December 31: Poor Men Who Labor, New Year's Eve, Burning Dumpster Heap

The end of Merton . . . 

That is the only reason why I desire solitude—to be lost to all created things, to die to them and to the knowledge of them, for they remind me of my distance from You. They tell me something about You: that You are far from them, even though You are in them. You have made them and Your presence sustains their being, and they hide You from me. And I would live alone, and out of them. O beata solitudo! 

For I knew that it was only by leaving them that I could come to You: and that is why I have been so unhappy when You seemed to be condemning me to remain in them. Now my sorrow is over, and my joy is about to begin: the joy that rejoices in the deepest sorrows. For I am beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled me, and I have begun again to hope and learn. 

I hear You saying to me: 

“I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way. 

“Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you to solitude. 

“Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone. 

“Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone. 

“Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations. 

“You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved, and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert. 

“You will have gifts, and they will break you with their burden. You will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them.

“And when you have been praised a little and loved a little I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth. 

“Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or at Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not ask me, because I am not going to tell you. You will not know until you are in it. 

“But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you for this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani: 

“That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.”

SIT FINIS LIBRI, NON FINIS QUAERENDI

So Merton ends his book with the Latin phrase:  "SIT FINIS LIBRI, NON FINIS QUAERENDI."  Translation--"This may be the end of the book, but not the end of the quest."  The conclusion is not a conclusion, but a new beginning.  Merton takes his final vows.  Becomes a Trappist monk.  Renounces all the things of the material world that distract him from God.  

It is New Year's Eve.  Almost 2 a.m. as I type this.  I may not finish this post before I need to go to sleep.  At the end of 2021, I wish to put an end to this burning dumpster heap of a year.  I want this night to be the last page, and I'm not sure I want to continue the book of 2021.  Yes, some wonderful things have happened to me--new job, NEA grants, an award for Arts Advocate of the Year.  But, on the flipside, the first chapter of 2021 started with COVID quarantine, and the last chapter comes full circle.  COVID quarantine again.  My mother died.  This morning, I woke up sick.  I'm pretty sure it's COVID.  Went to get tested, but the Health Department testing center is closed for the holiday.  And, to top it all off, Betty White died today.

Like I said, pour some gasoline on 2021 and light a match.

To try to salvage this last day of 2021 for my son, I ordered from Pizza Hut for lunch.  Then I took him to a huge Christmas lights display tonight.  Let him run around with our puppy.  Took pictures.  When we got home, we played some board games, watched a couple movies. Counted down the last seconds to midnight.  Blew some horns.  Raised a glass and let my son give a toast.  

He talked about his grandma, grandpa, Aunt Sally, and Uncle Kevin in heaven.  About getting and staying healthy.  Loving his parents and sister and puppy.  In short, my son gets it.  He knows what's important.

At midnight, I sent text messages to everyone I love.  My daughter, who's staying at her boyfriend's parents' house to avoid infection.  My sisters.  My sisters-in-law . A couple of my closest friends.  Because that is what's important.  The people in my life.  Pretty much everything I do in my life is for them.  Period.

So, as I say goodbye to Thomas Merton after this two-year journey, I am ready for this quest to end and a new one to begin.

Tomorrow, I start a new book.  Something simpler.  But beautiful.  The big reveal to happen in my first post of 2022.  As Merton says, ". . . and I have begun again to hope and learn."

Saint Marty is ready for a little hoping and learning, starting tomorrow.

December 29-31: Sing With Peace, New Year's Eve, In the Midst of Death

 Merton has an epiphany . . . 

I had my thesis to type out, and a lot of books to read, and I was thinking of preparing an article on Crashaw which perhaps I would send to T. S. Eliot for his Criterion. I did not know that Criterion had printed its last issue, and that Eliot’s reaction to the situation that so depressed me was to fold up his magazine. 

The days went on and the radios returned to their separate and individual murmuring, not to be regimented back into their appalling shout for yet another year. September, as I think, must have been more than half gone. 

I borrowed Father Leahy’s life of Hopkins from the library. It was a rainy day. I had been working in the library in the morning. I had gone to buy a thirty-five-cent lunch at one of those little pious kitchens on Broadway— the one where Professor Gerig, of the graduate school of French, sat daily in silence with his ancient, ailing mother, over a very small table, eating his Brussels sprouts. Later in the afternoon, perhaps about four, I would have to go down to Central Park West and give a Latin lesson to a youth who was sick in bed, and who ordinarily came to the tutoring school run by my landlord, on the ground floor of the house where I lived. 

I walked back to my room. The rain was falling gently on the empty tennis courts across the street, and the huge old domed library stood entrenched in its own dreary greyness, arching a cyclops eyebrow at South Field. 

I took up the book about Gerard Manley Hopkins. The chapter told of Hopkins at Balliol, at Oxford. He was thinking of becoming a Catholic. He was writing letters to Cardinal Newman (not yet a cardinal) about becoming a Catholic. 

All of a sudden, something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me. It was a movement that spoke like a voice. 

"What are you waiting for?” it said. “Why are you sitting here? Why do you still hesitate? You know what you ought to do? Why don’t you do it?” 

I stirred in the chair, I lit a cigarette, looked out the window at the rain, tried to shut the voice up. “Don’t act on impulses,” I thought. “This is crazy. This is not rational. Read your book.” 

Hopkins was writing to Newman, at Birmingham, about his indecision. 

