May 20-21: My Selfishness, But Maybe, Possibility

Merton talks about his shortcomings . . . 

It is true I was called to the cloister. That has been made abundantly clear. But the dispositions with which I was now preparing to enter the Franciscan novitiate were much more imperfect than I was able to realize. In choosing the Franciscans, I had followed what was apparently a perfectly legitimate attraction—an attraction which might very well have been a sign of God’s will, even though it was not quite as supernatural as I thought. I had chosen this Order because I thought I would be able to keep its Rule without difficulty, and because I was attracted by the life of teaching and writing which it would offer me, and much more by the surroundings in which I saw I would probably live. God very often accepts dispositions that are no better than these, and even some that are far worse, and turns them into a true vocation in His own time. 

But with me, it was not to be so. I had to be led by a way that I could not understand, and I had to follow a path that was beyond my own choosing. God did not want anything of my natural tastes and fancies and selections until they had been more completely divorced from their old track, their old habits, and directed to Himself, by His own working. My natural choice, my own taste in selecting a mode of life, was altogether untrustworthy. And already my selfishness was asserting itself, and claiming this whole vocation for itself, by investing the future with all kinds of natural pleasures and satisfactions which would fortify and defend my ego against the troubles and worries of life in the world. 

Besides, I was depending almost entirely on my own powers and on my own virtues—as if I had any!—to become a good religious, and to live up to my obligations in the monastery. God does not want that. He does not ask us to leave the world as a favor to Himself.

Ego gets in the way of everything--marriages, friendships, educations.  And, as Merton points out in this passage, ego even gets in the way of God.  Merton has not let go of his own aspirations and dreams.  In a way, he's using God as a shield to "fortify and defend [his] ego against" the slings and arrows of the universe.  He hasn't reached the point of total surrender to God's will.

I pride myself in the teaching I do for the university, the work I do for the library.  I'm not exactly sure if this is ego or simply the work ethic that my parents instilled in me at a very young age.  My dad was a plumber, going out on service calls at all hours of the day and night, for close to 60 years.  My mom was right there beside him, doing the bookwork, paying the bills, making the dinners.  They went to church every weekend, dropped an envelope in the collection plate each time.  They did all this because it was the right thing to do.  Not because they were trying to win a trophy or title.  Thirty years from now, nobody will even remember my parents' names, except their kids and maybe their grandkids.  

I often joke on this blog about winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry or the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Writing a bestselling poetry collection (if there is such a thing).  I am kidding, of course.  I know that the chance of my name being spoken in the halls of the Swedish Academy is about as likely as Bigfoot knocking on my door tonight and coming inside for a nightcap.  However, that doesn't stop me from engaging in a little fantasy.  

Is this ego?  Perhaps.  I make these jokes, fully aware that there is a small, niggling voice in the back of my mind whispering, "Yes, but maybe . . ."

Bigfoot is sitting in my living room tonight, sipping a glass of blueberry wine.  He's good company on late nights.  His hairy presence is a reminder that belief in impossible things is half the battle.  There are people out there who've devoted their lives to hunting my hominid houseguest.  Make their livings off his image.  He is as real as wonder and mystery to them.  

I don't want to live in a world where Bigfoot doesn't roam the Pacific Northwest of the imagination.  Where the Nobel Prize doesn't get awarded to a blogger.  Maybe that's ego with size 54 feet, stomping through my backyard.  Or maybe it's just my stubborn belief that the universe is a more interesting place with constellations of possibility in the heavens.  I think that's what kept my kept my father and mother going all those years.

Saint Marty gives thanks for stargazing with Bigfoot tonight.