see everyone and everything in the light of God.”

His superiors were not happy about his critical social commentary. Merton resorted to mimeographed circulation of his writing among friends. In a 1963 letter to French philosopher Jacques Maritain, Merton complained:

        “I am putting into the mail a copy of my 'unpublishable' book on 'Peace in the Post Christian Era.' Unpublishable because forbidden by our upright and upstanding Abbot General who does not want to leave Christian civilization without the bomb to crown its history of honor. He says that my defense of peace 'fausserait le message de la vie contemplative' [would falsify the message of the contemplative life]. The fact that a monk should be concerned about this issue is thought—by 'good monks'—to be scandalous. A hateful distraction, withdrawing one's mind from Baby Jesus in the Crib. Strange to say, no one seems concerned at the fact that the crib is directly under the bomb.”

Of course, it was his burgeoning dialogue with Buddhism that caused (and still causes) the most consternation from his orthodox handlers. That East-ward pilgrimage was cut short, in his 53rd year, after his first address to an interfaith conference on comparative monastic traditions held in Bangkok, Thailand. A final paradox: He died, electrocuted by faulty wiring on a fan in his room, twenty-seven years to the day of his arrival at the Gethsemani monastery.

The Pope was right to name Br. Louis—and Dorothy and Martin and Abraham—as especially bright lights in the cloud of witnesses, for this land and at this hour. We need to follow that lead.

#  #  #

•See the special "Merton Quotes" edition of "Signs of the Times," 1 October 2015, No. 40.

•An extended collection of Merton quotes ("More Merton quotes") is also available on this site.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

24 September 2015  •  No. 39

Bees catch a break. “A federal court has overturned the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of sulfoxaflor, a pesticide linked to the mass die-off of honeybees that pollinate a third of the world’s food supply.”
        “Because the EPA’s decision to unconditionally register sulfoxaflor was based on flawed and limited data, we conclude that the unconditional approval was not supported by substantial evidence,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel wrote in its opinion. —Taylor Hill, “Bees Have Their Day in Court—and Win Big.” Photo at right by Shutterstock.

Fast facts about honeybees.
        •Honeybees account for 80% of all insect pollination. Without such pollination, we would see a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables.
        •Bees collect 66 pounds of pollen per year, per hive.
        •Honey is the only insect-created food eaten by humans, and it is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life.
        •There is only one “queen” bee in each hive. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day.
        • All worker bees are female, but they are not able to reproduce.
        • A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth, to collect 1 kg of honey.
         View this fascinating video (3 minute) of the “honeybee dance”  For information on how to create a “bee garden” in your yard, see “Plant a Bee Garden—Create an oasis for bees and other pollinators.”

Invocation. “Prayer is more than something I do. The longer I practice prayer, the more I think it is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether I tune in to it or not.” —Barbara Brown Taylor

¶ “[Phyllis Tickle, who died this week] showed me that age is just a number, that it’s possible to be BFFs with someone half your age or twice it. Kindred spirits are generation-agnostic. . . . And in these last months, Phyllis has been teaching me about one final, very important (and yet not so important), matter: death. Mainly, that it is nothing to be afraid of. Death is merely the next step, the next part of the journey toward the heart of God. —See more of Jana Riess’ tribute to Trible

Another of this week’s obituaries is for legendary baseball player Yogi Berra, who is even more widely known for his mind-bending aphorisms (“Yogi-isms”), several of which made their way into common usage in the US. Below are four of my favorites. (See this USA Today article  for more.)
            •”It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
            • “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
            • “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
            • “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

In memory of one whose absence is still felt. "Absent now the countenance, the familiar / inflection, the identifiable measured / sound of steps, the scent of palm / and cheek. / Lungs, stilled. / But breathless?" —continue reading Ken’s Sehested’s poem, “Breathless”

Call to worship. "I am in Poland every day, on the battlefields. I am with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day. But I am also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window." —Etty Hillesum, writing from a Nazi concentration camp in World War II

