You are not what you do, although you do a lot. You are not what you have collected in terms of friendships and connections, although you might have many. You are not the popularity that you have received. You are not the success of your work. You are not what people say about you, whether they speak well or whether they speak poorly about you. All these things that keep you quite busy, quite occupied, and often quite preoccupied are not telling the truth about who you are. I am here to remind you in the name of God that you are the Beloved Daughters and Sons of God, and that God says to you, “I have called you from all eternity and you are engraved from all eternity in the palms of my hands. You are mine. You belong to me, and I love you with an everlasting love.”
(Victor) Hugo stated that peace, a universal religious ideal, emanated from divine law. For Hugo, God’s dream was peace, not war; justice, not oppression; universal prosperity, not the gap between rich and poor that characterized the economic imbalance between the rich and poor in Hugo’s time, and still does. Deploring the immense sums nations squandered on armaments, Hugo urged all countries to direct these funds to the arts, research, agriculture, or science. He pleaded that nations cease to traffic in arms. He advocated creation of international bodies to settle disputes and mediate conflicting interests.
As the audience applauded, Hugo said, The divine law is not one of war, but peace. Lay down your arms. And in that day you will all have one common thought, common interests, a common destiny; you will embrace each other and recognize each other as children of the same blood and of the same race; that day you will be a people, costs directed not to arms but the common good.
Source: Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World, p. 43
This is what we need today… Oh Lord, this is what we need…
I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them. — Heather Cox Richardson in her Martin Luther King Day Reflection on Substack
“Once there is seeing; there must be acting.”—Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
Aren’t you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: “May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire”? But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burnout.
“It may be that the most radical thing we can do right now is to act from our vision, not our fear, and to believe in the possibility of its realization.”—Starhawk
Things that make you go hmmmmm… written in 1971, Saul Alinsky’s words, like Thomas Merton’s, are prophetic and relevant as much today as they were in the 70s.
The great American dream that reached out to the stars has been lost to the stripes. We have forgotten where we came from, we don’t know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. Afraid, we turn from the glorious adventure of the pursuit of happiness to a pursuit of an illusionary security in an ordered, stratified, striped society. Our way of life is symbolized to the world by the stripes of military force. At home we have made a mockery of being our brother’s keeper by being his jail keeper. When Americans can no longer see the stars, the times are tragic. We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful new world; we will see it when we believe it. — Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals, p. 196 as found in Paul Dekar’s book Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World, p. 23)
There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed, and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes the relationship flat, superficial, empty, and often very boring. When we try to shake off our loneliness by creating a milieu without limiting boundaries, we may become entangled in a stagnating closeness. It is our vocation to prevent the harmful exposure of our inner sanctuary, not only for our own protection but also as a service to our fellow human beings with whom we want to enter in a creative communion. Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.
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.
“Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.”—Rosa Parks
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