September 5: A Trappist Monk, Resume and Cover Letter, Possibility

Merton first entertains the idea of becoming a Trappist monk . . .

It was a wan hope, however.  But the last week of ten days that I was in Rome were very happy and full of joy, and on one of those afternoons I took the trolley out to San Paolo, and after that got on a small rickety bus which went up a country road into a shallow saucer of a valley in the low hills south of the Tiber, to the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane. I went in to the dark, austere old church, and liked it. But I was scared to visit the monastery. I thought the monks were too busy sitting in their graves beating themselves with disciplines. So I walked up and down in the silent afternoon, under the eucalyptus trees, and the thought grew on me: “I should like to become a Trappist monk.” 

There was very little danger of my doing so, then. The thought was only a daydream—and I suppose it is a dream that comes to many men, even men who don’t believe in anything. Is there any man who has ever gone through a whole lifetime without dressing himself up, in his fancy, in the habit of a monk and enclosing himself in a cell where he sits magnificent in heroic austerity and solitude, while all the young ladies who hitherto were cool to his affections in the world come and beat on the gates of the monastery crying, “Come out, come out!” 

Ultimately, I suppose, that is what my dream that day amounted to. I had no idea what Trappist monks were, or what they did, except that they kept silence. In fact, I also thought they lived in cells like the Carthusians, all alone. 

In the bus, going back to San Paolo, I ran into a student from the American Academy whom I knew. He was riding with his mother, and introduced me to her, and we talked about the monastery, and I said I wished I were a monk. The student’s mother looked at me with a horror and astonishment so extreme that I was really a little shocked by it.

The days went by. Letters came from America, telling me to take the boat and come there. Finally I bade farewell to the Italian typewriter salesman and the other inhabitants of the pensione, including the lady who ran the place and whose mother had been overwhelmed with thoughts of death when I played St. Louis Blues on the piano, sending in the maid to ask me to desist. 

With sorrow in my heart I saw the last of the Piazza Barberini and the big curved boulevard that ran into it; and the last of the Pincio gardens, and St. Peter’s dome in the distance and the Piazza di Spagna; but above all, I had sorrow and emptiness in my heart at leaving my beloved churches—San Pietro in Vincoli, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Pudenziana, Santa Prassede, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Agnese, San Clemente, Santa Cecilia . . .

I suppose when I was very young, I entertained, for a short while, the idea of becoming a priest or monk.  All Catholic boys do at some point.  There's something pretty powerful about the uniform--all black with the white Roman collar.  It commands respect, even if the person wearing it is fresh out of seminary with little life experience.  And Merton's fantasy about girls beating down the gates of the monastery is another one of those common Catholic boy things, too.  Religion and devotion mixing with sex and passion.  Merton hasn't reached the point of surrender yet.  But visiting Tre Fontane fills him with hope for a life better than the one he is currently living.

I just spent three hours working on a resume and cover letter.  It's something I do frequently.  I see a job that I think I'd like, and I apply for it.  It's an act of hope.  For something better.  Most times, I never get past the slush pile of applications.  On rare occasions, I get a phone interview.  On even rarer occasions, a face-to-face interview.

I know that I've written about the need for hope a lot.  I think it's an important element in life.  I tell most of my students on the first or second day of classes that hope is the one thing that links them all.  They all enrolled in college for basically the same reason:  to gain an education which, in turn, will allow them to obtain the job/career they want.  That's hope.  I would go so far as to say that hope is the motivating factor of almost every day.  Simply getting out of bed is an act of hope.  If we all woke up thinking that life is meaningless, none of us would get out of bed.  Ever. 

I need hope.  Hope makes getting up every morning easier.  It makes going to work a little less difficult.  With hope there is the belief that something better is possible.  I like living in a state of perpetual possibility.  Every day seems like Christmas then.  Like a present waiting to be unwrapped.  That's the way I prefer to live.  That may sound naive.  I don't care. 

I don't want to live in a world without hope and possibility.  That would be a world without art and poetry and literature and theater and music.  Without love and joy.  I'm not ready to live in Orwell's 1984.  Doublespeak and darkness and depression.  Nope.  Not for me.

Tonight, I lift my glass of wine to something better that's just around the corner.  I may end up a Trappist monk or a librarian or the next Poet Laureate of the United States.  Anything is possible.

This message has been brought to you by Marty, Patron Saint of Hope.

March 30-31: Most Remarkable People, Doublespeak, Nostalgia

Merton writes about the Christmas of 1926 with some remarkable people . . .

