June 14-15: Deep Within Me, Restored My Faith, Blessing Versus Grace

Merton receives some grace . . . 

Yes, and from the secret places of His essence, God began to fill my soul with grace in those days, grace that sprung from deep within me, I could not know how or where. But yet I would be able, after not so many months, to realize what was there, in the peace and the strength that were growing in me through my constant immersion in this tremendous, unending cycle of prayer, ever renewing its vitality, its inexhaustible, sweet energies, from hour to hour, from season to season in its returning round. And I, drawn into that atmosphere, into that deep, vast universal movement of vitalizing prayer, which is Christ praying in men to His Father, could not help but begin at last to live, and to know that I was alive. And my heart could not help but cry out within me: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my speech be acceptable to Him: but I will take delight in the Lord.” 

Truly, He was sending forth His Spirit, uttering His divine Word and binding me to Himself through His Spirit preceding from the Word spoken within me. As the months went on, I could not help but realize it. 

Then, when I finished the Little Hours and closed the Breviary at the end of None reciting the Sacrosancte, and looked up out of the window to see the seminary of Callicoon momentarily appear on its distant hilltop, at the end of a long avenue of river, I no longer felt so much anguish and sorrow at not being in the monastery. 

So, these last few days have been sort of filled with a kind of grace for me, as well.  On Monday, Slow Dancing with Bigfoot was released.  That's the spoken-word album I worked on with a good friend from the band STREAKING IN TONGUES.  I have been working so long on this Bigfoot manuscript that I have sort of lost my sense of discernment when it comes to the poems.  I can't tell if they're good or bad.  I just keep revising and adding and subtracting.  

However, this project has restored my faith in my work and abilities.  People are telling me that it's good.  Not just close friends.  Everyone is listening and really digging it.  The local paper published a really astounding review of the album, and someone showed up at the library where I work, asking if they had the album available for checkout.  Amazing.

Here's the thing about grace:  it's not something you earn.  It's something that comes into your life when you need it.  Yes, I've worked hard on these poems.  Yes, my friend and I worked hard on putting this album together.  And yes, some other people worked hard on the project, as well--a sound engineer and a really talented visual artist.  It has been like a fever dream seeing all these disparate elements comes together.

That has been a great joy for me.  All these people working on an artistic endeavor that literally sprang from my imagination.  I've made movies.  Directed plays.  Acted on the stage.  All of those things depend upon the collaborative talents of a group of passionate artists.  This album is no different.  Hours and hours of hard work with many artists to bring something new into the world.

But that's not grace.  That's blessing.  I've been blessed with artistic friends who share my passion.  Grace is all the unexpected joy that's come my way since the album was released.  Sure, Slow Dancing with Bigfoot isn't going to win a Grammy or Pulitzer.  But people like it.  Are excited by it.  That's grace.

So, that's pretty much what I wanted to say tonight.  I've experienced two grace-filled days.  My problems haven't vanished.  My struggles are still real.

But Saint Marty has grace and Bigfoot on his side.

June 7: Burden of Desires, Desires and Passions, Bigfoot Project

Merton comes up with a plan . . . 

There could be no more question of living just like everybody else in the world. There could be no more compromises with the life that tried, at every turn, to feed me poison. I had to turn my back on these things. 

God had kept me out of the cloister: that was His affair. He had also given me a vocation to live the kind of a life that people led in cloisters. If I could not be a religious, a priest—that was God’s affair. But nevertheless He still wanted me to lead something of the life of a priest or of a religious. 

I had said something to Father Edmund about it, in a general way, and he had agreed. But I did not tell him about the Breviaries. It did not even occur to me to do so. I had said: “I am going to try to live like a religious.” 

He thought that was all right. If I was teaching, and living in a college, that would be all right, it would be fine. And he was glad I wanted to join the Third Order, although he did not seem to attach much importance to it. 

For my own part, I was not quite sure what a Third Order secular amounted to in modern America. But thinking of the Franciscan Tertiaries of the Middle Ages, and of their great saints, I realized in some obscure way that there were, or at least should be, great possibilities of sanctification in a Third Order. 

I did have a sort of a suspicion that it might turn out, after all, to be little more, in the minds of most of its members, than a society for gaining Indulgences. But in any case, I did not despise Indulgences either, or any of the other spiritual benefits that came with the cord and scapular. However, it was going to be a long time before I got them, and in the meantime I did not hesitate to shape out the new life I thought God wanted of me. 

It was a difficult and uncertain business, and I was starting again to make a long and arduous climb, alone, and from what seemed to be a great depth. 

If I had ever thought I had become immune from passion, and that I did not have to fight for freedom, there was no chance of that illusion any more.  It seemed that every step I took carried me painfully forward under a burden of desires that almost crushed me with the monotony of their threat, the intimate, searching familiarity of their ever-present disgust. 

I did not have any lofty theories about the vocation of a lay-contemplative. In fact, I no longer dignified what I was trying to do by the name of a vocation. All I knew was that I wanted grace, and that I needed prayer, and that I was helpless without God, and that I wanted to do everything that people did to keep close to Him.

Sometimes the things that we desire most can save our souls, like Thomas Merton's passion to enter the religious life.  Other times, our desires can be downright harmful for our wellbeing, and, by association, the wellbeing of the people in our lives.  Pick an addiction.  Pick an addict.  But all Merton wants to do is keep as close to God as he can while on the planet.

I will admit that I have harbored/do harbor desires and passions that could be considered harmful to me.  We all carry around urges like these.  Contemplate them on a daily basis.  Yet, the difference is whether you act on those destructive urges or not.  It's a matter of free choice--in my book, one of the worst gifts the human race ever received.  Sure, free choice allows good people to become even better, but it also allows good people to fuck up their lives in terrible ways.

But this post is not going to be about a person who is messing up his or her life.  I refuse to walk down that road tonight.  My blog.  My choice.  All of my loyal disciples are probably breathing a sigh of relief right now.  I tend to get in these ruts sometimes, where everything I write is dark and full of sadness.  I'm not sure I would label it depression.  The struggles in my life are real, not heightened by brain chemistry imbalances.  However, this time of year--the cusp of summer, end of school, high school and college graduations, a season of endings and beginnings--tends to make me slightly melancholy.

So, let me tell you about something that made me happy today.  I'm releasing a spoken-word album in a few days--a selection of my Bigfoot poems set to music by my friend's band STREAKING IN TONGUES.  A week or so ago, I asked a writer friend of mine to listen to the album and possibly write a review of it for the local newspaper, my Amazon author page, and Goodreads.  This morning, my writer friend sent me his review.  It was amazing.  Positive.  Poetic.

I've been working on this Bigfoot project for more years than I care to admit.  Adding poems.  Taking poems out.  Arranging.  Rearranging.  As a writer, I have a very hard time letting things go.  I tinker until I can't tell what is good, bad, or indifferent.  I have reached that point with this book.  Slow Dancing with Bigfoot, the album I recorded, is a huge step for me.  Like I've reached the point of Bigfoot graduation.  

The friend who recorded the album with me, and my writer friend who wrote the review, have given me a confidence in my work that I haven't felt in quite a long time.  I some light today.  Felt a lifting of my spirits that have been a little earthbound recently.  I'm not completely out of the swamp yet.

But Saint Marty has transitioned from Leonard Cohen to James Taylor.  It's a step in the right direction.