July 28-31: Shattered My Heart, Calling, Stumbled into Things

Something inside Merton breaks open . . .

Outside in the world were holy men who were holy in the sense that they went about with portraits of all the possible situations in which they could show their love of God displayed about them: and they were always conscious of all these possibilities. But these other hidden men had come so close to God in their hiddenness that they no longer saw anyone but Him. They themselves were lost in the picture: there was no comparison between them receiving and God giving, because the distance by which such comparison could be measured had dwindled to nothing. They were in Him. They had dwindled down to nothing and had been transformed into Him by the pure and absolute humility of their hearts. 

And the love of Christ overflowing in those clean hearts made them children and made them eternal. Old men with limbs like the roots of trees had the eyes of children and lived, under their grey woolen cowls, eternal. And all of them, the young and the old, were ageless, the little brothers of God, the little children for whom was made the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Day after day the round of the canonical hours brought them together and the love that was in them became songs as austere as granite and as sweet as wine. And they stood and they bowed in their long, solemn psalmody. Their prayer flexed its strong sinews and relaxed again into silence, and suddenly flared up again in a hymn, the color of flame, and died into silence: and you could barely hear the weak, ancient voice saying the final prayer. The whisper of the amens ran around the stones like sighs, and the monks broke up their ranks and half emptied the choir, some remaining to pray. 

And in the night they also rose, and filled the darkness with the strong, patient anguish of their supplication to God: and the strength of their prayer (the Spirit of Christ concealing His strength in the words their voices uttered) amazingly held back the arm of God from striking and breaking at last the foul world full of greed and avarice and murder and lust and all sin. 

The thought of those monasteries, those remote choirs, those cells, those hermitages, those cloisters, those men in their cowls, the poor monks, the men who had become nothing, shattered my heart. 

In an instant the desire of those solitudes was wide open within me like a wound.

I believe that's pretty much the textbook definition of "a call."  God tapping you on the shoulder and saying "hey."

I don't think that I've ever experienced a call like that.  Nothing that clear.  I think that, for most of my life, I've stumbled into things blindly.  When I was about to graduate with my BA, one of my professors asked me if I'd considered applying to the Master's program.  So I did.  When I needed a job with health insurance, my sister asked me if I wanted to work in the medical office of an outpatient surgery center.  So I did.  Eventually, the Head of the English Department at the university called me up and asked if I wanted to teach a tech writing class as an adjunct professor.  So I did, and thus began my teaching career in academia. Then one of my mentors asked me if I was interested in applying for the MFA program in poetry.  So I did.  Last year, a friend told me that there was a job opening that I would be perfect for at the library.  So I applied and got it.

So, as you can tell, most of the things that I've done in my life have been suggestions from family and friends and mentors.  I don't think that qualifies as a calling.  Or callings.  More like being in the right place at the right time.  Maybe it was luck.  Or maybe it was God.

Perhaps, if I were closer to God at the moment--or if I lived in Biblical times--divine messages would be easier to recognize.  It wasn't unusual in the Old and New Testaments for angels to knock on your door and ask for dinner.  Or appear in your dreams with clear instructions from the Big Guy.  Or show up in your bedroom, saying things like Ave.  That doesn't happen anymore.  God is sort of like Elvis these days.  Doesn't play the big venues.  Instead, He shows up outside Burger King, looking a lot like a homeless guy, holding a sign that says, "Haven't eaten in 5 days."

Maybe God did send angels to me when I needed them.  Instead of Gabriel singing in my dreams, I got professors, sisters, department heads, and friends.  No wings or white robes or harps.  Just people with good intentions and advice.  And maybe that's the way it has always been.  When you need a hand up, there's someone there, arm outstretched.  It's always happened that way for me.

For those of my disciples who don't believe in God, call it luck or coincidence.  For those of you with religious beliefs, it's God or Yahweh or Jesus or Muhammed or Buddha or Brahma or Vishnu or Shiva.  Here's the thing:  when all you see is darkness, remember there's always light on the way.  Whether it feels like you stumble into that light, or that light finds you.  

That's the gospel according to Saint Marty.

July 19-27: An Act of Love, Tokyo Olympics, Perseverance,

Merton prepares for his Trappist retreat . . . 

