Thomas Merton, the 17-year-old philosopher . . .
Here in this study I edited the school magazine which had fallen into my hands that autumn, and read T. S. Eliot, and even tried to write a poem myself about Elpenor, in Homer, getting drunk and falling off the roof of a palace. And his soul fled into the shades of hell. And the rest of the time I played Duke Ellington's records or got into arguments about politics and religion.
All those vain and absurd arguments! My advice to an ordinary religious man, supposing anyone were to desire my advice on this point, would be to avoid all arguments about religion, and especially about the existence of God. However to those who know some philosophy I would recommend the study of Duns Scotus' proofs for the actual existence of an Infinite Being, which are given in the Second Distinction of the First Book of the Opus Oxoniense--in Latin that is hard enough to give you many headaches. It is getting to be rather generally admitted that, for accuracy and depth and scope, this is the most perfect and complete and thorough proof for the existence of God that has ever been worked out by any man.
I doubt if it would have done much good to bring these considerations before me in those days, when I was turning seventeen, and thought I knew all about philosophy without ever having learned any. However, I did have a desire to learn. I was attracted to philosophy. It was an attraction the Headmaster had worked hard to implant in our souls but there was, and could be, no course in philosophy at Oakham. I was left to my own devices.
I remember once mentioning all this to Tom, my guardian. We were walking out of his front door, into Harley Street, and I told him of my desire to study philosophy, and to know the philosophers.
He, being a doctor, told me to leave philosophy alone: there were few things, he told me, that were a greater waste of time.
I, myself, have never taken an official course in philosophy, although, through my schooling, I have read Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Descartes and Voltaire, among others. And I will admit that I struggle with most philosophical reading. Its density and abstraction hinder me. I do much better with the concrete rather than the abstract in most cases. I guess that's why I became a poet. Big ideas and emotions grounded in image and metaphor. For me, that's the best way to understand life.
Last night, I went comet chasing again. This time, I enlisted my entire family in the endeavor. My wife, son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend joined me this time. At around 11 p.m., we piled into my car and drove 35 minutes to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, a popular tourist hiking spot with a fairly well-kept trail, including several flights of stairs to aid in ascent and descent. We started climbing around 11:50 p.m.
On our way up, we could see the flashlights of other Neowise-seekers bobbing through the trees in front of us, some going up, some coming down. One man, as he passed us, said, "You're in for quite a show." Because of the dark, we took our time, not wanting to risk injury. We could hear creatures in the dark, saw a deer standing several hundred yards away, staring at our strange parade, its eyes reflecting the beams of our torches, as the British call them.
When we finally reached the last flight of steps that led to the top of Sugarloaf, I could hear voices and see dark shapes moving above me. In the daytime, when you reach the summit, you are rewarded with an unimpeded view of sky and water and forest. Lake Superior stretches out to the horizon on one side, and lush green evergreen crawls to the horizon on the other. It's a breathtaking sight.
Last night, however, as I stepped onto the top of the mountain, my head was pointed to the heavens. I tried to orient myself, searching for the Big Dipper. I knew that, once I located that constellation, I could easily find Neowise. It took only a moment. The sky was milky with stars, and there was the handle and pan of the Dipper. I imagined a stream of water cascading from the pan in an arc (not hard to do with the sound of Superior's surf in the dark below). At the base of that arc was Neowise, a smudge of powdery light.
After almost a full week of Neowise hunting, I was exhilarated. It was a moment almost 7,000 years in the making. I stood there, mouth open (not something I recommend, as I swallowed some bug that flew through my lips). There were clustered groups around me. One had a camera on a tripod, taking a slow-exposure picture of the comet. Further away, a group of college-age kids, emitting the skunky scent of marijuana. had set up a large telescope. They were taking turns staring into the eyepiece.
Staring up, I felt connected to something much larger than myself. The last time Neowise appeared in the sky was roughly 5,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The wheel had just been invented. Farming was a fairly new innovation--having only started in Mesopotamia around two millennia prior. The woolly mammoth could have seen Neowise, but not any of the pharaohs. The Egyptian civilization wouldn't appear for another 1,800 years. No pyramids. No mummies. Hammurabi and his code weren't even a twinkle in the universe's eyes. The Trojan War hadn't been fought. Homer wasn't singing. And Rome wouldn't be built for almost 5,000 years.
And there I stood last night, in the year 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, gaping at Neowise the way, I imagine, those mammoths 7,000 years ago never did. They simply went about the business of eating, sleeping, moving, and mating. Meanwhile, that smear of comet light kept climbing away and away. The mammoths disappeared, and humankind took over. Building and advancing and polluting and warring and pretty much making a big mess of the world.
It's difficult, standing on top of a mountain under the stars not to feel a little insignificant, to ask yourself questions like, "Does God exist?" and "Are we all alone here?" In my blog posts, I've been honest over the last year about my personal struggles. To think that everything that I'm going through is random, without meaning, pushes me to the edge of a pretty steep existential cliff.
Yet, Neowise is up there and has been heading my way for thousands of years. Last night, on top of Sugarloaf, was a confirmation that miracles still exist. They are bright scoops of light in a dark universe. They show up when you least expect, and they fill you with a mammoth wonder. They make you believe you are not alone. There are comet pilgrims all around, seeking the same thing you are: love and happiness.
And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.