Little Rock Nine anniversary. After weeks of resistance from Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, nine black students successfully enter Little Rock's Central High School on 25 September 1957 with protection from the National Guard and the 101st Airborne Division authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
        Here is a 3+ minutes video about the Little Rock Nine; and another 9+ minute video. —for more information see this profile of Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP, who was instrumental in the Central High desegregation

Mighty girl. “After 16-year-old Olivia Hallisey from Greenwich, Connecticut saw news reports of the devastation caused by last year's Ebola epidemic in West Africa, she became determined to find a way to help prevent the highly infectious and often fatal virus from spreading. In response, this inventive Mighty Girl has developed a new Ebola Assay Card which can be shipped and stored without refrigeration and detect Ebola in as little as 30 minutes.” —read the complete story

Intercession. “I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic / and she said yes / I asked her if it was okay to be short / and she said it sure is / I asked her if I could wear nail polish / or not wear nail polish / and she said honey / she calls me that sometimes / she said you can do just exactly what you want to. . . .” —Kaylin Haught, “God Says Yes to Me.” Here  is a video rendition of the complete poem (3+ minutes).

Does your liturgy ever allow time for this kind of prayer?

Another student initiative. “Columbia University has become the first college in the US to divest from private prison companies, following a student activist campaign. The Ivy League school—with boasts a roughly $9 billion endowment—will sell its shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in the United states.” —“Columbia Becomes First US University to Divest From Prisons” (Thanks, Rick.)

Grateful praise. “When there was no ear to hear /  You sang to me. . . / When there were no strings to play / You played to me. . . / When I had no wings to fly / You flew to me. . . / When there was no dream of mine / You dreamed of me.” —“Attics of My Life,” Grateful Dead

Confession. "To the Blessed One of Heaven does my heart heave its burden. / For release from my shame, I wait all the day long. / Silence accusers; still every sharp tongue. / For pardon amid failure, I wait all the day long." —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “All the day long” litany inspired by Psalm 25

Hymn of assurance. “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” an cappella jazz arranged and sung by Sam Robson

Emmy Award history. “In my mind I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” —Viola Davis, first black woman to win the best actress in a drama category, in her award acceptance speech, quoting Harriet Tubman, the 19th century abolitionist who rescued dozens of slaves, then struggled for women’s voting rights after the Civil War. In her acceptance speech, Davis went on to say that “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.”

Hymn of praise. “Nearer My God to Thee,” beautiful arrangement by James L. Stevens, sung by Brigham Young University Men’s Chorus

Today, one in five amputees in the world lives in Sierra Leone, the tragic consequence of the 1991-2002 civil war. “Amputee football is one of the few ways those affected can bond and transcend the war’s trauma. Watch this 47-second clip from “The Flying Stars,” an inspiring documentary from Al Jazeerz that brings world issues into focus through compelling human stories.

¶ “Free” enterprise, aka, the depths to which the language of freedom has sunk. “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Martin Shkreli, former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical mogul, after buying the rights to a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections and increasing the price overnight from $13.50 to $750. Several years ago, prior to being bought by different pharmaceutical companies several times, the drug cost $1.00 per tablet. —Tom Boggioni

In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then—down at the bottom—“Screw it, just make money.” —Barbara Enrenreich

The Bible uses a variety of words to denote the reality of “sin.” Maybe the best English synonym is “cluelessness”—as when Martin Shkreli (see above) responds to complaints with “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”

Can Iran be trusted? The better question is: Can we be trusted, given our national insecurities? How else to explain the case of Ahmed Mohamed (handcuffed, at left), the 14-year-old smart brown kid in Irving, Texas arrested when he created an ingenious homemade clock that school officials and police figured must be a bomb?

The axial moment in the Jewish Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) confessional liturgy are the dozens of lines that begin with Al cheit (“for the sins of. . . .”). The range of sins, from minor to mortal, is significant.
            But one in particular is “Al cheit shechatanu lefanekha betimhon levav,” which is best translated as, “For the sin that we have committed before you through confusion of heart and mind.” (Levav is Hebrew for heart, but in traditional Jewish culture the heart was considered the seat of reason as well as emotion.) —Mark Silk, “Why Yom Kippur calls us to repent for confusion,” where he challenges the opposition to the nuclear arms agreement with Iran by major Jewish leadership organizations in the US

Last week’s prayer&politiks post featured “Days of awe and Meccan pilgrimage: Reflections on the confluence of Jewish and Islamic holy days.” Here’s another reflection—“A rabbi and an imam: The story of Isaac and Ishmael can be a source of hope”—on the same subject.