There were still about three weeks left until Easter.  Thinking more and more about the Trappist monastery where I was going to spend Holy Week, I went to the library one day and took down the Catholic Encyclopaedia to read about the Trappists. I found out that the Trappists were Cistercians, and then, in looking up Cistercians, I also came across the Carthusians, and a great big picture of the hermitages of the Camaldolese. 

What I saw on those pages pierced me to the heart like a knife. 

What wonderful happiness there was, then, in the world! There were still men on this miserable, noisy, cruel earth, who tasted the marvelous joy of silence and solitude, who dwelt in forgotten mountain cells, in secluded monasteries, where the news and desires and appetites and conflicts of the world no longer reached them. 

They were free from the burden of the flesh’s tyranny, and their clear vision, clean of the world’s smoke and of its bitter sting, were raised to heaven and penetrated into the deeps of heaven’s infinite and healing light. 

They were poor, they had nothing, and therefore they were free and possessed everything, and everything they touched struck off something ofthe fire of divinity. And they worked with their hands, silently ploughing and harrowing the earth, and sowing seed in obscurity, and reaping their small harvests to feed themselves and the other poor. They built their own houses and made, with their own hands, their own furniture and their own coarse clothing, and everything around them was simple and primitive and poor, because they were the least and the last of men, they had made themselves outcasts, seeking, outside the walls of the world, Christ poor and rejected of men. 

Above all, they had found Christ, and they knew the power and the sweetness and the depth and the infinity of His love, living and working in them. In Him, hidden in Him, they had become the “Poor Brothers of God.” And for His love, they had thrown away everything, and concealed themselves in the Secret of His Face. Yet because they had nothing, they were the richest men in the world, possessing everything: because in proportion as grace emptied their hearts of created desire, the Spirit of God entered in and filled the place that had been made for God. And the Poor Brothers of God, in their cells, they tasted within them the secret glory, the hidden manna, the infinite nourishment and strength of the Presence of God. They tasted the sweet exultancy of the fear of God, which is the first intimate touch of the reality of God, known and experienced on earth, the beginning of heaven. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of heaven. And all day long, God spoke to them: the clean voice of God, in His tremendous peacefulness, spending truth within them as simply and directly as water wells up in a spring. And grace was in them, suddenly, always in more and more abundance, they knew not from where, and the coming of this grace to them occupied them altogether, and filled them with love, and with freedom. 

And grace, overflowing in all their acts and movements, made everything they did an act of love, glorifying God not by drama, not by gesture, not by outward show, but by the very simplicity and economy of utter perfection, so utter that it escapes notice entirely. 

I want to believe that this kind of perfection is possible in the world.  That it's possible to empty oneself of all worries and troubles that plague the human race, and pour grace into the empty vessels of our bodies.  Out with the bad, in with the good.  And Thomas Merton is painting a pretty idealized vision of the Trappist way of life, devoted completely to the glory of God.

I'm a little too jaded to buy completely Merton's Edenic portrait.  Trappist monks are, above all, human beings.  As such, they pretty much have the same struggles as each one of us.  Granted, living in a cloistered monastery makes it a little easier to avoid the normal pitfalls of the world like lust or greed or envy.  Yet, these impulses can't be entirely erased.  Maybe they can be muffled a little.  But they still exist.

Perfection does not exist because we live in a broken world where terrible things happen.  I think that you can STRIVE to be perfect, and it's in the striving where grace can enter in.  You have to make room in yourself for things like generosity and self-sacrifice, because they go against all of the normal selfish impulses that everyone feels.  If you aren't able to wave that white flag, then grace will remain on the bench and never come up to bat.  (Yes, I just used a sports metaphor.  Don't judge me.)

It has been a long seven or eight days.  I've been having a difficult time not focusing on my problems.  Forget about emptying myself out to make room for grace.  That's not going to happen.  However, this is not going to be one of THOSE posts where I depress all my loyal disciples out there with some kind of poetic meditation on loss and anger and grief.  I've been treading water in that pool for about a week now.  (Yes, I just used another sports metaphor.  Blame it on the fact that I'm watching the Tokyo Olympics as I'm writing this post.)

