March 1: Our Lady of Gethsemani, Snow Fell, Bigfoot Poem, "Bigfoot Multiple Choice Haibun"

Merton learns a little about Trappists and doesn't like what he hears . . .

“Last summer,” said Dan, “I made a retreat at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is called Our Lady of Gethsemani. Did you ever hear of it?” 

And he began to tell me about the place—how he had been staying with some friends, and they had driven him over to the monastery. It was the first time they had ever been there. Although they lived in Kentucky, they hardly knew the Trappists existed. His hostess had been very piqued at the signs about women keeping out of the enclosure under pain of excommunication, and she had watched with awe as the heavy door closed upon him, engulfing him in that terrible, silent building. 

(From where I sit and write at this moment, I look out the window, across the quiet guest-house garden, with the four banana trees and the big red and yellow flowers around Our Lady’s statue. I can see the door where Dan entered and where I entered. Beyond the Porter’s Lodge is a low green hill where there was wheat this summer. And out there, yonder, I can hear the racket of the diesel tractor: I don’t know what they are ploughing.) 

Dan had stayed in the Trappist monastery a week. He told me of the life of the monks. He told me of their silence. He said they never conversed, and the impression I got was that they never spoke at all, to anybody. 

“Don’t they even go to confession?” I asked. 

“Of course. And they can talk to the abbot. The retreat master talked to the guests. He was Father James. He said that it was a good thing the monks didn’t have to talk—with all the mixture of men they have there, they get along better without it: lawyers and farmers and soldiers and schoolboys, they all live together, and go everywhere together and do everything together. They stand in choir together, and go out to work together and sit together in the same place when they read and study. It’s a good thing they don’t talk.” 

“Oh, so they sing in choir?” 

“Sure,” said Dan, “they sing the Canonical hours and High Mass. They are in choir several hours a day.”

I was relieved to think that the monks got to choir and exercised their vocal cords. I was afraid that so much silence would wither them up altogether. 

“And they work in the fields,” said Dan. “They have to make their own living by farming and raising stock. They grow most of what they eat, and bake their own bread, and make their own shoes...” 

“I suppose they fast a lot,” I said. 

“Oh, yes, they fast more than half the year, and they never eat meat or fish, unless they get sick. They don’t even have eggs. They just live on vegetables and cheese and things like that. They gave me a cheese when I was there, and I took it back to my friends’ house. When we got there, they handed it to the colored butler. They said to him, ‘Do you know what that is? That’s monks’ cheese.’ He couldn’t figure it out, and he looked at it for a while, and then he got an idea. So he looked up with a big smile and said: ‘Oh, I know what YOU all mean: monks! Them’s like goats.’” 

But I was thinking about all that fasting. The life took my breath away, but it did not attract me. It sounded cold and terrible. The monastery now existed in my mind as a big grey prison with barred windows, filled with dour and emaciated characters with their hoods pulled down over their faces.

“They are very healthy,” said Dan, “and they are big strong men. Some of them are giants.” 

(Since I came to the monastery I have tried to pick out Dan’s “giants.” I can account for one or two easily enough. But I think he must have seen the rest of them in the dark—or perhaps they are to be explained by the fact that Dan himself is not very tall.) 

I sat in silence. In my heart, there was a kind of mixture of exhilaration and dejection, exhilaration at the thought of such generosity, and depression because it seemed such a drastic and cruel and excessive rejection of the rights of nature. 

At this point, Merton has no idea that what his friend Dan is describing to him will be his home, his life.  That these silent men, giants or otherwise, will be his closest companions for the majority of his years.  It's sort of like hearing somebody describing the Empire State Building.  Until you are actually standing on the Top Deck observatory, looking down at the M. C. Escher Manhattan landscape below, you simply cannot wrap your mind around the experience.  That is Merton in this passage.

Snow fell yesterday, last night, on my little part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Heavy and wet with Lake Superior moisture.  March came in like a lion, as the saying goes.  Every once in a while, this place I call home needs to remind everybody who's in charge.  And it isn't any hairless creature walking around on two legs.  

For several years now, I've been working on a manuscript of Bigfoot poems, as many of you know.  It's a book that shrinks and grows, hibernates and roars to life.  When I started the project, I never thought that the big guy would be my companion this long.  Six or so months ago, I set the collection aside for a while.  I needed some space from it.  I thought it was near completion, but I wasn't sure.  And I wrote other things.  Poems about starfish and catfish.  Elephants and butterflies.  My bald head.  Sand castles.  