¶ “The World’s in a Bad Condition” (when politicians, bankers and preachers are on the make), by bluesmen Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin. Here is the original 1939 version of the song by the Golden Gate Jubilee Quarter.

Preach it. "As believers we have parallel callings, distinct in their performance but woven together in their origins and growth. There is the call to sacrificial engagement with the world’s pain; and there is the call to relax into the confident quiet and stillness of the abiding presence of God. Their rhythm has its own ecology, its own alternating impulses, its own distinctive and mutually-reinforcing requirements and disciplines." —from Ken Sehested’s “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn,” a sermon for World Communion Sunday

Just for fun. Comedic lip syncing of Patsy Cline’s classic, “She’s Got You.”

Altar call. "We learn some things to know them; others, to do them.” —St. Augustine

Lection for Sunday next. “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn," a sermon for World Communion Sunday.

Benediction. “God be in my head,  / And in my understanding;  / God be in mine eyes,  / And in my looking;  / God be in my mouth,  / And in my speaking;  / God be in my heart,  / And in my thinking;  / God be at mine end,  / And at my departing." —Henry Walford Davies, from the “Sarum Primer, 1558,” sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “All the day long,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 25

• “Remembering the Future: Bright with Eden’s dawn,” a sermon for World Communion Sunday

• “Breathless: In memory of one whose absence is still felt,” a poem on the anniversary of a friend’s passing

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends

Remembering the Future: “Bright with Eden’s dawn”

A sermon for World Communion Sunday

by Ken Sehested,
Text: Hebrews 2:5-12 (The Message)

      The main title of this sermon, “remembering the future,” is a nonsensical notion. How can you remember the future since it hasn’t happened yet? Maybe if you love science fiction, or if you’re a fan of the actor Michael J. Fox, you can imagine going “back to the future.” But remembering the future?

      How silly is that, in a grown-up world?

      Maybe, in our growing up, we have actually grown in, grown in on ourselves, grown sour on the world, grown weary of illusions, grown cynical about pious propaganda—pious politics as well as pious religion.

      I believe, however, that remembering the future is at the heart of our redemptive calling. Remembering the future is what we ritually practice each and every week in the celebration of the Eucharist, communion, the Lord’s Supper. It’s a ritual to remind us to remember the future each and every day. We are by definition an unreasonable people—if, by reason, you mean the economic reasoning which generates extremes of wealth and poverty. If, by reason, you mean defense strategies that generate instability and terror. If, by reason, you mean the certainties which proclaim that you get is what you earn, that you are what you can buy, and that respect comes at the price of threat.

      We are, by definition, an unreasonable people, because we believe that another world is possible. We believe that one day mercy will trump vengeance. We believe we’re headed for a party, not a purge. We believe the meek will inherit the earth. We believe that what the poor and the abandoned need is not money but friendship. If we are to be co-inheritors with the meek, we’d best spend some time with them. For we have much to learn—much to learn about the faith we profess.

            Today is world communion Sunday. Our Presbyterian friends get credit for initiating this annual observance, back in the  mid-1930s. I’m not sure if it’s celebrated much outside the US. And that may be because much of the world suspects that “world communion” holds the same promise of what we call “globalization.” A globalized economy is supposed to work for everyone. “Everyone has an even chance,” so we’re told. But casino owners say the same thing, knowing the process is heavily tilted toward the house.

      Having said that, however, I’ve always thought one of the strengths of this congregation is its global vision. We have consistently made connections with people and events at a distance from our own neighborhoods.

      Early this past summer I rediscovered a small 4” x 6” notebook I used to record the offerings we received in the first year after our founding. In fact, the very first offering we took as a congregation was not for our own support. Our very first offering was a mission grant to Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization which was replanting olive trees destroyed by the Israeli army on the West Bank in Palestine. The total was $305.

