September 23-24: Hill of Forebodings, Fragile Thing, Striking a Match

Merton feels the coming of war . . .

Above all, why did the very boisterousness of the soccer blues, the rugger players, the cricketers, the oarsmen, the huntsmen and drinkers in the Lion and the clumsy dancers in the Rendezvous—why was all their noise so oafish and hollow and ridiculous? It seemed to me that Cambridge and, to some extent, the whole of England was pretending, with an elaborate and intent and conscious, and perhaps in some cases a courageous effort, to act as if it were alive. And it took a lot of acting. It was a vast and complicated charade, with expensive and detailed costuming and scenery and a lot of inappropriate songs: and yet the whole thing was so intolerably dull, because most of the people were already morally dead, asphyxiated by the steam of their own strong yellow tea, or by the smell of their own pubs and breweries, or by the fungus on the walls of Oxford and Cambridge.

I speak of what I remember: perhaps the war that grew out of all this did something to cure it or to change it. 

For those who had nothing but this emptiness in the middle of them, no doubt the things they had to do and to suffer during the war filled that emptiness with something stronger and more resilient than their pride— either that or it destroyed them utterly. But when I had been away from Cambridge about a year, I heard what had happened to one of them, a friend of mine. 

Mike was a beefy and red-faced and noisy youth who came from somewhere in Wales, and was part of the crowd in which I milled around in the daytime and the nighttime during that year at Cambridge. He was full of loud laughter and a lot of well-meaning exclamations, and in his quieter moments he got into long and complicated sentences about life. But what was more characteristic of him was that he liked to put his fist through windows. He was the noisy and hearty type; he was altogether jolly. A great eater and drinker, he chased after girls with an astounding heaviness of passion and emotion. He managed to get into a lot of trouble. That was the way it was when I left Cambridge. The next year I heard how he ended up. The porter, or somebody, went down into the showers, under the buildings of the Old Court at Clare, and found Mike hanging by his neck from a rope slung over one of the pipes, with his big hearty face black with the agony of strangulation. He had hanged himself. 

The Europe I finally left for good, in the late November of 1934, was a sad and unquiet continent, hill of forebodings. 

Of course, there were plenty of people who said: “There will not be a war...” But Hitler had now held power in Germany for some time, and that summer all the New York evening papers had been suddenly filled with the news of Dollfuss’ murder in Austria, and the massing of Italian troops on the Austrian borders. It was one of the nights when I was down at Coney Island, with Reginald Marsh, and I walked in the whirl of lights and noise and drank glasses of thin, icy beer, and ate hot dogs full of mustard, and wondered if I would soon be in some army or other, or perhaps dead. 

It was the first time I had felt the cold steel of the war-scare in my vitals. There was a lot more to come. It was only 1934. 

And now, in November, when I was leaving England forever—the ship sailed quietly out of Southampton water by night—the land I left behind me seemed silent with the silence before a storm. It was a land all shut up and muffled in layers of fog and darkness, and all the people were in the rooms behind the thick walls of their houses, waiting for the first growl of thunder as the Nazis began to warm up the motors of a hundred thousand planes.

Here is a man who, in retrospect, acknowledges all the foreboding signs of the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe and across the globe.  He sees it, in particular, in the death of his Cambridge acquaintance, Mike, who chases the sensual excesses of life.  Mike is a great eater and drinker and luster.  Yet, his end is stark and sobering, a true testament to the adage that you can't always judge a book by its cover.  Mike, the life of the party, "altogether jolly," is broken in some way, a reflection of a world that is breaking around him.

I could easily use this little passage from Merton to reflect on the current rise of nationalism in the world.  I could say something about Trump supporters, and draw comparisons to Adolf Hitler's Germany.  It would be easy.  The parallels are uncanny and terrifying, with Donald Trump in the last 24 hours hinting that he is not going to go gentle in that good night if things don't go his way on November 3.  But I'm not going for easy today.

You see, in this last week, I have learned that hope is a fragile thing.  It's not something that burns like a wildfire every day.  It is more like a match struck in the morning.  If that match only flares up and burns down, without being applied to the wick of a candle, then hope dies.  And if that candle isn't used to light another candle, and another, and another, then the light cast by hope is dim and concentrated instead of radiating.  Hope needs oxygen.  Hope needs company.  Hope needs to be, you'll excuse the term, virally bright.

I have hope today.  This morning wasn't great with my son, but I still have hope.  Teaching today wasn't fantastic, but I still have hope.  Now, the light outside my window is cloudy and gray, but I still have hope.  Because I am embracing the possibility of something better in the days ahead.  Change, for my life, my community, my country, the world.  I am lighting a match this afternoon, holding it to a candle.

I know that I am belaboring this metaphor.  But I really want everyone to know, regardless of how things are going for you, life is too short to hunker in darkness, waiting for bombs to rain down from the clouds.  In a few minutes, I am going to march out my front door into possibility.  It's what I need to do, every time I venture into the world.  Forget yesterday's failures, and embrace tomorrow's successes.

So, everyone out there reading this post, light your match.  Hold it out.  Light somebody else's candle.  Spread your light into every dark corner of the world.

Saint Marty will meet you at the intersection of Hope and Miracle.

February 4-5: Waters Purified, Dark Period, Striking a Match

Merton waxing eloquent on his return to France, the land of his birth:

How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality--how did it happen that, from all this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus?

How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?

When I went to France, in 1925, returning to the land of my birth, I was also returning to the fountains of the intellectual and spiritual life of the world to which I belonged.  I was returning to the spring of natural waters, if you will, but waters purified and cleaned by grace with such powerful effect that even the corruption and decadence of the French society of our day has never been able to poison them entirely, or reduce them once again to their original barbarian corruption.

Merton's point--or wonder--is valid.  It seems that, at the darkest moments in history, from the most violent or corrupt of times, spring some of the most enduring works of art.  Merton's list bears that out.  More recently, think of Allen Ginsberg's Howl during the Vietnam War in America.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward at the height of Soviet oppression, Anne Frank's diary scribbled during the Holocaust.  It seems that, when the human race is at its worst, artists and poets and writers rise to their very best.

I know that, at times of struggle in my life, I have turned to my work as a means of consolation.  Writing helps me make sense of the senseless, find beauty in ugliness.  The impulse to put pen to journal pages is, for me, an act of hope.  It's sort of like striking a match in a dark room.  Suddenly, all that is important and true shines for a few brief seconds.  Those matches have to be lit.  The light has to shine.  If it doesn't, we're all sort of doomed by the brutality of the world.

In my country, I'm living through a pretty dark period.  Nationalism is running rampant.  Compassion and humanity and charity are in short supply.  Racism, homophobia, xenophobia are on the rise.  Families are being torn apart, literally and metaphorically.  I find it difficult right now to strike any kind of match, shed any kind of light, because the darkness is so deep and entrenched.  It has brought out the very worst in everybody.

Yet, I think it's important to keep writing, painting, playing music, creating.  It's how we're going to get through these Dark Ages in the United States of America.  Maybe, 40 or 50 years from now, some diary is going to be published.  It will have been written by an adolescent Central American girl being held in an internment camp somewhere in my country at this very moment.  It will be about her longing for her missing parents.  About the teenage boy in the internment camp with her, how she longs to kiss his lips.  The randoms acts of kindness she may witness during her days, things that give her hope and sustain her will to survive.  That diary will be a testament to the indomitable spirit of a human being in the face of inhumanity.  It will be beautiful and heartbreaking.

Saint Marty just struck another match in the darkness.