Running with the Current: Thomas Merton on Leaving Decisions to God

Another "Running with the Current" video.  A great lesson from the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. I hope you like it.


Narrative - Letter from Thomas Merton to Abbot James Fox from 1950. Found in the book "Thomas Merton: School of Charity"

Background: Kootenai Creek near Stevensville, Montana

Read by Matt Kuntz

The End of One Journey and Beginning of Another

Last week, I was walking home for lunch when an ambulance passed me. It moved slowly over the dirt road, not an emergency. Still it’s always disconcerting to have an ambulance on your street. The other side of the spectrum from the old Publishers Sweepstakes commercials when Ed McMahon showed up at someone’s door with seven-foot long check for a million dollars.

The yellow sun was high in the Montana sky. The air was calm. A few slight wisps of clouds against the blue. The spring daffodils on the side of the road were drooping, giving way to summer’s bluebells. As I got closer to home, I watched the paramedics rolling my neighbor out of the ambulance and into his house. My neighbor is a kind, retired physician from Portland. He’d been battling serious illness for over a year. The last weeks were especially hard. It was clear that they were bringing him back to pass away in the comfort of his home surrounded by family.

As I passed their house, I heard a piercing cry. My two-month old son was telling the world that he was ready to be fed again. I pictured usually-smiling mouth stretched in a squall. All of the joy, love, anger, and sadness that life would require wrapped up in that little body.

The juxtaposition between birth and death was striking. Some ancient theologians described the process of life as going out from and then returning to the Divine. Plato and Aristotle both espoused versions of the concept. Christian theologians tied the theory to Jesus’s parable in Luke 19:12 and the King Solomon’s Song of Songs.

I’m writing this in the Salt Lake City airport. Travelers go past. Different races, faiths, and destinations. They recheck their itineraries. Contemplating the challenges and joys that they will face upon reaching their destination. I read the German mystic Meister Eckhart’s statement that “All created things have flowed out of God’s will.” Then imagine the travelers as souls departing the Divine for their time on Earth. Each going to their own personal destination to confront their own individual challenges and joys. Eventually to return, discuss their trip with the heavenly father, and be judged upon their actions.

• Did you remember the reason for your trip? 
• Did you stay true to that purpose? 
• Did you follow the signs and teachings that were sent to guide you? 
• How did you act when confronted with the adversities of life? 
• How did you serve your fellow human beings?

Anyone contemplating how they would respond to those questions should be filled with trepidation. Human existence is by definition cloaked in failings and sin. We do the best that we can, knowing it can never truly be enough.

However, the words of Psalm 145 give comfort. "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to all, compassionate to every creature." Psalm 145:8-9

The return to the Divine may be terrifying, but it will be more filled with joy and love than anything we can imagine.

The Sunset Didn't Have to Be That Beautiful

Note: This post does not make an argument for or against evolution.  That question is between you, your pastor, your rabbi, your scientist, your monk, your guru, and anyone else who might be able to help you shine light on that riddle.  Fortunately Catholicism lets me off that hook by providing that: "Christian faith does not require the acceptance of any particular theory of evolution, nor does it forbid it, provided that the particular theory...does not deny...that God creates each human soul directly to share immortal life with him." U.S. Catechism, page 60.  That's good enough for me.

Near sunset on a Sunday night in late July of 2011

I drove home to Helena from Canyon Ferry Lake.  Fiona and Rowan were in their carseats in the back.  Our little Subaru Forester climbed up the Spokane Hills.  The pines stood green over the dry yellow grass.  I didn't have a direct view of the Sun, but the sky took on shades of orange and pink into its deep blue.

We drove through some construction, past the Glass Slipper bar, then by a little subdivision sprouting up in the farmland.  The radio rattled on.  The girls jabbered to each other.  My mind flipped back and forth between the road and trying to plot out my schedule for the upcoming week.

Then we crested the hill and the Helena valley opened up before us.  I didn't hear the radio.  I didn't care about next week's calendar.  Thankfully the road stayed where it was, because all I could focus on was the sunset erupting in front of us.

The ball of trembling golden light struck the mountains to the west and rippled its rays up through the clouds above.  The clouds surrounding that gold patch, were divided between shades of orange and pink.  The colors rippled, tore, and cascaded through each other.  A massive turqoise perimeter nipped at the edges of the orange and pink clouds.

It was amazing.  From the back seat, Fiona (3 1/2) said, "Ooh, pretty!"  Two seconds after her, Rowan (2) said the same.  Then the car was quiet.  We were all transfixed on the dance of light beyond the windshield.

Black tires rolled over black asphalt between the painted lines all the way into town, but I'm not sure that would have been the case if it wasn't mostly a straight shot.  Somewhere during that drive, I realized that the sunset didn't have to be that beautiful.

The spectacle was caused by the Earth turning in its rotation around the Sun.  Earth's act of rotating part of itself way from its primary light source had to cause a transition from day to night.  That transition required some changes in the coloring of the sky, but really it didn't need to be spectacular.  From light, to gray, to black would have worked.

