Thoughts on the world of open source
I couldn’t agree more with what Thomas Merton says here.
“The monastery is not an “escape” from the world. On the contrary, by being in the monastery, I take my true part in all the struggles and sufferings of the world. To adopt a life that is essentially nonassertive, nonviolent, a life of humility and peace is in itself a statement of one’s position.”
Thomas Merton. Honorable Reader. Quoted in Thomas Merton In My Own Words (Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2007: 107.
I’ve seen this video a few months ago, but tonight I came to it off a Twitter feed from St. Bonaventure University. I first met Dan Riley in the winter of 2000. I came to Mt. Irenaeus in search of I don’t know what. I had been leading a Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddle and I was looking for something more. Coming to Mt. Irenaeus was a stretch as I’d been away from the active practice of my faith for almost thirty years at that point. I’d become disillusioned with the a church that didn’t seem to live up to its mission, at least in my own eyes. I’d read Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen and was an occasional visitor to Abbey of the Genesee, but I was not a regular communicant until that Sunday in February 2000. I don’t know if Dan was the celebrant that first Sunday, but I met him very soon after coming to Mt. Irenaeus and I distinctly remember that it was a homily by Dan on Holy Thursday night of 2000 that brought me back home. His manner bespeaks a man who is the epitome of what it is to be a Franciscan. Fr. Dan taught me how to be holy by being wholly myself.
This video pays tribute to Dan and the sharing of these students demonstrates that Dan’s ministry transcends generations. Recently he was honored by St. Bonaventure University with the Gaudete Award. It’s the highest award given by St. Bonaventure University. I saw him on campus on Thursday and he was as warm as ever.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbCVbCn2Z4c]
Just yesterday I was having a conversation with one of the summer interns at Mt. Irenaeus when I said to him that the God of the theologians was not God as I had experienced him. Too often I/we let theologians limit our concept of God. God becomes pigeon-holed and limited by what the God scholars say and speak. I don’t intend to demonize theologians, that’s not my mission. I’m grateful that theologians think and write. Today in my mail comes this gift from the Merton Institute and it expresses almost the same sentiment.
Just as we have a superficial, external mask which we put together with words and actions that do not fully represent all that is in us, so even believers deal with a God who is made up of words, feelings, reassuring slogans, and this is less the God of faith than the product of religious and social routines. Such a “God” can become a substitute for the truth of the invisible God of faith, and though this comforting image may seem real to us, he is really a kind of idol. His chief function is to protect us against a deep encounter with our true inner self and with the true God.
Thomas Merton. Love and Living. Naomi Burton Stone & Patrick Hart, editors (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jonvanovich, 1985): 42.
I got this quote in today’s mail and it made me grateful for my own life and even the past two days which were spent not in my own country but in the lake country of Canada. Diane and I spent a weekend at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario at a lovely bed & breakfast called Blueberry Gate. Our hostess treated us very well and we’re likely to return. We got to enjoy a couple of performances at the Shaw Festival and very little television and only sparse internet, enough to send some text messages to our children and an update or two on Facebook.
This will give us some idea of the proper preparation that the contemplative life requires. A life that is quiet, lived in the country, in touch with the rhythm of nature and the seasons. A life in which there is manual work, the exercise of arts and skills, not in a spirit of dilettantism, but with genuine reference to the needs of one’s existence. The cultivation of the land, the care of farm animals, gardening. A broad and serious literary culture, music, art, again not in the spirit of Time and Life-(a chatty introduction to Titian, Prexiteles, and Jackson Pollock)-but a genuine and creative appreciation of the way poems, pictures, etc., are made. A life in which there is such a thing as serious conversation, and little or no TV. These things are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed.
Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William H. Shannon, editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003): 131.
I haven’t been doing much if any blogging lately. I’ve been too busy and mostly without words or the willingness to write anything down. Yesterday, Dara Maria graduated from State University of New York at Fredonia. I am so proud of her, she finished Summa Cum Laude. She’s a very bright, classy young lady with a bright future and like her father, she’s an idealist. I think being an idealist is important for teachers. Ever since I returned from my southern trip last month I’ve been in a very introspective and contemplative mood. I’ve found a great deal to be excited about besides Dara too. I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs, reading blogs everyday, posting to Facebook and taking lots of digital images. Most of them have been with my Blackberry cameras, but still taking pictures and being as much alive as ever.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Thomas Merton and how his journey and mine are parallel though vastly different. A friends Facebook post led me to a Merton quote from “Rain and the Rhinoceros.”
The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.”–Thomas Merton
I love to listen to the rain and we had some more of it last night. It was a perfect setting for contemplation. In fact I live on our enclosed porch. Nearly every waking hour I spend here except for when I’m at work or eating dinner with my wife. I spend my time in this hermitage that’s set apart from the rest of our home.