      In case you didn’t know this, the Circle of Mercy budget process requires that our annual mission grants line item be equal to 10% of everything else in the budget. And that line item is the only one that does not zero out at the end of the year. Meaning: if we don’t spend the allotted amount, we carry that surplus over to the next year. We don’t do that with any other line item. We maintain this commitment because when finances get tight, most congregations end up cutting the missions budget. This commitment involves a spiritual discipline as well as a budgetary practice: Relinquishing control over some portion of our assets reflects our convictions about God’s alternative economy. It is a counter-cultural habit that testifies against the rule of hoarding.

§ § §

      There are a lot of courageous people in this small Circle. A significant percentage of you have taken risky adventures of faith which involved geographic dislocation. Just in recent years the Walker Wilson family spent 2 years in Colombia., tending the needs of the massive numbers of people dislocated by that country’s civil conflict. The Sigmon Siler family spent a year in Cuba, Mark working on the very first professional training for prison chaplains and Kiran, Joy and Leigh helping hosts other gringo delegations visiting the island. This academic year, Marc Mullinax is teaching in South Korea.

      Stephy has made several trips to Haiti, training grief counselors. At least 3 of our number—Mary Anne Tierney, Kaki Roberts and Rachel Berthiaume—have done Peace Corps tours. A couple years ago Will Farlessyost went on a Witness for Peace tour to Nicaragua. Joyce recently reported on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada regarding the treatment of indigenous people. Linda and Bill Mashburn have traveled countless times to Central America. Jane and Larry Wilson lived in Colombia for years, and LisaRose Barnes lived in Belarus for several years. Brian Graves grew up in the Dominican Republic. About half of our congregation—including many of our children—have visited our sister church in Camaguey, Cuba.

      This list is incomplete. If we were to start telling stories, there would no doubt be a lot more examples.

      But of course, “foreign” travel doesn’t always require many hours on a plane. Sometimes “foreigners” live close by. It’s easy to cross significant social, political and economic boundaries without leaving town, much less the country.

      Missy Harris has volunteered at the Haywood Street Congregation, whose membership includes a good many homeless folk. Tamara Puffer is part of a Homeward Bound team helping the homeless into permanent housing. As part of his ministry, Louis Parrish maintains daily contact with a 101-year-old woman in Swannanoa who has no family. At least once each year David Privette volunteers at a camp for young people living with serious illness or disability.

      A number of you have been advocates for the undocumented, none more than Tim Nolan. Mahan Siler is a regular volunteer at Marion Correctional Institution, and Mark Siler at the Buncombe County Jail. Chris Berthiaume and Tyrone Greenlee are both key leaders in Just Economics, which , among many other things, provides an economic literary training series each year—and each year, Jo Hauser has organized an evening meal for the group. I think Tracey Whitehead has raised money for about half the nonprofit organizations in town. Greg Yost has labored and lobbied and stood in courtroom defendants’ chairs several times—and jail cells as well—as an advocate of the earth’s health and well-being.

      Holly Jones is likely the most intelligent, compassionate and competent public servant in the state. Jessica and Rich Mark gave away to local nonprofits $9,000 of the profits from the small business they created. (You can’t get more unreasonable than that!) Just recently, Sabrina Ip offered many nights of assistance helping Brian and Beth care for their twin babies. And Rachel Rasmussen returned to us after a year volunteering a Jubilee Partners, welcoming refugees from war-torn countries find a safe haven.

      Several in the congregation have maintained close contact with Wiley Dobbs, our only member serving time on death row. And supporting LGBT young people. Each year all our kids make cards for prisoners on Valentine’s Day—for some inmates, the only correspondence they receive; and cookies for the annual Christmas program. A little sugar goes a long way in prison cafeterias.

      Dozens of you volunteer in public schools, at MANNA Foodbank, with Room in the Inn and a host of other organizations committed to the common good of our city, of our nation, of the whole-wide world.