And then, about a week ago, Bigfoot entered my life again.  I didn't expect him to show up, but he did.  And it felt like Thomas Merton visiting Our Lady of Gethsemani for the first time.  As if I'd returned home after a long trip abroad.  After walking around the coastline of Africa for a while, I'd come back to a landscape I knew like my children's breath.  A winter landscape, full of snow and glacial lake water.  

I'm not sure if this means that I'm finally going to make the push to finish this book up, or, like Walt Whitman with Leaves of Grass, I'm just going to keep coming back and back and back for the rest of my life.  I'm hoping it's the former, but it just may be the latter.  I may be poetically chasing Bigfoot forever.

So, tonight, I am home.  On my couch.  Covered in an electric blanket.  And Bigfoot is sitting next to me, smelling like old fish and rotten eggplant.  An old friend.

Saint Marty gives thanks for the miracle of this homecoming.

Bigfoot Multiple Choice Haibun

after Todd Kaneko

by:  Martin Achatz

Bigfoot growled last night in my backyard.  No moon-blind snow.  Banks hunched like marble surf, a cemetery of ice.  My dog, fur a mini-map of the world, squatted in a yoga pose of defecation.  I stood, stared into midnight's mouth, heard it.  Low as the separation of sea and shore, crabapple and crawfish.  It rolled over us both, a haired wall of mud and sand and God's toes.  My dog sniffed, raised her muzzle, buried her nose in constellations, made the sound pharaohs made when they were sealed in their pyramids, a wail that opened the gates of Duat.  And I knew I was about to become a footprint, a skunk-filled memory.

Question:  What do you do when Bigfoot growls?

a) Let your dog eat a meteor.

b) Sink into earth like salt.

c) Become an eardrum.

February 28: Reduced Me to Jelly, Quiet Day, Life of Simplicity

 Merton reflects on different religious orders . . . 

This is not something that is confined to the Franciscans: it is at the heart of every religious vocation, and if it is not, the vocation does not mean much. But the Franciscans, or at least St. Francis, reduced it to its logical limits, and at the same time invested it with a kind of simple thirteenth century lyricism which made it doubly attractive to me. 

However, the lyricism must be carefully distinguished from the real substance of the Franciscan vocation, which is that tremendous and heroic poverty, poverty of body and spirit which makes the Friar literally a tramp. For, after all, “mendicant” is only a fancy word for tramp, and if a Franciscan cannot be a tramp in this full and complete and total mystical sense, he is bound to be a little unhappy and dissatisfied. As soon as he acquires a lot of special articles for his use and comfort and becomes sedate and respectable and spiritually sedentary he will, no doubt, have an easy and pleasant time, but there will be always gnawing in his heart the nostalgia for that uncompromising destitution which alone can give him joy because it flings him headlong into the arms of God. 

Without poverty, Franciscan lyricism sounds tinny and sentimental and raw and false. Its tone is sour, and all its harmonies are somewhat strained. 

I am afraid that at that time, it was the lyricism that attracted me more than the poverty, but really I don’t think I was in a position to know any better. It was too soon for me to be able to make the distinction. However, I remember admitting that one of the advantages of their Rule, as far as I was concerned, was that it was easy. 

After all, I was really rather frightened of all religious rules as a whole, and this new step, into the monastery, was not something that presented itself to me, all at once, as something that I would just take in my stride. On the contrary, my mind was full of misgivings about fasting and enclosure and all the long prayers and community life and monastic obedience and poverty, and there were plenty of strange spectres dancing about in the doors of my imagination, all ready to come in, if I would let them in. And if I did, they would show me how I would go insane in a monastery, and how my health would crack up, and my heart would give out. and I would collapse and go to pieces and be cast back into the world a hopeless moral and physical wreck. 

All this, of course, was based on the assumption that I was in weak health, for that was something I still believed. Perhaps it was to some extent true, I don’t know. But the fear of collapse had done nothing, in the past years, to prevent me from staying up all night and wandering around the city in search of very unhealthy entertainments. Nevertheless, as soon as there was question of a little fasting or going without meat or living within the walls of a monastery, I instantly began to fear death. 

What I eventually found out was that as soon as I started to fast and deny myself pleasures and devote time to prayer and meditation and to the various exercises that belong to the religious life, I quickly got over all my bad health, and became sound and strong and immensely happy. 

That particular night I was convinced that I could not follow anything but the easiest of religious rules.

When Dan began to talk about the one religious Order that filled him with the most enthusiasm, I was able to share his admiration but I had no desire to join it. It was the Order of Cistercians, the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. The very title made me shiver, and so did their commoner name: The Trappists. 