So, what is this post about then?  It's about perseverance.  Not giving up when every part of you--body, mind, and spirit--wants to pull the blanket over your head and never get out of bed again.  As I said, I've been watching the Tokyo Olympics since they began last Friday, and I'm constantly inspired by the athletes.  But not the ones with gold, silver, or bronze medals hanging around their necks.  Nope.  It's the athletes who come in dead last.  Who know they have no chance of winning anything, but still persist.  Finish the race.  Or the game.  Or the match.  Who give it their all--against great odds, sometimes.  The ones who are only battling themselves.

For me, those athletes are the true heroes of the Olympics.  I grew up in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where everyone lives and eats and breathes sports.  The entire town convoys downstate when a team makes it to the finals.  And they return home, honking their horns, escorted by firetrucks with sirens blaring, at one or two o'clock in the morning.  I have never been a part of that scene, as a student or adult.  

I think that's why I enjoy endurance sports.  Marathons.  Triathlons.  In high school. the only sport I participated in was cross country.  Never won a race.  Never even came close to winning.  It was just about finishing.  Here's my favorite Olympic moment ever:

Gabriela Andersen-Schiess from Switzerland running the inaugural women's marathon in the 1984 Los Angeles summer Olympics.  The day was brutally hot--90 degrees.  Andersen-Schiess was in trouble.  Suffering from dehydration.  Stumbling into the stadium at the end of the race.  She was dragging her legs, weaving along the track unsteadily.  But she never gave up.  When she finally crossed the finish line, she collapsed into the arms of the doctors waiting for her.  She was carried off the track as the crowd gave her a standing ovation.

That is what I'm talking about.  Perseverance.  Getting out of bed.  Facing an impossible day.  Stumbling across that finish line despite everything that's against you.  That's real courage.  Real grace.

Saint Marty is running a marathon right now.  He's not coming in gold or silver or bronze.  He's just looking to finish.

July 15-18: Greenest Shamrock, Surrender, "On Your 60th Birthday"

Merton gets a letter from the draft board . . . 

The weeks went by, and I wrote some more poems, and continued to fast and keep my Lent. All I prayed was that God should let me know His will —and, if it pleased Him, there was only one other thing I asked for myself besides: if I had to go to the army, I begged Him at least to let me make a retreat with the Trappist monks before I went. 

However, the next thing I got from the Draft Board was a notice to present myself for medical examination before the doctors in Olean. 

I had not been expecting things to develop that way, and at first I interpreted this to mean that my request for consideration as a non-combatant had simply been ignored. There were three days before the examination, and so I got permission to go down to New York. I thought I might see the Draft Board and talk to them: but that was not possible. In any case, it was not necessary. 

So the week-end turned out to be a sort of a festival with my friends. I saw Lax, who was now working for the New Yorker, and had a desk of his own in a corner of their offices where he wrote letters to pacify the people who complained about the humor, or the lack of it, in the pages of the magazine. Then we went out to Long Beach and saw Seymour. And then Seymour and I and Lax all together got in a car and went to Port Washington and saw Gibney. 

The next day was St. Patrick’s Day, and the massed bands of all the boys and girls in Brooklyn who had never had an ear for music were gathering under the windows of the New Yorker offices and outside the Gotham Book Mart. And I, an Englishman, wearing a shamrock which I had bought from a Jew, went walking around the city, weaving in and out of the crowds, and thinking up a poem called April, although it was March. It was a fancy poem about javelins and leopards and lights through trees like arrows and a line that said: “The little voices of the rivers change.” I thought it up in and out of the light and the shade of the Forties, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and typed it on Lax’s typewriter in the New Yorker office, and showed it to Mark Van Doren in a subway station. 

And Mark said, of the shamrock I was wearing: “That is the greenest shamrock I have ever seen.” 

It was a great St. Patrick’s Day. That night I got on the Erie train, and since I was so soon, I thought, to go to the army, I paid money to sleep in the Pullman. Practically the only other Pullman passenger was a sedate Franciscan nun, who turned out to be going to St. Elizabeth’s: and so we got off at Olean together and shared a taxi out to Alleghany. 

