War, Peace, Hope and a Dream: A Reflection

I want to share with you some food for thought from Thomas Merton as I consider the state of the world today and how politicians and authoritarian dictators treat humankind as pawns in their obscene lust for power and control. While some of the names and the faces have changed, what I see today and what I saw during my time in uniform as an Air Force Chaplain is eerily similar to what Thomas Merton saw and wrote about from the monastery and his hermitage in the 1960s. In his review of Paul Dekar’s book Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World, Jim Forest captured what I often feel as I read Merton’s prophetic writings.

From his monastic outpost in rural Kentucky, Thomas Merton saw the world around him with stunning clarity. Whether gazing at a nuclear-armed B-52 flying overhead night after night or pondering the racism that infects so many of us, he had insights that help clear the eyes and minds of those fortunate enough to pick up one of his books. Jim Forest in Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World, p. 6.

As Merton reflected on the display of nuclear-armed B-52s flying over head and the thump thump of artillery fire from a nearby Army base, he wrote the following:

All over the face of the earth the avarice and the lust of men breed divisions among them, and the wounds that tear men from union with one another widen and open out into huge wars. Murder, massacres, revolution, hatred, the slaughter and torture of the bodies and souls of men, the destruction of cities by fire, the starvation of millions, the annihilation of populations, and finally the cosmic inhumanity of atomic war: Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb. God is murdered in men. — Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation (p. 71) as found in Paul Dekar’s book Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World (p. 10)

To be honest, reading the news online and scrolling through Social media feeds often leaves me feeling depressed and hopeless. My wife and partner in life, love, and ministry Denise reminded me today as she worked on a project for her home church that we can make a difference. It may not be through grand and spectacular actions, but then an ocean is filled by water one drop at a time. Will you join me, dear reader, in finding a way to make a difference one day and one drop at a time? Perhaps then we can become a part of the vision that Thomas Merton had on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville:

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. — Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (p. 155)

That is my hope and my fervent prayer as I seek to live out my own life and faith one day at a time.