Once, six years before—and it seemed much longer than that—when I had barely glanced at the walls of the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane, outside Rome, the fancy of becoming a Trappist had entered my adolescent mind: but if it had been anything but a pure day-dream, it would not have got inside my head at all. Now, when I was actually and seriously thinking of entering a monastery, the very idea of Trappists almost reduced me to a jelly. 

The irony of this passage, of course, is that Merton became one of the most famous Trappist monks of all time.  Of course, being a monk AND being famous are sort of antithetical.  The Trappists are all about simplicity and humility and hiddenness and service and prayer.  In a lot of ways, that does not define Merton at all.  Yes, he lived as a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.  Yet, he was also an international literary star, sought out by fans and fellow writers.  He traveled.  Attended conferences.  His life was anything but hidden.

It has been a fairly quiet day for me.  By "quiet," I mean that I have pretty much not left my house, except for a three-mile walk with my puppy.  Aside from that, I've been grading and reading and writing.  This evening, I met with my book club for a lovely two-hour discussion of Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet, an uplifting novel about the Black Plague, childhood death, and William Shakespeare.

And now, I am back at grading after this little blogging respite.  Heavy snow fell this afternoon.  A very quick drop of four or five inches in about two hours.  At one point, I looked out my living room window and could barely see the trees and bushes that mark my property line.  It is now almost 9 p.m., and the precipitation has stopped.  The wind has picked up.  All this after a three-day thaw with temperatures approaching 40 degrees. 

Today has proven to me that I could easily live a life of simplicity and prayer and service.  I'm not so sure about humility and hiddenness.  There's a part of most poets, I think, that craves attention and praise.  I can't think of a single poet of my acquaintance who would say, "I hope nobody reads my work."  No, we all want to be read.  Widely.  

Yet, poetry isn't a field that really attracts a whole lot of attention, except from other poets.  Unless you happen to get invited to deliver a poem at a U. S. Presidential inauguration.  Then, you can start asking for $100,000 for public appearances.  (I can't imagine pulling down that kind of money.  As a poet, I'm used to getting paid in snacks and a free poster.)  I am in the wrong field if I want acclaim and wealth.

Yet, I am rich and famous in a lot of ways.  I have an abundance of friends who care about me a great deal.  Who send me messages like "How are you today?" and genuinely want to know.  That is real wealth.  And, hopefully, those same friends know that I will do anything for them if they are hurt or hungry or homeless. I want to be famous for being compassionate and generous.

Life isn't about how much you have or how many people know you.  If's about how much you give and how many people you serve.  That's what frightens the young Merton about the Trappists.  That dying to self.  But the whole world would be a better place if we all operated this way.  

That is the lesson young Thomas Merton still needs to learn in the passage above.

And it's the lesson that Saint Marty lives by every day.  He doesn't always succeed, but he fails trying.

February 24-27: God Will Come, Michael Landon, Stayed Stuck

 Merton goes shopping for a religious order to join . . . 

The quietest place we could think of in that neighborhood was the men’s bar at the Biltmore, a big room full of comfortable chairs, hushed and paneled and half empty. We sat down in one of the far corners, and it was there, two being gathered together in His Name and in His charity, that Christ impressed the first definite form and direction upon my vocation. 

It was very simply done. We just talked about several different religious Orders, and Dan suggested various priests I might consult and finally promised to give me a note of introduction to one of them. 

I had read a little here and there about the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Benedictines, leafing through the Catholic Encyclopedia in the reference library in South Hall, and shopping around in the stacks. I had put my nose into the Rule of St. Benedict and not derived much benefit from so cursory an acquaintance—all I remembered was that the saint seemed a little vexed at the fact that the monks of his day could not be persuaded to go without wine. I had looked into a little French book about the Dominicans, and there I met with a piece of information that gave me pause: it said they all slept together in a common dormitory, and I thought: “Who wants to sleep in a common dormitory?” The picture in my mind was that of the long, cold, green upstairs room in the Lycée, with row after row of iron beds and a lot of skinny people in nightshirts. 

I spoke to Dan Walsh about the Jesuits, but he said he did not know any Jesuits, and for my own part, the mere fact that he did not seem to have any particular reaction, positive or negative, to that Order, did away with the weak and vague preference which I had hitherto given it in my own mind. I had instinctively turned that way first of all, because I had read the life of Gerard Manley Hopkins and studied his poems, but there had never been any real attraction calling me to that kind of a life. It was geared to a pitch of active intensity and military routine which were alien to my own needs. I doubt if they would have kept me in their novitiate—but if they had, they would probably have found me a great misfit. What I needed was the solitude to expand in breadth and depth and to be simplified out under the gaze of God more or less the way a plant spreads out its leaves in the sun. That meant that I needed a Rule that was almost entirely aimed at detaching me from the world and uniting me with God, not a Rule made to fit me to fight for God in the world. But I did not find out all that in one day. 