      Truth is, the majority of our acts of healing, our stands for justice, our pursuit of peace are anonymous, attracting no applause, no news reporters, rarely acknowledgment of any kind. Except in the heart of God. (Ethics is, as they say, what you do when no one is looking.)

      I could stand here all evening just telling you other specific examples. And I’m quite sure I don’t know the half of it. But you get the point.

§ § §

      Many of you have seen the bumper sticker: The first line boldly proclaims, “Jesus is coming back soon!”

      The second line adds: “Look busy!!”

      Going and serving and telling the goodness of the news of grace and mercy we have come to experience in our own lives is surely part of our mission. But part of our mission is also learning to not be so busy, to be still and know, to opt out of the rat race, to come to experience the sheer relief of knowing the world’s healing is not finally up to us. Being exhausted in the world of nonprofit work can be as deafening as exhaustion in the for-profit world.

      As believers we have parallel callings, distinct in their performance but woven together in their origins and growth. There is the call to sacrificial engagement with the world’s pain; and there is the call to relaxing into the confident quiet and stillness of the abiding presence of God. Their rhythm has its own ecology, its own alternating impulses, its own distinctive and mutually-reinforcing requirements and disciplines. The deeper we dig into our own souls, discovering the DNA of God’s love, the more loving, and forgiving, we will be in the world. And the more loving and forgiving we are in the world helps us dig deeper into the love of God. Neither precedes the other. Neither is more important than the other. The joining of these two are linked as much as breathing in and breathing out.

      And the only way we can get it right is to remember the future, a future that in the book of Hebrews is referred to as “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” (The Message)

      The secret to our sacramental vision, the secret that inspires our conviction that heaven’s regard has not abandoned earth’s remorse, is that the future is not determined by the past. If that were true, surely we all would burn in hell.

      The Greek word that describes the early church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper is anamnesis. If you look it up in the dictionary, it means “a recollection of past events” or a “reminiscence.”  It’s true that when we gather for communion we always tell a particular story, of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples. This is not a generic religious ritual. We are people of a particular story, though we believe the story to have global and even cosmic significance.

      But we don’t simply reminiscence: yeah, so-and-so did such-and-such around some Palestinian dinner table back in the day. Anamnesis is more that historical accounting. Anamnesis means to re-member, to put the pieces back together, to be animated with the same Spirit which drove Jesus to his confrontation with the authorities. It was not a confrontation he desired. The next to last prayer he said before his death was “let this cup pass from me,” which is fancy way of saying: Get me outta’ here!

      Elsewhere in the Book of Hebrews the text returns to the image of Jesus as the “pioneer” of our faith, and goes on to say that “for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:2). It is this “joy” that here in chapter 2 is referred to with the image of the coming day that is “bright with Eden’s dawn light.”

            The thing that drives us in our engagement with a world shaped by despair and driven by violence is the promise that another world is waiting, another world is coming, another world is groaning, waiting to be born, as a mother in childbirth. And we are among its midwives. Likewise, the thing that protects us from despair and exhaustion is this secret whisper we manage to hear when we quiet our souls: Be not afraid! God is not yet done. The night of travail will surely give way to the morning, a morning “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” Be of good cheer. For “we are people on a journey, pain is with us all the way. Joyfully we come together at the holy feast of God”: From College Avenue, to Camagüey, Cuba, to Bogota, Colombia. “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). That’s a world communion Sunday worth working and waiting for.

            Sisters and brothers, the meek are getting ready. The invite us to join them in that risky vigil.

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Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC, 7 October 2012
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

All the day long

A litany inspired by Psalm 25:1-7

by Ken Sehested

To the Blessed One of Heaven does my heart heave its burden.

For release from my shame, I wait all the day long.

Silence accusers; still every sharp tongue.

For pardon amid failure, I wait all the day long.

Alone to you do I yield, sealed in grace unrelenting.

For the hint of your mercy, I wait all the day long.

Guide my feet along paths of wisdom’s contentment.

For amnesty’s assurance, I wait all the day long.

May your truth be my beacon; your justice, my guide.

For the ransom of your realm, I wait all the day long.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org