I have been spending more time in silence and reflection, especially as I consider how our church should respond to COVID-19. It weighs heavily on my heart given the age of our parishioners and the underlying health conditions of many of them.
As I contemplate Living and Loving, these words from Thomas Merton touched my heart and made me start thinking about life.
Merton knew himself to be essentially uncomplicated as he gazed upon the natural world of his monastic surroundings. What he called the “reality of life itself” taught him a simple way to be a monk, namely, “One lives and loves.” … “To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wider landscape of wood and hills… to sit still while the sun comes up over that land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night calls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars.” (Thomas Merton’s Gethsemane: Landscapes of Paradise, p. 10)
To live and love… to have the love of God illuminate the darkness… to Be Still and Know… to listen for the gentle whisper of the Spirit… to live and to love….
In our daily prayer from the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer we pray the following each time we begin the morning in prayer:
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
Isn’t that somehow related to Merton’s reality of life, to live and to love? Isn’t that what we are called to do each and every day? You don’t have to be in a Monastery to do this.
The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
Today has been a long but good day of ministry
Meetings and also time for reading and reflection
Time for continued planning as we work through COVID-19 protocols
Yet there was also time to share inspiration
Merton spoke once more to me
Prayer, Thanksgiving, and the Present Moment
For these gifts I am truly thankful
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
Today at the Stephen Minister meeting we had a good conversation about Praise and Thanksgiving in difficult times. A story was told about a woman who is writing weekly Devotionals and loving each day despite her cancer (Glioblastoma) diagnosis. Even when the days are difficult, she still manages to see God present in the suffering. She truly is living Psalm 118:24 each day: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
I have seen this sort of attitude before in hospitals and care centers. Often this attitude literally brings sunshine and hope to others and to the patient. Years ago when I was in the Air Force in Clinical Pastoral Education, I was making pastoral calls to patients on the ward I was responsible for. Two rooms were next to each other on the ward. The first room I entered was all dark and the shades were drawn. This person was acting like he was dying yet the clinical notes stated that the diagnosis was not severe or life threatening. I left the room pretty depressed from the experience of hopeless despair on the part of the patient.
As I walked into the next room I was truly amazed. The blinds were open, there were flowers in the room, and the patient was smiling and asked, “How can I help you today, Chaplain?” I said that I was here to ask her the same question. The light and love that exuded from her was a powerful tonic for the soul. She talked of life and love and faith and her grandchildren. I left her room uplifted. She had given more to me that I had given to her. It was especially amazing because she was dying of an incurable cancer. Yet she was definitely living out Psalm 118:24! She was fully living in and embracing the Present moment.
The women were fully alive and embracing the day the Lord had given them. As I read today from Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine by Susan McCaslin and JS Porter I was impressed by Merton’s prayer and praise. As they said, Prayer is at the centre of Merton’s rich interior life.
In Merton’s poem from his journal Turning Toward the World (p. 120) he said the following as he wrote about the praise offered from all the aspects of nature which he lived in the midst of. You have made us all together and you have placed me here this morning in the midst of them. And here I am.
According to McCaslin and Porter, With praise comes thanksgiving… Meister Eckhart was a big influence on Merton in his early intellectual and spiritual development… what Eckheart said truly encapsulated Merton’s prayer life: If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice. (Turning Toward the World, p. 120)
These lessons are quite important as we face the difficulties of this world. Merton did struggle mightily with the issues of Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the Nuclear Arms Race. Yet he always returned to the joy and amazement of God’s creation. I believe there is much to learn for all of us from these individuals and how they lived (or didn’t live) in the present moment.
The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
It has been a busy day of planning
It has been a busy day of meetings
Yet there was also time for much needed silence and reflection
In the midst of it all, Your Spirit has been present
Leading, Guiding, Challenging, Sustaining
For all of this I thank you Lord
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
Christine must have been reading my diary today… thank you, Christine ❤️☘️
“What does it mean to practice the spiritual life? When we embody practices, we live into them and they shape our habits of being. We have to practice being present to the moment, because our tendency – and the world around us conspires in this – is to be distracted. The monk practices contemplation so that in her whole life she can become conscious of the sacred presence beating through the heart of the world.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
What is a distraction or obstacle that keeps you from living a more contemplative life as a monk in the world?
Beautiful blog from my Seminary classmate Shirley ❤️❤️
Several Lenten Seasons ago the worship committee, of my then church, decided to force a tree into leafing out. It seemed like a great living experience for the weeks of Lent. The congregation would be surprised as a seemingly dead tree would come to life…
— Read on shirleyhobsonduncanson.com/2020/03/09/one-act-of-love-at-a-time/
When Denise and I went on a Silent Ignatian Retreat at Spring Hill College in June of 2019, it was a blessing to be immersed in the silence of the retreat. The only time we could talk was during our daily one-hour meeting with our Spiritual Director. It was an amazing experience. This was the longest time I had ever spent in silence. At first I was nervous about the silence because silence when I was living alone during my last two years in the Air Force was difficult in part because of my tinnitus. In a larger part, the silence was difficult because of the spiritual darkness in my own soul .