On Monday I prepared to go and be examined for the army. I was the first one there. I climbed the ancient stairs to the top floor of the Olean City Hall. I tried the handle of the room marked for the medical board, and the door opened. I walked in and stood in the empty room. My heart was still full of the peace of Communion. 

Presently the first of the doctors arrived. 

“You got here early,” he said, and began to take off his coat and hat. 

“We might as well begin,” he said, “the others will be along in a minute.” 

So I stripped, and he listened to my chest, and took some blood out of my arm and put it in a little bottle, in a water-heater, to keep it cosy and warm for the Wassermann test. And while this was going on, the others were coming in, two other doctors to do the examining, and lanky young farm boys to be examined. 

“Now,” said my doctor, “let’s see your teeth.” 

I opened my mouth. 

“Well,” he said, “you’ve certainly had a lot of teeth out!”

And he began to count them. 

The doctor who was running the Medical Board was just coming in. My man got up and went to talk to him. I heard him say: 

“Shall we finish the whole examination? I don’t see much point to it.” 

The head doctor came over and looked at my mouth. 

“Oh, well,” he said, “finish the examination anyway.” 

And he sat me down and personally took a crack at my reflexes and went through all the rest of it. When it was over, and I was ready to get back into my clothes, I asked: 

“What about it, Doctor?” 

“Oh, go home,” he said, “you haven’t got enough teeth.” 

Once again I walked out into the snowy street. 

So they didn’t want me in the army after all, even as a stretcher bearer!  The street was full of quiet, full of peace. 

And I remembered that it was the Feast of St. Joseph. 

Saint Joseph, patron of, among other things, fathers (he was God's stepfather), unborn children (considering what he went through to protect in utero Jesus, not surprising), workers (a carpenter his whole life), immigrants (crossed a desert to Bethlehem, fled to Egypt to protect his family), and a happy death (supposedly, Jesus was at Joseph's bedside when he passed).  Joseph surrendered to God's will.  Merton is ready to surrender to whatever God has in store for him in this passage.  And what God has in store for Merton is a bus ticket back to teaching and the pursuit of a religious life.  Because of his bad teeth.

I get surrender.  Have done it a lot in my life.  Sometimes by choice.  Other times, because of metaphorical bad teeth.  Free will is a thing that all humans possess.  Joseph could have chosen to quietly break off his engagement with Mary and spend the rest of his life making birdhouses.  Instead, he gave his life over to something else.  That's not easy to do.

Yet, sometimes life doesn't give you many options.  You have to accept whatever plate comes out of the kitchen and is put before you, even if you're vegan and the entre is prime rib.  In that case, surrender is easy.  Because you have no choice.  It's when you're faced with a potluck that surrender is more complicated.  You can go with the salad, which is better for you.  However, the brownie trifle is so much more appealing.

Right now, I'm facing a salad/brownie trifle situation, and I'm not finding the lettuce that appetizing.  Not going to get into details, but let me just say that, come fall, I think my life is going to look a lot different.

Yesterday, my sister, Sally, would have been 60 years old.  She probably would have retired this year and started planning long road trips with her trailer.  But she never got to make that choice.  Seven years ago, she died of lymphoma of the brain.  It was one of those situations where God didn't give her any options.  She got sick.  She died.  It wasn't a matter of surrender.

Some people hate having options.  Some people have no options.  And, somehow, we have to trust that God's watching over us.  Is present in every decision we make, good or bad.  Was with my sister to the end.

Saint Marty is wondering if he can send back his salad.  Maybe trade up for a plate of pasta.

And a poem for my sister . . . 

On Your 60th Birthday

by:  Martin Achatz

This birdsong morning, you have been free

of rib and lung for almost seven years.  You've seen

the face of God or disappeared down oblivion's throat.

Soar with seraphim or feed the veins of hungry cedars.

You walk with Saint Francis through Eden's orchards

or sun yourself on the backs of Galapagos turtles.

Mystery doesn't exist where you are now,

or you have become part of mystery.  Remember

the first question we learned in catechism?

Who made you?  Answer:  God made me.

Second question:  Who is God?  Second answer:

God is the supreme being who made all things.

We recited those words as if they were simple

as vanilla pudding, could be rolled around

on our tongues, swallowed as easy as breath.

