December 6: Intrinsically Holy, Screwing Up, Fixing Up

Merton writes about a Hindu savior . . . 

On the door of the room in one of the dormitories, where Lax and Sy Freedgood were living in a state of chaos, was a large grey picture, a lithograph print. Its subject was a man, a Hindu, with wide-open eyes and a rather frightened expression, sitting cross-legged in white garments. I asked about it, and I could not figure out whether the answer was derisive or respectful. Lax said someone had thrown a knife at the picture and the knife had bounced back and nearly cut all their heads off.  In other words, he gave me to understand that the picture had something intrinsically holy about it: that accounted for the respect and derision manifested towards it by all my friends. This mixture was their standard acknowledgment of the supernatural, or what was considered to be supernatural. How that picture happened to get on that door in that room is a strange story. 

It represented a Hindu messiah, a savior sent to India in our own times, called Jagad-Bondhu. His mission had to do with universal peace and brotherhood. He had died not very long before, and had left a strong following in India. He was, as it were, in the role of a saint who had founded a new religious Order, although he was considered more than a saint: he was the latest incarnation of the godhead, according to the Hindu belief in a multiplicity of incarnations. 

In 1932 a big official sort of letter was delivered to one of the monasteries of this new “Order,” outside of Calcutta. The letter came from the Chicago World’s Fair, which was to be held in the following year. How they ever heard of this monastery, I cannot imagine. The letter was a formal announcement of a “World Congress of Religions.” I am writing this all from memory but that is the substance of the story: they invited the abbot of this monastery to send a representative to Congress. 

Merton got himself into a lot of hot water with his interest in Eastern mysticism, as I've said before.  Here, he's talking about a Hindu messiah.  Keep in mind, when he wrote this passage, he was already a Trappist monk, dedicated to the life and way of Jesus Christ.  Yet, he recognizes the possibility of holiness in a non-Christian saint.  Goodness is goodness.

I have spent my life trying to be a good person.  A good son, husband, father, friend.  Frequently, I've failed at this task.  Every day, as a matter of fact.  Perfection is something to aspire to, but it's never something you can attain.  It's a goal, like cutting carbs from your diet or exercising more.  You try.  You fail.  You try again.  You eat a Hershey bar, or you skip your walk.  The next day, you have an orange for lunch, and you take your dog for a good, long jaunt after supper.

Today, I am failing on a few levels.  I'm not going to able to take my puppy for the walk I promised her yesterday.  I have tons of exams to grade before I go to bed.  Tonight, I'm leading a poetry workshop, and I just spent a couple hours refreshing my notes, updating my plans.  Time I could have spent playing a board game with my son and daughter.  In about ten minutes, I'm going to get dinner ready.  Bakes potatoes.  While I'm preparing the potatoes, I'll have a glass of wine or spiked eggnog.  Carbs and alcohol.  Not a good combo for an insulin-dependent diabetic.

Here's the thing, though:  I can always do better.  That's what being human is all about.  Screwing up, and then fixing what you've screwed up.  It's an unending cycle.  The human race has been doing it for thousands of years.  Think about it.  A recent example:  four years ago, the citizens of the United States elected a man to be President of the United States who was completely unfit for the job.  Now, four years later, we tried to correct that mistake.  Screwing up, and fixing up.

It's when you refuse to recognize your mistakes that you get yourself into trouble.  Because then you don't know you have something to fix.  Yesterday, I made instant mashed potatoes for my daughter's birthday dinner.  It's what she wanted.  However, as I was putting all the ingredients together, I messed up.  I added an extra cup of milk, not enough salt, and three too many tablespoons of butter.  I read the instructions on the box wrong.

Now, I could have thrown the whole concoction out and started over.  However, I didn't have enough milk.  I was out of salt, and butter was in short supply.  So, instead, I tried to make lemonade out of lemons.  I added even more butter, sprinkled in some extra potato flakes, and poured in just a little bit of water.  Heated the whole thing up and served it with turkey loaf and gravy.

It was delicious, as evidenced by the fact that there were no leftovers.  The turkey was gone.  Corn gobbled up.  Potatoes scraped to the bottom of the bowl.  Mistakes corrected.

And now, I have final exams to grade.  A poetry workshop to conduct.  A blog post to polish and publish.  Tomorrow morning, I will reread what I've just written, and I will probably find typos.  Maybe a spelling mistake.  An awkward phrase.  Clunky metaphor.  I will fix all these problems, and then I will move on to new fuckups, new opportunities for perfection.

Marty gives thanks for the miracle of mistakes this evening.  Because mistakes bring him all that closer to sainthood.