Merton enters graduate school . . .
Ultimately, I suppose all Oriental mysticism can be reduced to techniques that do the same thing, but in a far more subtle and advanced fashion: and if that is true, it is not mysticism at all. It remains purely in the natural order. That does not make it evil, perse, according to Christian standards: but it does not make it good, in relation to the supernatural. It is simply more or less useless, except when it is mixed up with elements that are strictly diabolical: and then of course these dreams and annihilations are designed to wipe out all vital moral activity, while leaving the personality in control of some nefarious principle, either of his own, or from outside himself.
It was with all this in my mind that I went and received my diploma of Bachelor of Arts from one of the windows in the Registrar’s office, and immediately afterwards put my name down for some courses in the Graduate School of English.
The experience of the last year, with the sudden collapse of all my physical energy and the diminution of the brash vigor of my worldly ambitions, had meant that I had turned in terror from the idea of anything so active and uncertain as the newspaper business. This registration in the graduate school represented the first remote step of a retreat from the fight for money and fame, from the active and worldly life of conflict and competition. If anything, I would now be a teacher, and live the rest of my life in the relative peace of a college campus, reading and writing books.
That the influence of the Huxley book had not, by any means, lifted me bodily out of the natural order overnight is evident from the fact that I decided to specialize in eighteenth century English Literature, and to choose my subject for a Master of Arts Thesis from somewhere in that century. As a matter of fact, I had already half decided upon a subject, by the time the last pile of dirty snow had melted from the borders of South Field. It was an unknown novelist of the second half of the eighteenth century called Richard Graves. The most important thing he wrote was a novel called the Spiritual Quixote, which was in the Fielding tradition, a satire on the more excited kind of Methodists and other sects of religious enthusiasts in England at that time.
I was to work under Professor Tyndall, and this would have been just his kind of a subject. He was an agnostic and rationalist who took a deep and amused interest in all the strange perversions of the religious instinct that our world has seen in the last five hundred years. He was just finishing a book on D. H. Lawrence which discussed, not too kindly, Lawrence’s attempt to build up a synthetic, home-made religion of his own out of all the semi-pagan spiritual jetsam that came his way. All Lawrence’s friends were very much annoyed by it when it was published. I remember that in that year one of Tyndall’s favorite topics of conversation was the miracles of Mother Cabrini, who had just been beatified. He was amused by these, too, because, as for all rationalists, it was for him an article of faith that miracles cannot happen.
I was once like Thomas Merton, heading into graduate school, so certain of what I was going to do. Who I was going to become. In graduate school, I was influenced by a lot of people, friends and teachers and mentors. For Merton, it was Professor Tyndall, agnostic, skeptic, non-believer in anything miraculous. Merton had an idea of who he was going to become, too. Just like me. And, of course, just like me, he turned out to be someone completely different.
You see, I thought I was going to be an important intellectual. A college professor. Best-selling writer. Nobel Prize-winning poet. I was going to set the world on fire. With myself. I was going to be a match, igniting everything and everyone with my light.
Now, decades later, I realize how stupid I was. I'm sure Merton thought the same thing. Time has a way of doing that. Making you reevaluate. I'm sure there are thousands of failed bestselling writers out there. People who dreamed they were going to be the next Stephen King. Just like there are probably a lot of former English graduate students out there who thought they were going to be Seamus Heaney or Louise Gluck.
Here's the thing: there is only one Stephen King. One Louise Gluck. And there is only one me. We can spend years and years and years trying to be someone else. I was like that. I fought being the person I was supposed to be. I wanted to be a fiction writer. A full-time professor at a big university. Rich, famous, loved. A big shot, as my dad used to say.
The universe had different plans for me. Better plans. I became a teacher. That gives me purpose. A poet. That gives me empathy, insight. A church musician. That gives me spiritual connection. A husband and father. That gives me love. I have a better life than I ever imagined when I was in graduate school.
You see, unlike Merton's mentor, I do believe in miracles. I think we are surrounded by them, all day, every day. We live them. Live with them. My wife is a miracle, for all the struggles we have. My daughter and son. Miracles. Every poem I write--a gift, a miracle. Sitting here, writing this blog post. A miracle.
This life I was mean to live. A miracle.
Saint Marty gives thanks for that.
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