Perhaps it is that plain.  Perhaps, after your last

sigh, as color drained from the dusk

of your face, the knot of the universe unraveled 

before you, you were looking down on me

from some divine glossary page, marveling 

at how it was just a matter of footprints.

Heel.  Instep.  Ball.  Toes.  You followed

them.  Didn't ask where you were going.  Trusted.

Ahead of you, right where Bluff Creek

curves and forest takes over, something waited,

hand outstretched, ready to lead you

into the pines.  Show you that place

where hosts of blueberries sing

hosannas, loud and round and sweet.

July 14: Filled with Peace, Reality Check, At Sea

Merton finds real peace of mind and heart . . . 

It was a late, cold afternoon. The frozen piles of snow lay along the swept sidewalks, in the gutters, in front of the small, one-story buildings on State Street. Presently Bob O’Brien, the plumber at the Olean house, who lived in Alleghany, and who used to fix the pipes when they went wrong up at the cottage, came by in his car. He stopped to give me a ride.

He was a big, jovial, family man, with white hair and several sons who served as altar boys at St. Bonaventure’s Church in Alleghany, and as we passed out of town on the wide road, he was talking about peaceful and ordinary things. 

The country opened out before us. The setting sun shone as bright as blood, along the tops of the hills, but the snow in the valleys and hollows was blue and even purple with shadows. On the left of the road, the antennae of the radio station stood up into the clean sky, and far ahead of us lay the red-brick buildings of the College, grouped in an imitation Italy in the midst of the alluvial valley. Beyond that, on the side of the hill were the redder buildings of St. Elizabeth’s convent, past the high bridge over the railroad tracks. 

My eyes opened and took all this in. And for the first time in my life I realized that I no longer cared whether I preserved my place in all this or lost it: whether I stayed here or went to the army. All that no longer mattered. It was in the hands of One Who loved me far better than I could ever love myself: and my heart was filled with peace. 

It was a peace that did not depend on houses, or jobs, or places, or times, or external conditions. It was a peace that time and material-created situations could never give. It was peace that the world could not give.

There are some times in your life when you experience what Merton is writing about in this passage.  A peace that has nothing to do with wealth or health, possessions or people.  A peace that doesn't come from anything the exists on this little rock of a planet.  

I apologize for my extended absence this last week.  My last few posts were certainly not about peace of mind or heart, that's for sure.  I allowed myself to become overwhelmed by certain aspects of my life.  Choices I didn't want to make, but also couldn't avoid.

Then, God stepped in.  Gave me a reality check.

My wife found a lump in her breast last Monday.  She had a doctor's appointment and a biopsy on Tuesday.  Wednesday, she spent the day in bed, nauseated with chills and a low-grade fever.  Thursday, she had a COVID test, even though she is fully vaccinated.  Friday morning at 2 a.m., she woke me up to take her to the local ER.  Her incision site was red and hot and hard.  The doctor diagnosed her with an infection and prescribed an antibiotic.  Friday, she was supposed to get the results of both the COVID test and the biopsy.  She got neither.  Saturday, she wasn't feeling better, and the infection looked as if it was spreading.  Back to the ER.

Finally, at about 5 p.m. on Saturday, we find out that she didn't have COVID and that her breast biopsy came back negative.  And she had a MRSA infection throughout her body.  She was admitted to the hospital Saturday evening and spent three days there on IV Vancomycin.  She was discharged yesterday and is recuperating at home, taking oral Bactrim and changing her dressings twice a day.

So, here I sit on my couch at almost midnight.  Everyone else in my house is asleep.  I'm tired after a full week of medical chaos.  I'd like to say that I've found the peace that Merton is talking about.  Peace that the world cannot give.  I haven't.  I'm still at sea about a lot of things.

However, there have been some blessings these last six or seven days, as well.  I spent a lot of time with my twelve-year-old son.  He wrote some poems.  Went to an Open Mic poetry night with me.  My daughter and I bonded over hating the ending of a movie called The Florida Project.  We had a family game night of Jeopardy.  And one particularly bad situation was completely avoided because of my wife's illness.

As I said, God put things into perspective.  Showed me who's really in charge.

And it ain't Saint Marty.  Perhaps there's some peace of mind in that.