November 21: If It Were Pleasing to God, Moment of Grace, "Thanksgivings"

Merton tries to avoid God's call . . .

And yet, what a strange admission! To say that men were admirable, worthy of honor, perfect, in proportion as they disappeared into a crowd and made themselves unnoticed, by even ceasing to be aware of their own existence and their own acts. Excellence, here, was in proportion to obscurity: the one who was best was the one who was least observed, least distinguished. Only faults and mistakes drew attention to the individual. 

The logic of the Cistercian life was, then, the complete opposite to the logic of the world, in which men put themselves forward, so that the most excellent is the one who stands out, the one who is eminent above the rest, who attracts attention. 

But what was the answer to this paradox? Simply that the monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection. Omnis gloria ejus filiae regis ab intus. 

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real! 

With all these things before me, day and night, for two days, I finally came to the afternoon of Good Friday. 

After a tremendous morning of ten hours of practically uninterrupted chanting and psalmody, the monks, exhausted, had disappeared from the scene of their gutted church, with its stripped altars and its empty Tabernacle wide open to the four winds. The monastery was silent, inert. I could not pray, I could not read any more. 

I got Brother Matthew to let me out the front gate on the pretext that I wanted to take a picture of the monastery, and then I went for a walk along the enclosure wall, down the road past the mill, and around the back of the buildings, across a creek and down a narrow valley, with a barn and some woods on one side, and the monastery on a bluff on the other. 

The sun was warm, the air quiet. Somewhere a bird sang. In a sense, it was a relief to be out of the atmosphere of intense prayer that had pervaded those buildings for the last two days. The pressure was too heavy for me. My mind was too full. 

Now my feet took me slowly along a rocky road, under the stunted cedar trees, with violets growing up everywhere between the cracks in the rock. 

Out here I could think: and yet I could not get to any conclusions. But there was one thought running around and around in my mind: “To be a monk ... to be a monk...” 

I gazed at the brick building which I took to be the novitiate. It stood on top of a high rampart of a retaining wall that made it look like a prison or a citadel. I saw the enclosure wall, the locked gates. I thought of the hundreds of pounds of spiritual pressure compressed and concentrated within those buildings and weighing down on the heads of the monks, and I thought, “It would kill me.” 

I turned my eyes to the trees, to the woods. I looked up the valley, back in the direction from which I had come, at the high wooded hill that closed off the prospect. I thought: “I am a Franciscan. That is my kind of spirituality, to be out in the woods, under the trees...” 

I walked back across the trestle over the sunny, narrow creek, embracing my fine new error. After all I had seen of the Franciscans, where did I get the idea that they spent their time under the trees? They often lived in schools in towns and in cities: and these monks, on the contrary, did go out every day and work in the very fields and woods that I was looking at. 

Human nature has a way of making very specious arguments to suit its own cowardice and lack of generosity. And so now I was trying to persuade myself that the contemplative, cloistered life was not for me, because there was not enough fresh air.... 

Nevertheless, back in the monastery I read St. Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo and I read the life of a Trappist monk who had died in a monastery in France, ironically enough in my own part of France, near Toulouse: Father Joseph Cassant. 

The Retreat Master, in one of his conferences, told us a long story of a man who had once come to Gethsemani, and who had not been able to make up his mind to become a monk, and had fought and prayed about it for days. Finally, went the story, he had made the Stations of the Cross, and at the final station had prayed fervently to be allowed the grace of dying in the Order. 

“You know,” said the Retreat Master, “they say that no petition you ask at the fourteenth station is ever refused.” 

In any case, this man finished his prayer, and went back to his room and in an hour or so he collapsed, and they just had time to receive his request for admission to the Order when he died. 

He lies buried in the monks’ cemetery, in the oblate’s habit. 

And so, about the last thing I did before leaving Gethsemani, was to do the Stations of the Cross, and to ask, with my heart in my throat, at the fourteenth station, for the grace of a vocation to the Trappists, if it were pleasing to God. 

You can never escape God.  God sort of chases you.  Doesn't give up on you.  Ever.  That's what Merton learns at the end of this passage.  