What I do remember about leaving the retreat was how noisy the outside world was! I yearned for the silence again and again. Denise and I have intentionally taken time for silent reflection and meditation at home. There is just something so inviting and refreshing about that time.
Today I was able to have some time for quiet contemplation and reading at work. In between meetings and tasks, I embraced the opportunity for some reflective reading.
In the book Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine by Susan McCaslin and JS Porter, I read the following about Merton, Art, and Contemplation: You also see a call, if not to prayer, then to quiet reflection, in Merton’s photography, calligraphies and brush drawings.
As a photographer I could really resonate with that. Photography has become such an integral part of my spiritual life (along with blogging and reading). Nature has taught me (along with Thomas Merton and Abbess Christine Valters Paintner of the Abbey of the Arts) to slow down and receive the images that God shares with us. I learned back in 2015 at a course at Columbia Presbyterian Theological Seminary on Thomas Merton’s Journals how Photography was an essential contemplative practice for Merton. So he and Christine have taught and continue to teach me a lot about this practice.
In his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton said the following about meditation:
…this is the real end of meditation—it teaches you how to become aware of the presence of God; and most of all it aims at bringing you to a state of almost constant loving attention to God, and dependence upon [God].
The real purpose of meditation is this: to teach a woman/man how to work herself/himself free of created things and temporal concerns, in which she/he finds only confusion and sorrow, and enter into a conscious and loving contact with God in which she/he is disposed to receive from God the praise and honor and thanksgiving and love which it has now become her/his joy to give. (p. 217-218)
As I continue to minister in a variety of contexts, these centering moments help to keep me spiritually grounded. Out of these moments come the ability and opportunity to guide the flock through the pitfalls and problems in today’s 24/7 information and opinion overload. For that, I am truly thankful. My hope and my prayer dear reader, is that it can do the same for you.
The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
What a day it has been Lord
A busy day of worship and meetings
A delightful dinner supporting Highlands Camp and Retreat Center
An evening with my sweetheart in front of the fireplace
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
It has been a full day all around. It began with presenting initial protocols to the church as we prepare for any potential COVID-19 cases in our Mountain Town. I am so thankful for all the work Denise did to assist me with research so that I could write the protocols. I am also so very thankful for the retired and active medical people who have agreed to assist and advise as we move forward.
Frankly this experience took me back to my Air Force days when we would spend days building contingency plans for all sorts of disasters and potential outbreaks. In 21 years we rarely had to implement such plans other than major crashes, suicides, and post-September 11th where we had to actually build a defense plan instead of simulating it. The only one that I never experienced was the biological response.
Tonight was a delightful dinner and program at our Presbytery’s Camp and Retreat Center. After we got home, we both had to walk through a potential suicidal ideation call with someone via Facebook Messenger. Today I think I have had too many flashbacks as has Denise. However, it has been a matter of processing and moving through the difficulties rather than sinking into panic or becoming overwhelmed.
Funny how things intersect in the midst of life’s challenges. In the brief period between the dinner and the call, I was able to read a bit from Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine by Susan McCaslin and JS Porter. In the section I was reading they were discussing Merton and prayer during times of darkness.
In Merton’s book Cold War Letters, the subject was prayer in a time of darkness. This particular quote from the introduction really gave me food for thought as I begin to process the day’s events. “Merton knew prayer takes many forms… his Cold War Letters were a form of praying in darkness, a search for light with the companions he addressed, in a night of the spirit when everything seemed lost.” — James W. Douglas, Forward, Cold War Letters by Thomas Merton (p. xvi)
The subject of prayer in times of light and darkness have been a source of much contemplation for me. As I imagine Merton praying and spending time in silence and contemplation around the Cold War, I can’t help but wonder what he would say today if we were to sit at table over a cup of coffee.
His advice to me was found in a letter he wrote to Rabbi Zalman Schachter on December 15, 1961. He shared with the Rabbi this thought about prayer in a time of darkness: “And in the political dark, I light small, frail lights about peace and hold them up in the whirlwind. (The Hidden Ground of Love, p. 534)
I can almost hear Merton offering this same hope and advice to me. It reminds me of John 1:5 — The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Perhaps that is the advice and challenge for us in these days where darkness creeps across the land. May we do just as Merton did himself almost 60 years ago.
First Scripture Reading – Psalm 121
Second Scripture Reading – John 3:1-17
Sermon – Hope and New Life