Dan spoke of the Benedictines. In itself, the vocation attracted me: a liturgical life in some big abbey in the depths of the country. But in actual fact it might just mean being nailed down to a desk in an expensive prepschool in New Hampshire for the rest of my life—or, worse still, being a parish priest remotely attached to such a prep-school, and living in more or less permanent separation from the claustral and liturgical center which had first attracted me. 

“What do you think of the Franciscans?” said Dan. 

As soon as I mentioned St. Bonaventure’s, it turned out that he had many friends there and knew the place fairly well; in fact they had given him some sort of an honorary degree there that summer. Yes, I liked the Franciscans. Their life was very simple and informal and the atmosphere of St. Bonaventure’s was pleasant and happy and peaceful. One thing that attracted me to them was a sort of freedom from spiritual restraint, from systems and routine. No matter how much the original Rule of St. Francis has changed, I think his spirit and his inspiration are still the fundamental thing in Franciscan life. And it is an inspiration rooted in joy, because it is guided by the prudence and wisdom which are revealed only to the little ones—the glad wisdom of those who have had the grace and the madness to throw away everything in one uncompromising rush, and to walk around barefooted in the simple confidence that if they get into trouble, God will come and get them out of it again. 

This post will be short.  I am tired, and I hope to rest tonight after almost a week of sleeplessness.  

I really love the last few sentences of the above passage about the Franciscan order from Merton:  ". . . the glad wisdom of those who have had the grace and madness to throw away everything in one uncompromising rush, and to walk around barefooted in the simple confidence that if they get into trouble, God will come and get them out of it again."  (Emphasis mine.)

I think it's that word "again" that really strikes me.  It hints at the fact that these Franciscans have gotten into trouble more than once.  In fact, it pretty much seems to say that they have screwed up over and over and over.  And God, like a good parent, has rolled out of bed each time they've called home, put on his coat, climbed behind the wheel of the car, and driven down to the police station to bail them out.  

I like that version of God.  The tired parent who always shows up in times of crisis.  Always forgives.  Doesn't yell or make you feel shittier than you already feel.  This God is simply a divine version of Michael Landon in Little House on the Prairie.  In the end, you know he's always going to be there to help his neighbor raise the new barn or slog through a blizzard to find a lost dog.

I think that's the version of God everyone should have.  All-loving and with really good hair.  It's the version that I cling to in times of difficulty.  Nobody really wants an Old Testament God showing up when you've just gotten pulled over for drunk driving.  Nope.  I want Pa Ingalls, with a warm blanket and a plate of Ma's stew.  

A couple evenings ago, I got home late from cleaning at church.  I was exhausted and ready to just sit down and try not to think about anything.  My mind has been running like a gerbil on a wheel for many days now.  As I climbed out of my car and grabbed my belongings from the back seat, I heard the sound of car wheels spinning on ice.  Like a belt sander whirring and whirring and whirring.  I looked across the street.

My neighbor's car was stuck in his driveway.  It had stormed heavily that day, and the city snowplows had roared by in the afternoon, scraping piles of what I call white cement into driveways and sidewalks.  My neighbor had obviously underestimated the amount of snow in his driveway, tried to barrel through it with his car, and gotten solidly stuck.  He and his significant other were pushing and rocking the vehicle, trying to get it unstuck.

But it just wasn't moving.  

I noted the situation as I reached my front step.  Let me repeat:  I was pretty exhausted.  I didn't feel like peopling at all.  Yet, there was God, planting the seed in my brain.  I went inside my house, put my car keys on the dining room table, slipped a facemask on, and headed back outside.

As I crossed the street, I called out, "Do you need a hand?"

The neighbor looked over at me and said something like, "I'd really appreciate it, man.  I didn't think it was that deep."

"I'll get behind and push," I said.

"Don't get run over," said my neighbor's significant other.

I got behind the car and started pushing and rocking the vehicle.  It inched forward, rolled back, inched forward, rolled back.  It stayed stuck.

"Just a minute," I called.

I went back to my house and asked my wife to come help.  

In a few minutes, the neighbor's significant other, my wife, and I were all behind the car, lifting and pushing as my neighbor gunned the accelerator.  The car inched forward, rolled back.  Inched forward a few more inches, rolled back.   Inched forward, inched forward, inched forward, and then . . . the wheels caught traction, and the car rolled out of the driveway into the street.