Sometimes, God puts things into your head that terrify or amaze you.  Ideas or urges.  For instance, tonight, I led a poetry workshop.  I'd been trying to put it together for days--the poems and writing prompts.  It finally came together this afternoon.  In a matter of about 15 or 20 minutes.  Now, some disciples of this blog will say that all of my struggle helped me to that moment of inspiration.  I prefer to believe that it was a moment of grace.  God reaching down and giving me a gift.

At the end of the workshop, God gave me another gift.  A new poem.  I haven't written a new poem in ages.  

God doesn't give up on anybody.  Even tired, grief-stricken saints like Marty.

Here's the new poem . . . 

Thanksgivings

by:  Martin Achatz

This is a poem of last suppers

that I didn't know were last suppers.

The day my brother came to my parents'

house to have pumpkin pie

after Thanksgiving because his wife

was Seventh Day Adventist, refused

to make the whole turkey smorgasbord.

And pumpkin pie was his favorite.

He ate it with Cool Whip, went home, 

was gone five months later.  

Or my sister in the hospital, how I fed

her strawberry frozen custard.  She smiled

at me like a guilty child.  Four months

later, she took her last bite of air.

For my father, it was a McDonald's 

cheeseburger, large fries, vanilla

milkshake.  The following day, 

my mother held his hand, told him

he'd been a good husband,

and he slipped out the door.  Now,

my mother.  I remember the last

Thanksgiving, how she ate a piece

of pecan pie, forgot she had eaten,

ate another because why not?

Gone four weeks before turkey,

stuffing, mashed potatoes, pecan

pie.  All these last suppers, as holy

as any bread or wine.  I gospel

them here, make them into psalm,

lamentation.  Because, really, 

aren't all family dinners like that?

June 22: Light and Darkness, Domino Effect, Poem from "Kyrie"

If you want beautiful light, you're going to have to deal with darkness, too.  That's the way the universe works.  You can't have one without the other.

This evening, as I walked into church to clean, I was in a particularly dark mood for some reason.  One of those funks that fall on me seemingly out of the blue.  I call it the domino effect--a bunch of little or medium-sized problems that turn into a cascade.  Suddenly, you're at the bottom of a very dark place.  That's where I was as I pulled on my rubber gloves, grabbed my bottle of bleach, and walked into the sanctuary to start sanitizing.

I had gotten to the church later than normal because of another obligation, so, by the time I was done with my work, the sun was giving one last yawn in the sky before retiring to the other side of the planet.  I walked back into the sanctuary to retrieve my cell phone and make sure I hadn't left any lights on.  The room was quite dark.

Yet, there was a wall of stained glass that was literally blazing with sunset.  I snapped a photo with my phone, but the resulting picture just doesn't capture the full cut-glass beauty of the moment.  And it pierced the darkness I'd been experiencing.  Gave me some kind of solace.  A moment of grace is what writer Flannery O'Connor would have called it.  Where, through the ugliness of the world, something wondrously frightening and frighteningly wondrous appears.

The window, the sun, the darkness (surrounding me and inside me) combined into a miraculous, grace-filled vision that filled me with something like hope.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

. . . and a poem that ends with a moment that could be grace, too:

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

I told him not to move, they'd said don't move.

The weeks of fewer cases were a tease,

a winter thaw that froze back up worse

than before, backswing of a scythe, we filled

the gym, cots and pallets on the floor.

And many now in uniform--I could spot

who'd been gassed, their buttons were tarnished green--

and many of them were missing parts, like him.

Did I say the nurses were wearing masks?

My last day she put him next to me,

sweet little nurse but not enough of her

to go around she said don't let him move.

You tell me, was it prayer or luck kept

me from being that boy reaching for water?

February 3: True Philosophers, Appearances, Message of Jesus Christ

Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.

But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page- as I fancied- stopping for a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.

With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face- at least to my taste- his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems as Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is- which was the only way he could get there- thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester."

There has been a lot of ink spilled about Queequeg.  He is the "other" in the novel, and yet he comes across as the most civilized and most composed character in these opening chapters.  Ishmael calls him "savage" and "cannibalistically developed."  Yet, there he sits in the Spouter-Inn , warming himself at the hearth, paging through a large book, with great dignity.

