December 5: One With God, Surrender, Mary Poppins

Merton comes to an epiphany . . .

To say that [the only way to live was to live in a world that was charged with the presence and reality of God],is to say a great deal: and I don’t want to say it in a way that conveys more than the truth. I will have to limit the statement by saying that it was still, for me, more an intellectual realization than anything else: and it had not yet struck down into the roots of my will. The life of the soul is not knowledge, it is love, since love is the act of the supreme faculty, the will, by which man is formally united to the final end of all his strivings—by which man becomes one with God.

The life of the soul is love, not knowledge.  There is something  so wise in that.  Love really is incomprehensible.  It makes no sense.  It doesn't need to make sense.  It simply is.  Falling in love with anything--a person, writer, book, movie, poem--is about surrender.  Giving yourself over completely.

I wrote last night about my daughter's birth, which was one of those surrender moments for me.  There was no knowledge guiding me when I first held her in my arms.  No book that said, "The first time you hold your newborn child, you must become completely devoted to her."  Instead, it was an overpowering storm.  A drowning.

And today, I celebrated that drowning, with turkey loaf, mashed potatoes, corn, a double-layer white cake, and Blue Moon ice cream.  A game of Trivial Pursuit.  Mary Poppins on the television.  All the things my daughter loves best.  After Mary Poppins, it was Jim Carrey's Grinch.  We sat around, as a family, and I felt it again.  That surrendering.  

Some may call me sentimental.  That's okay.  A father is allowed to be sentimental about his daughter.  I think this IS knowledge, not just love.  There's a commandment that says "Honor thy father and thy mother."  The flipside of that commandment is "Honor thy children."  Honor and love are mutual things.  In order to receive them, you must give them.

I am still drowning in love for my daughter, as much I was that first bright morning.  She is everything I find good in the world--poetry and music and Christmas lights and literature.  And God.  She has been one of the greatest blessings in my life.

There's a Christmas song titled "Mary, Did You Know?"  There's a line in that song that goes, "When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God."  That is something that can't be explained intellectually.  It can only be felt.  Deeply.  Through the lens of love.

Tonight, Saint Marty wishes his little baby a miraculous birthday.