As I walked back across the street to my house with my wife, my neighbor waved and called out, "Thanks, man."

I waved and climbed the steps to my house.

That's what God does for us sometimes.  We get stuck in bad habits or situations or illnesses.  Addictions.  Depressions.  Joblessness.  Cheating boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses.  Poverty.  Our wheels keep spinning and spinning and spinning.  Digging deeper and deeper and deeper.  

And then God shows up, gives us a shove in the right direction, and we start moving.  Slowly.  Really slowly.  Until, eventually, you're free.

It felt good to help my neighbor out this week.  It reminded me that I can be someone's light.  

Yes, there is darkness in the world.  We all make mistakes, get sick, experience loss.  But God will show up to help you.  Every time.  He may look like your sister, brother, best friend, spouse.  A complete stranger.  Nurse.  Police officer.  Teacher.

Or he may look exhausted and stressed, as if he hasn't slept in five days.   Like Saint Marty. 

February 23: Season of New Beginnings, Latecomer to the Party, Insomnia

 Merton pursues his vocation . . . 

Once again, classes were beginning at the university.  The pleasant fall winds played in the yellowing leaves of the poplars in front of the college dormitories and many young men came out of the subways and walked earnestly and rapidly about the campus with little blue catalogues of courses under their arms, and their hearts warm with the desire to buy books. But now, in this season of new beginnings, I really had something new to begin. 

A year ago the conviction had developed in my mind that the one who was going to give me the best advice about where and how to become a priest was Dan Walsh. I had come to this conclusion before I had ever met him, or sat and listened to his happy and ingenuous lectures on St. Thomas. So on this September day, in 1939, the conviction was to bear its fruit. 

Dan was not on the Columbia campus that day. I went into one of the phone booths at Livingston Hall and called him up. 

He was a man with rich friends, and that night he had been invited to dinner with some people on Park Avenue, although there was certainly nothing of Park Avenue about him and his simplicity. But we arranged to meet downtown, and at about ten o’clock that evening I was standing in the lobby of one of those big, shiny, stuffy apartments, waiting for him to come down out of the elevator. 

As soon as we walked out into the cool night, Dan turned to me and said: “You know, the first time I met you I thought you had a vocation to the priesthood.” 

I was astonished and ashamed. Did I really give that impression? It made me feel like a whited sepulchre, considering what I knew was inside me. On the whole, perhaps it would have been more reassuring if he had been surprised. 

He was not surprised, he was very pleased. And he was glad to talk about my vocation, and about the priesthood and about religious Orders. They were things to which he had given a certain amount of thought, and on the whole, I think that my selection of an adviser was a very happy one. It was a good inspiration and, in fact, it was to turn out much better than I realized at first. 

As often is the case, Merton is the last person to realize his true calling.  Dan, the person Merton seeks out after deciding to pursue a religious life, had already discerned Merton's vocation on their first meeting.  It's sort of like finally you're admitting you're an alcoholic after years of drinking--everyone already knows it.  You're the only latecomer to the party.

Today was a long day after a long, fitful night.  Dealing with some issues in my personal life, and I just couldn't seem to fall asleep.  So I did what I normally do when I suffer insomnia:  I sat on the couch and read all night long.  Started with Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist, and then moved on to Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet.  I finally was able to drift off around 3 a.m., and got up at 5:45 a.m. to start my day.  

And now I'm in the same boat--tired but unable to shut my eyes without my mind beginning to race.  I have been like this for most of my life.  Late nights and early mornings have been my thing since I was a teenager.  I'm not saying it's a healthy existence, but it's just how I'm wired.  Plus, my life these last three years has contributed to the problem.

I write these words knowing that anyone who knows me is already well aware that I'm a chronic insomniac.  Sort of like Merton walking around telling people he's going to be a priest.  It's not earth-shattering news in the least.  That doesn't make these long, dark hours any easier.  

People who've never suffered from insomnia have no idea how lonely a state it is.  It feels as if the entire planet is tucked under a warm blanket, soundly snoring, and you are stuck awake, washing dishes, folding laundry, reading The Brothers Karamazov, trying to make yourself tired enough to collapse.  You feel isolated with all of your worries.

It is now 1 a.m., and I'm going to try to go to sleep again.  I'll probably end up on the couch, watching Claire Danes in an episode of My So-Called Life, cuz, well, if I'm going to stay awake all night, I might as well do it with her.  Another non-revelation about myself--I love Claire Danes.  

So, my faithful disciples, I wish you all sweet dreams.

Saint Marty is going to go alphabetize his bookshelves now.