Human beings are way too inclined to judge people by appearances.  I have often observed to life-long Christians that if Jesus Christ actually stepped into church, wearing his robes and sandals, looking Middle-Eastern and unwashed, he wouldn't be ushered to the front pew or given a cup of coffee and some cookies.  No, my guess is that Jesus Christ would quickly be given a police escort to the nearest homeless shelter, after being detained for a little while for questioning by ISIS agents.

Tattoos.  Piercings.  Mohawks.  A skin tone other than snowy white.  Weird accent.  All those things pretty much mark a person for ridicule and suspicion.  The United States is not alone in this.  All over the globe, people have become incredibly intolerant of the Queequegs of the world.  Daily, it seems, I I read about attacks and deportations and refugee camps.

In my country, so-called "Christians" seem to forget that, for a while in the Roman Empire, followers of Jesus Christ were fed to lions on a frequent basis.  We (and I count myself as a Jesus geek) were the "other" for a very long time.  Just like Puritans were religious refugees from British persecution.  Chinese immigrants were forced to build railroads and keep to themselves.  You name an ethnic group (Italian, German, Irish, Japanese) and, at some point in the history of the United States of America, that ethnic group was subjected to discrimination.

However, when the discriminated become the discriminators, they tend to forget the past.  Power is a terribly corrupting force.  It makes those people petty, mean, and self-serving.  Just read the Congressional tax bill, if you don't believe that.  We are in a time of universal selfishness.  Everyone seems to be worried simply about themselves and their personal struggles, without understanding that compassion and acceptance works both ways.  I buy a Happy Meal for a homeless person standing outside of Walmart, offer a smile, a handshake.  Treat that person the way I would like to be treated.  Down the road, who knows?  I might need food or a kind face or human contact.

Today, I was struggling with a blocked sewer in my home.  I called every single local plumber in the Yellow Pages and on the Internet.  I received exactly three calls back, and all of them carried the same message, "Sorry, can't do it.  Try this plumber instead."  About an hour-and-half ago, I was pretty desperate.  Then, my daughter decided to take a hot shower.  She said the bathtub filled up for a little while, then, suddenly, there was a large burp from the drain, and all the water drained.  My sewer is clear.  Granted, it's not a miracle along the lines of healing a leper or walking on water, but, in my book, it counts as a moment of grace in my life.

It doesn't take much to be kind.  To help a fellow human being out.  Remember, that girl sitting in the booth next to you at McDonald's with the blue hair and eyebrow piercings might look like a "savage" or "cannibal" to you, but she's not.  She's Jesus Christ.  Mohammed.  Buddha.  Queequeg.  She deserves your compassion.  Your understanding.  Your love.  She deserves healthcare.  A living wage.  Warm clothes.  Food.  Education.  Those aren't luxuries.  Those are necessities.

That's my challenge to my fellow Christians reading this today.  Disturb the comfortable.  Comfort the disturbed.  Pretty much that sums up the message of Jesus Christ.

Saint Marty isn't feeling quite so disturbed now that his toilet is flushing properly.

July 22: Little Green Hands, Control Freak, Grace

All the little green hands closed tight, because Montana's terror was so unpleasant to see.  The head zoo keeper ordered a crane operator, who was standing by, to drop a navy blue canopy over the dome, thus simulating Earthling night inside.  Real night came to the zoo for only one Earthling hour out of every sixty-two.

Billy switched on a floor lamp.  The light from the single source threw the baroque detailing of Montana's body into sharp relief.  Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed.

Montana has lost control of her life, if she ever had control of it at all.  She was sunning herself next to a swimming pool in Palm Springs, and she suddenly finds herself in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore without a single notion of how she got there.  Complete loss of control.  She is at the mercy of her zookeeper.  And it terrifies her.  The veil of her life has been torn away, and what's behind the curtain isn't too pleasant.

I must admit that I'm a little bit of a control freak.  I like routine.  Getting up at the same time every day.  Doing the same things every day.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time every day.  Going to bed around the same time every day.  I find great comfort in that kind of schedule.  It allows me to believe that I'm in control of my life.

Of course, I know that isn't true.  Just like every other human being on the planet, I am at the mercy of lots of factors.  Environment--yes, global warming is real.  Health--can't control illness.  Finances--money does make the world go 'round.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  My routine is built on a pretty shaky foundation.  One little shift in that foundation and everything falls apart.