Similarly, the human eye and mind had to take in that the sun was going down.  This evening, that knolwedge let me to flip a switch to turn on the car's lights.  Generations ago, I would have known it was time to either light a fire or call it a night.  That basic human knowledge could also have been accomplished by the ability to perceive a transition from full light, to gray, then black. 

That's probably overstating it, but evolutionarily-speaking me and my two daughters did not require the ability to take in and appreciate the immense beauty of that sunset.  A little less color sensitivity and natural beauty appreciation probably wouldn't have gotten our ancestors eaten by sabre tooth tigers, but just functional wasn't enough for the Divine Creator.

The Creator took what needed to merely function and made it indiscribably beautiful.  From the wildflowers poking up from the wet Spring dirt to the stars glittering in the night sky.  They didn't have to be that beautiful and we didn't require the senses to appreciate that beauty.

The beauty of the Universe is evidence that the Creator loves Creation.  Genesis 1:31 ("God looked at everything he had made, and he found it was very good.")  It's the same pride in workmanship that every great craftsman knows.  Functional is not enough.The details have been unfolded and reworked from the smallest particles to entire Galaxies.  The Creator has noticed even the smallest sparrow and counted the very hairs on our heads.  Luke 12:6-7.

We were given the ability to appreciate that beauty so we would know from the core of our being that something incredibly powerful loves us and has blessed us beyond measure as evidence of that love.  In dating terms, the Creator could have gotten us carnations.  That would have done the job, but the Creator went the extra mile and sprung for roses.  Most of us intrinsically know what that means, now we need to let ourselves believe it.

The Upside of Suffering

April 8-9, 2011

For those going through a divorce, there are days when it all makes sense.  In our case, a chimp with a fifty-word sign language vocabulary could come up with a list of reasons why it is the best thing for me, my ex-wife, and our kids.  By this stage in the process, I can usually see the chimp's logic.

At other moments and other days, it feels like someone cut out my heart with an jagged sawblade.  April 8th, 2011 was one of those days.  I had to come face-to-face with the reality that she is never coming back to us.  The first word in "irreconcilable differences" is operative.  It is over.

I played with the kids that night and put them to bed.  After getting the elves down, I called a friend, did some work, and watched an episode of "The Office."  Anything to keep my head from the pillow and the sad thoughts that would keep me from sleep.

My gaze kept returning to a red book on the desk in my livingroom, "Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body."  I felt beckoned to open it up and try another chapter, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  The first 124 pages had been excruciating as it examined the divine root of spousal love.  I thought that it might help me come to terms with my new reality.  Unfortunately, the book had done nothing more than to add in questions about the divine and how it related to my failed marriage.  I was willing to take the hit on my daily Looking 4 Answers quiz by passing up the day's spiritual reading.

I went to bed about midnight.  My daughter Fiona came in around one and sometime after three she gave me a kick that brushed away any semblance of sleep.  I went downstairs hoping to find a distraction.  The laundry was done.  The house was clean.  I didn't want to turn on the TV to risk waking up the girls.

It was just me, grief, and that damned red book.  I didn't understand why it had to hurt this bad.  I'd saw it coming and I thought I was moving on.  What was the point in all the suffering?

I put aside the question and picked up the book.  The first dozen or so pages barely even distracted me from the thoughts of why my prayers hadn't been answered.  Why we'd failed so miserably when I knew that we both really tried.  The pages went along and I didn't find hte answers that I was looking for.  I knew that Creation had been broken and that evil was a reality in the world, but there had to be an upside.  I'd seen too much goodness to just fall into the pit of despair.

Why had I been called to read this book that wasn't helping?

Then on page 138, I saw it, "This analysis of our fallen situation has a sobering corollary: Because love runs counter to the logic of domination, a genuine lover is bound to suffer.  Anyone who wants to love must face the possibility of indifference and rejection; he must be willing to suffer on account of the fractured unity of human existence[.]"

The book went on to describe how suffering has a special capacity to reveal love.  Human suffering moves others to compassion, inviting us to comfort them in their sorrow.  As Pope John Paul II described in Salvici Doloris, "[S]uffering is present in the world in order to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbor, in order to transform the whole of civilization into a 'civilization of love.'"

At some level, something clicked.  I rewound through my memories of the collapse of my marriage and realized how many acts of kinship and love had been directed my way through that suffering.  Friends calling to see if we were alright.  Near strangers offering to do anything to help us get through the days.  Colleagues at both mine and my ex-wife's work displaying boundless depths of patience and compassion.  A staggering amount of support from my family.

My daughters and I are closer now than we ever would have been without the sorrow created by the distancing of a wife and mother.  Earlier that day, I'd held my little brother's new baby boy in my arms and found out that they were considering using my name as his middle name.  I don't know if they would have given me that honor if they hadn't seen how hard I'd worked to try and keep this sad little family together.

I knew that while I would not wish this sorrow on anyone.  I also couldn't deny that it had led to a powerful force of good in my life.  While I could not guess with any certainty  on what the future brings, I would feel comfortable betting that some of the further good things to come will spring from the reaction to this sorrow.  For better or worse, that is how the Divine works.

The red book's message of peace allowed me to turn off the light and go back to bed.