In the winter of 1926 Father went to Murat.  Murat is in the Cantal, the old Province of Auvergne, a Catholic province.  It is in the mountains of central France, green mountains, old volcanoes.  The valleys are full of rich pastures and the mountains are heavy with fir trees or raise their green domes into the sky, bare of woods, covered with grass.  The people of this land are Celts, mostly.  The Auvergnats have been more or less laughed at, in French tradition, for their simplicity and rusticity.  They are very stolid people, but very good people.

At Murat, Father boarded with a family who had a little house, a sort of a small farm on the slope of one of the steep hills outside the town, and I went up there to spend the Christmas holidays, that year.

Murat was a wonderful place.  It was deep in snow, and the houses with their snow-covered roofs relieved the grey and blue and slate-dark patter of the buildings crowded together on the sides of these hills.  The town huddled at the foot of a rock crowned by a colossal statue of the Immaculate Conception, which seemed to me, at the time, to be too big, and to bespeak too much religious enthusiasm.  By now I realize that it did not indicate any religious excess at all.  These people wanted to say in a very obvious way that they loved Our Lady, who should indeed be loved and revered, as a Queen of great power and a Lady of immense goodness and mercy, mighty in her intercession for us before the throne of God, tremendous in the glory of her sanctity and her fullness of grace as Mother of God.  For she loves the children of God, who are born into the world with the image of God in their souls, and her powerful love is forgotten, and it is not understood, in the blindness and foolishness of the world.

However, I did not bring up the subject of Murat in in order to talk about the statue, but about M. and Mme. Privat.  They were the people with whom we boarded, and long before we got to Murat, when the train was climbing up the snowy valley, from Aurillac, on the other side of the Puy du Cantal, Father was telling me.  "Wait until you see the Privats."

In a way, they were to be among the most remarkable people I ever knew.  

Any person who knows me knows that Christmas is my jam.  Therefore, I love Merton's description of Murat in deep snow during the yuletide season.  And the huge statue of the Virgin Mary towering over the entire town.  It speaks to my Catholic childhood, where the walls were adorned with pictures of the Sacred Heart and a statue of the Blessed Mother looked down on family dinners from her perch on top of the china cabinet.

In this time of pandemic, I find my mind retreating to these simpler times, when life wasn't a daily struggle.  Even before Covid-19 entered the global consciousness, my life had become difficult in many ways.  Now, facing a kind of plague of Biblical proportions, I feel like everything that I thought was important and consequential is being stripped away.  Each day brings one less thing, one less comfort.

This morning, when I got to the hospital to report to work, I had to stand in line.  At the front of the line, I had to answer a series of questions ("Have you been experiencing fever or respiratory symptoms in the past week?" and "Have you traveled outside the Upper Peninsula in the past two weeks?" and "Have you been in contact with anyone who has been outside of the Upper Peninsula in the past two weeks?")  And then entered another line to have my temperature taken.  Only after passing this screening was I able to get my badge scanned and enter the building.

It was surreal, as if I was living in some kind of police state.  Now, I know that all this is being done in the interest of public safety, but that knowledge doesn't make this newest change any easier.  And a new (or old) language has entered the public domain, one that Orwell identified in 1948:  doublespeak.  Messages layered in double-negatives.  Announcements made and then minutes later retracted, rescinded, revised, or revoked.  This is the new normal.

That is why I allow myself to indulge in nostalgia these days.  Yes, the old days were not all sunshine and rainbows.  There was still poverty and racial injustice and homophobia and xenophobia and war and pestilences.  There hasn't been a time since Adam and Eve walked out of the Garden (metaphorically or literally, depending on your belief system) that human history hasn't been rife with these plagues, physical and existential. 

For tonight, however, I hold onto memories, like Christmases of the past.  My daughter's first Christmas.  She was twenty days old.  Fit into my elbow and slept there like a beautiful gift.  I hold moments like that close to me right now.  Dip into it like fresh water from a cold well.

Saint Marty wishes you all beauty and rest.

October 26: Low Morale, Quiet Day

Morale is pretty low here at my place of work.  Coworkers are walking around as if they don't trust each other, like we're living in a police state and anybody could be the enemy.  I've been in work situations like this before, felt like Winston Smith from 1984.  The problem is that Big Brother really is watching this time.

I'm not going to get all paranoid, but if you never hear from me after this post, know that I died for the cause of Saint Marty and becoming a Blog of Note.  Not very heroic sounding, I know.  It's all I got, however.  They're going to have to tear me away from this computer kicking and screaming, then write a doublespeak memo saying how I've decided to pursue other career opportunities or gone on an extended vacation.

Saint Marty is still here for the moment.  The truth is out there.

Kind of looks like my big boss...