In the last few years, I've experienced a lot of shifts in the foundation.  Some good, some bad.  That's life.  When that happens, the veil that covers the dome of my life is torn away for a while, and I'm reminded how little control I actually have of my existence.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that God is some race of aliens from a distant planet.  I'm saying that most of us walk around, confident in our places in the world, and then God sends us reminders of Who's really in control.

Now, when this happens, we can react like Montana.  Scream and scream.  Or we can accept the reminder (good or bad) as a blessing.  A moment of grace.  As Flannery O'Connor said, "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."  Most people think of grace as the Holy Spirit descending in a beautiful cloud.  I'm here to tell you that grace can hurt like a bitch sometimes.

But, grace, in whatever form, is good.  And Saint Marty gives thanks for it in his life.

September 10: Surface of Jupiter, Moment of Grace, Judith Minty, "Purple Finches," Adventures of Stickman

Not one to read books on spiritual subjects, on out-of-body experiences, reincarnation, spiritualism, or mysticism, witchcraft or voodoo, Ives was left confounded by the strangeness of his vision.  He sighed, wishing that he had seen the Virgin Mother floating over Forty-first Street and Madison Avenue instead.  Somehow, in his mind, it all related to his ideas of afterlife.  He would think of all the depictions of Christ on the Cross, his tortured eyes looking upward, heaven just beyond, and wonder, to his horror, just what Christ might have been seeing.  What if he had looked up and seen the whirling center of a chaotic universe swallowing him up?  He felt disappointed that he had neither the education nor intelligence to fathom what had happened to him.  On some of those nights, he had concluded that death would not be a joyous ramble with ethereal and eternally pleasant angelic beings, but a chaotic, mysterious, and dark experience, as if a soul, in leaving the body, would alight upon the surface of Jupiter or Mars or some other mysterious planet, such as he had read about in Astonishing Stories magazine, or in the science-fiction books whose covers he had upon occasion illustrated.

Both the above passage from Mr. Ives' Christmas and the poem below from Judith Minty are about moments of transport.  Ives' vision is other-worldly.  Swirling colored winds, as if out of some strange science fiction story.  Minty's vision is transformative, the speaker somehow becoming wing and wind and color.  Both are connected with something natural and something divine.

I am incredibly tired this evening.  It has been a difficult day.  At work, I found myself short-tempered, impatient with anyone and everyone.  My medical office job puts me in contact with people who are sometimes very sick and sometimes, literally, out of their minds with worry.  They have chest pain, shortness of breath.  Their hearts feel like they're running ultra-marathons in their chests.  They feel like they're dying.  I understand.  I empathize.

However, there are times when my well of compassion runs a little dry.  Today was one of those days.  I didn't feel like I was connected to anything transformative.  I experienced no moments of transport.  They only time I felt something extraordinary was when I sat on a pencil in my car.  I didn't feel God's presence a whole lot.

That doesn't mean that I didn't have a moment of grace.  After my good books class, I spoke with a student who thinks he has bipolar disorder.  I listened to him, offered him advice.  He needed someone to listen.  I listened.  He seemed to physically relax as we spoke.  Tonight, I said a prayer for him.

There was nothing transcendent about the conversation I had with my student.  I didn't feel the Holy Spirit enter my body.  I didn't speak in tongues.  It was one human being talking to another human being about being broken, about finding help.  No swirling, colored winds.  No finch wings or birdsong.

Just Saint Marty being Saint Marty in all his imperfections and petty jealousies.

Purple Finches

by:  Judith Minty

They come in the morning.  Even before she is awake, she hears the tap-tap of their beaks, a scratching, faint whistles in the air.  When sun drifts along the bed, she floats to the surface.

They ripple over the feeder.  The males flame in the light, their pink and rose feathers.  The females are delicate, softer.  She wants to say, "Look, they are beautiful," but there is no one.  They fly up and wait in the pines, then sink back.

The window mutes their voices.  She circles the room slowly so they won't startle.  They bend to the seeds and crack them with their beaks.  They were not here yesterday or the day before.  They will not come tomorrow.  She puts her finger to the glass and enters their rhythm.  She steps inside their color.

Adventures of STICKMAN