Merton reflects on the struggle of meditation and prayer . . .
Now every day began with Mass and Communion, either at Our Lady of Guadalupe or St. Francis of Assisi Church.
After that I went back to Perry Street, and got to work rewriting the novel which had been handed back to me politely by one of those tall, thin, anxious young men with horn-rimmed glasses who are to be found in the offices of publishers. (He had asked me if I was trying to write in some new experimental style, and then ducked behind his desk as if I might pull a knife on him for his impertinence.)
About twelve I would go out to get a sandwich at some drug-store, and read in the paper about the Russians and the Finns or about the French sitting in the Maginot Line, and sending out a party of six men somewhere in Loraine to fire three rifle shots at an imaginary German.
In the afternoon I usually had to go to Columbia and sit in a room and hear some lecture on English Literature, after which I went to the library and read St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics which I had reserved for me on my desk in the graduate reading-room. This was a matter of great consternation to some Sisters of St. Joseph who occupied nearby desks and who, after a while, became timidly friendly when they learned that I was going to become a Franciscan in the summer.
At about three in the afternoon I was in the habit of going to Corpus Christi, or to Our Lady of Lourdes which was even closer, and doing the Stations of the Cross. This meditative and easy prayer provided me with another way, more valuable than I realized, of entering into participation in the merits of Christ’s Passion, and of renewing within me the life that had been set alight by that morning’s Communion.
In those days it took a little effort to walk to a church and go around the fourteen stations saving vocal prayers, for I was still not used to praying. Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently.
It was also at this time that I first attempted any kind of mental prayer. I had bought a copy of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius many months before, and it had remained idle on the shelf—except that when I came back from Olean and took over the apartment from Seymour’s wife, to whom I had sub-let it, I found a couple of little pencil marks in the margin opposite passages that might be interpreted as sinister and Jesuitical. One of them was about death, and the other had something to do with pulling all the blinds down when you wanted to meditate.
For my own part I had long been a little scared of the Spiritual Exercises, having somewhere acquired a false impression that if you did not look out they would plunge you head first into mysticism before you were aware of it. How could I be sure that I would not fly up into the air as soon as I applied my mind to the first meditation? I have since found out that there is very little danger of my ever flying around the premises at mental prayer. The Spiritual Exercises are very pedestrian and practical—their chief purpose being to enable all the busy Jesuits to get their minds off their work and back to God with a minimum of wasted time.
I wish I had been able to go through the Exercises under the roof of some Jesuit house, directed by one of their priests. However, I went about it under my own direction, studying the rules of procedure that were given in the book, and following them in so far as I managed to grasp what they were all about. I never even breathed a word about what I was doing to any priest.
As far as I remember I devoted a whole month to the Exercises, taking one hour each day. I took a quiet hour, in the afternoon, in my room on Perry Street: and since I now lived in the back of the house, there were no street noises to worry me. It was really quite silent. With the windows closed, since it was winter, I could not even hear any of the neighborhood’s five thousand radios.
The book said the room should be darkened, and I pulled down the blinds so that there was just enough light left for me to see the pages, and to look at the Crucifix on the wall over my bed. And the book also invited me to consider what kind of a position I should take for my meditation. It left me plenty of freedom of choice, so long as I remained more or less the way I was, once I had settled down, and did not go promenading around the room scratching my head and talking to myself.
So I thought and prayed awhile over this momentous problem, and finally decided to make my meditations sitting cross-legged on the floor. I think the Jesuits would have had a nasty shock if they had walked in and seen me doing their Spiritual Exercises sitting there like Mahatma Gandhi. But it worked very well. Most of the time I kept my eyes on the Crucifix or on the floor, when I did not have to look at the book.
Here's the thing--prayers get answered, whether you're sitting cross-legged on the floor with your eyes closed, driving into a pink Lake Superior sunrise, or eating a bag of microwave popcorn at eleven o'clock at night after a long day of toil. Open your mouth and give words to your heart, and those words will rise into the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Prayers are subject to a different kind of gravity, pulled toward the eardrum of the universe.
Merton is simply too worried about details--space and position, method and light. He doesn't understand that the only thing that matters, in the end, is surrender. Giving yourself over to God's will. Trusting that the universe isn't all chaos and chance. There is order and design in all things. Scientists have laws of motion, thermodynamics, energy, chemistry, evolution. They rely on these concepts for their understanding of how things work. Christians have the Bible--Old Testament, New Testament. Jewish people have the Torah. Muslims have the Koran. We trust in these lessons and rules and narratives. They give meaning and import to our lives. And comfort.
I found out this evening that a young someone I love lost that sense of meaning. Gave into feelings of shame and despair. Forgot that the universe's capacity for love and forgiveness is infinite, filled with multitudes of stars and planets and nebulae. Let's name that young person "Judy." Judy, in that black hole moment, almost did something--something irrevocable. Then got scared, changed her mind.
Tonight, I'm lifting Judy up to the light of the universe. Giving thanks that she's still here. With us. That God reached down and filled her with fear. That the object that was set into motion in Judy's spirit spun off in a different and opposite direction. Judy is still here, on this mess of a world in which we all live.
And I am here to tell Judy that she is loved, by her parents and family and friends. That the universe is a brighter place because she is in it. It needs the elements of her. Solar systems collapse when stars die, and the star of her is brighter than Sirius, despite all of the garbage that swirls in its orbit.
Tonight, Saint Marty is wishing on a star, hoping on a star, giving thanks for a star.
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