Merton has a Scrooge moment . . .
Now I walked leisurely down Broadway in the sun, and my eyes looked about me at a new world. I could not understand what it was that had happened to make me so happy, why I was so much at peace, so content with life for I was not yet used to the clean savor that comes with an actual grace—indeed, there was no impossibility in a person’s hearing and believing such a sermon and being justified, that is, receiving sanctifying grace in his soul as a habit, and beginning, from that moment, to live the divine and supernatural life for good and all. But that is something I will not speculate about.
All I know is that I walked in a new world. Even the ugly buildings of Columbia were transfigured in it. and everywhere was peace in these streets designed for violence and noise. Sitting outside the gloomy little Childs restaurant at IIIth Street, behind the dirty, boxed bushes, and eating breakfast, was like sitting in the Elysian Fields.
After attending a Catholic Mass for the first time, listening to the priest speak about the Incarnation of Christ, Merton is a changed man. Walks about New York City in a state of sanctified grace. He doesn't understand the peace he feels. I don't think he even tries to comprehend the cause of his sudden happiness. He just sees everything transfigured, shimmering with goodness.
In short, Merton has become Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of Dickens' novel. A new man. No longer chained to his past. Living in the present moment. Future before him, full of promise and hope. That's what sanctifying grace is all about. What Christmas is all about.
Now that my annual Christmas essay is done, I can turn my attention to my annual Christmas poem. I've already started it. Have been working on it for a few weeks. It has simply taken a back seat since I turned my attention to prose. Now, it will take the wheel and begin driving.
I sort of depend on grace this time of year. I don't suppose a whole lot of writers think of inspiration as grace. I do. When I find my path on something that I'm writing, it's as if someone/something else is at work. All I know is that it's not me, and it's all me.
I know that's not a helpful way of explaining how I write. It's not always easy. Some days (a lot of days), it's more like clipping a dog's nails. Each snip brings about pain, a yip, a bead of blood. For example, this new poem. It has been a slow, slow, sloooooowwww composition. Lots of fits. Starts and restarts. But, I trust this process. I have to.
And that's what faith is all about, too. Trusting. In grace. In God's love. I've said that before. I know that, by Christmas day, I will have a new poem, framed and wrapped and ready to deliver to family and friends. This year, my essay took the same circuitous path into being. Lots of crossing out and rewriting. Yet, this morning, my recording of it played on Public Radio.
Tomorrow, I will go out and buy frames for my poem. Nice paper, as well. Even though it's not fully written. That is how much faith I have. I think of it as sort of hoeing the field, getting it ready for planting. Just like, sometimes, a person with a particularly hard heart needs to be cracked open before God can find a way in.
That's right. I'm comparing writing to spiritual conversion. In a way, each person is a divine poem, if you will. Me. You. My wife. Each of my kids. Even Donald Trump. (He's sort of an obscene limerick written on the bathroom wall in a bar where a guy nicknamed Bodia sells heroin in the back booth, closest to the fire exit.) We were all scribbled into existence by some Almighty Poet.
I'm not going to belabor this metaphor that is already working way to hard any more. You get the idea. My point is simply this: I am putting trust out into the universe, and the universe will take care of me. It always does.
In two days' time, there will be a new Christmas poem in existence on this planet. In three days' time, we will celebrate another gift. Christian's would say the Greatest Gift of All.
Here are some snapshots from my day:
- The baking element arrived for my broken stove. With a little struggle--and about 15 minutes' time--my stove is back in working order. Just in time to make some beautiful Christmas cookies.
- My beautiful friend Steph listened to my essay and texted me: "It's beautiful."
- I cleaned at my church tonight. It's all decorated for Christmas, and my beautiful organist friend Lynn was practicing Christmas music with her beautiful choir. It reminded me how much I miss playing in church because of my quarantine. It filled my soul to the brim.
- Late tonight, I watched a beautiful livestreamed Christmas concert by a wonderful local musician and his family.
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