“What are you waiting for?” said the voice within me again. “Why are you sitting there? It is useless to hesitate any longer. Why don’t you get up and go?” 

I got up and walked restlessly around the room. “It’s absurd,” I thought. “Anyway, Father Ford would not be there at this time of day. I would only be wasting time.” 

Hopkins had written to Newman, and Newman had replied to him, telling him to come and see him at Birmingham. 

Suddenly, I could bear it no longer. I put down the book, and got into my raincoat, and started down the stairs. I went out into the street. I crossed over, and walked along by the grey wooden fence, towards Broadway, in the light rain. 

And then everything inside me began to sing—to sing with peace, to sing with strength, and to sing with conviction. 

I had nine blocks to walk. Then I turned the corner of 121st Street, and the brick church and presbytery were before me. I stood in the doorway and rang the bell and waited. 

When the maid opened the door, I said: 

“May I see Father Ford, please?” 

“But Father Ford is out.” 

I thought: well, it is not a waste of time, anyway. And I asked when she expected him back. I would come back later, I thought. 

The maid closed the door. I stepped back into the street. And then I saw Father Ford coming around the corner from Broadway. He approached, with his head down, in a rapid, thoughtful walk. I went to meet him and said: 

“Father, may I speak to you about something?” 

“Yes,” he said, looking up, surprised. “Yes, sure, come into the house.” 

We sat in the little parlor by the door. And I said: “Father, I want to become a Catholic.” 

It's a profound moment of revelation for Merton.  Everyone experiences times like this in their lives--where the fog lifts and the road forward becomes clear. While Merton has been toying with the notion of conversion for quite a while, he has never given voice to it--confessed it--before.  He does so now to a Catholic priest.  Even if he backslides, he can never unspeak these words.  He will never be the same again.

It is New Years Eve.  An evening that invites reflection and resolution.  People take stock of the previous 365 days.  Think about failures and successes, losses and joys.  This year has been rife with struggles for everyone across the globe.  Unless you are a resident of Antarctica, you have been somehow affected by COVID-19, directly or indirectly.  Nobody on the planet will ever be the same again.

For the first seven months of this year, I worked in healthcare.  I sat at hospital entrances, taking names and temperatures.  Screening patients for symptoms.  Answering phone calls from frightened family members.  Worrying on a daily basis about carrying coronavirus home to my family.  

Since March, my social circle has pretty much been limited to about three or four people--my wife, daughter, son, and daughter's boyfriend.  That's it.  My interaction with family members outside my household has been pretty much limited to six-foot distant conversations from doorways.  An outside barbecue or two.  One small birthday gathering.

Meanwhile, the citizens of my country were dealing with a leader who was becoming increasingly unhinged.  Who claimed the pandemic was nothing worse than a normal flu season, and that the virus would simply vanish in warm weather.  He criticized scientists and medical doctors, and encouraged people to defy the most basic of safety measures--facemasks and social distancing.  The result?  344,000 deaths in the United States.

In addition, racial tensions spilled into the streets, and politics edged toward fascism and dictatorship.  

And, for the last month of the year, I have been in quarantine with my family, with both of my kids contracting COVID-19.  Tonight, on this night of looking forward and back, I give thanks that my daughter and son have recovered, and my wife and I tested negative.

During this month of isolation, I have been blessed so many times by the kindness of friends.  Some dropped off groceries.  Others brought dog treats.  Dinners.  Snacks.  Cards in the mail.  Text messages.  It has been a lesson, for me, in the inherent goodness of people.  

So, I sit here at the brink of 2021, counting some of the blessings of 2020:

• I started a new job that pays me to organize poetry readings and concerts and theatricals and fundraisers.  This isn't work for me.  It's earning money for dreaming.
• I got a beautiful new puppy that fills my house with love and laughter every day.
• My beautiful wife got a new job, as well.
• My beautiful daughter was promoted to a supervisor.
• My beautiful mother fell out of bed and broke her hip  She had hip replacement and is currently a resident at a nursing home.  She contracted COVID, but her symptoms remained mild, and she never lost her appetite or smile.
• My beautiful sister, Rose, who has Down Syndrome, ended up in the ICU with heart issues.  She's on medication now, doing physical therapy.  Home.
• I published some poems and started a podcast.
• I reconnected with a beautiful friend who lives downstate, and we have become writing buddies.  Just last night, we Zoomed and drank and wrote.  And drank some more.

I could go on.  And on.  There's a saying from the Book of Common Prayer:  "In the midst of life, we are in death."  For 2020, I think that the saying is a little different:  "In the midst of death, we are in life."  In the face of so much suffering and division, there have been miracles, as well.  Things to celebrate.  Yes, we lost Sean Connery this year.  But Betty White is still alive and kickin'.  Yes, my 12-year-old son ended up in the ER this fall because he was having ideas of self-harm.  But tonight he's playing Family Feud and Taboo with us, laughing and joking.

As the clock counts down to the first hour of 2021, I celebrate all of the miracles of 2020.  There have been many.  Yes, a year from now, ten years from now, 25 years, the newspapers and history books will be filled stories of overrun hospitals, body counts, racial protests turning violent.  Pictures of empty churches.  Masked families.  Angry, MAGA-hat wearing domestic terrorists.

Here is what Saint Marty will remember about this year:  tonight, with his family.  Everyone laughing.  Healthy.  Hopeful.  Together.