What is God’s will for me is a thought I’ve often entertained. Today in the mail I got an answer that has the ring of truthfulness to it.
If you want to know what is meant by “God’s will”, this is one way to get a good idea of it. “God’s will” is certainly found in anything that is required of us in order that we may be united with one another in love. …Everything that is demanded of me, in order that I may treat every other person effectively as a human being, “is willed for me by God under the natural law.” …I must learn to share with others their joys, their sufferings, their ideas, their needs, their desires. I must learn to do this not only in the cases of those who are of the same class, the same profession, the same race, the same nation as myself, but when those who suffer belong to other groups, even to groups that are regarded as hostile. If I do this, I obey God. If I refuse to do it, I disobey Him. It is not therefore a matter left open to subjective caprice.
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation(New York: New Directions Press, 1961): 76-77.
Today a friend called to tell that another friend had died and suddenly at that. The fellow who died was a very good friend and I’ll miss him a lot. He was a good friend. We’d spent quite a bit of time together this winter. We’re both fathers and Navy veterans and both drove PT Cruisers. I hadn’t seen Pat in about a month and only the other day I thought of sending him a text message. Earlier this winter while we were having a lengthy discussion I told him that I loved him and I did. I’m glad I was able to say that because I’ve often found it difficult to come right out and say that to another who is not in my own family. Today, though I was filled with sadness over Pat’s passing I was glad that those words had passed between us. Life is short, shorter than we imagine sometimes.
All of this got me to thinking about the Gospel of Jesus. I read a couple of different places that Christian churches are in decline and that we’re in a post-Christian era. I’m not always sure what these writers mean when they write words like that, but for me there is a huge difference for what passes as Christianity most places and what was written in the Gospels. Many Christian churches have become so wrapped up in politics that they are no longer prophetic, but pathetic instead. I believe the Gospels were mainly about radical mercy and forgiveness. I don’t even think Jesus came to found a church, he came in fulfillment of the scriptures. To me all of that is secondary to the message and that message is about forgiveness that knows no bounds and mercy beyond compare. I came across an article written by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM that summarizes much of what I think.
You don’t know mercy until you’ve really needed it. As Thomas Merton once said—and I’ve quoted it often—“Mercy within mercy, within mercy.” It’s as if we collapse into deeper nets of acceptance, deeper nets of being enclosed and finally find we’re in a net we can’t fall out of. We are captured by grace. Only after much mistrust and testing do we accept that we are accepted.
–Richard Rohr, OFM
Another gem from the Merton Institute.
How many people are there in the world of today who have “lost their faith” along with the vain hopes and illusions of their childhood? What they called “faith” was just one among all the other illusions. They placed all their hope in a certain sense of spiritual peace, of comfort, of interior equilibrium, of self-respect. Then when they began to struggle with the real difficulties and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their precious self-respect, and it became impossible for them to “believe.” That is to say it became impossible for them to comfort themselves, to reassure themselves, with the images and concepts they found reassuring in childhood.
Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, of spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair.Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Press, 1961): 187.
From the Merton Institute. How timely is this quote as we all contemplate how best to dig out of this financial debacle that threatens us.
We never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.
New Seeds of Contemplation: 115-116.
Today began as I made my way to Mt. Irenaeus for Mass this morning. When I arrived there were a couple dozen young men there for a St. Bonaventure University men’s overnight. Men’s overnight’s are a part of the Friars outreach to the St. Bonaventure University Campus. It was great to see so many young men gathered and sharing in the chapel. Usually women outnumber men at Mass even at the Mountain which is home to five Franciscan Friars, but today was one of those exceptions when there were only a smattering of women and nearly three dozen men and many of them were University freshmen.
A handful of young ladies from nearby Houghton College arrived soon after the liturgy had started and I could tell that they were amazed and perhaps amused by the presence of all these Bonaventure men. The theme of the overnight was “Wildmen, Warriors and Kings.” It was great to see how these young guys connected with each other and with the Friars. Following Mass and a walk down to House of Peace for brunch I found myself soaking up the presence of Brother Sun whom we haven’t seen much of lately and enjoying the warmth he provided as the mercury moved above freezing. I decided to take a leisurely drive along Route 86 through the towns of Hornell, Arkport, and Dansville on my way to Abbey of the Genesee.
I arrived at the Abbey in time for Vespers. On Sunday’s vespers always includes a time of Eucharistic Adoration and I love the combination of the two. Two Sundays in a row I’ve been able to part take in adoration. Last Sunday at prior to our Secular Franciscan meeting and today at Abbey of the Genesee. After Vespers I stayed on in the chapel to soak up the silence. On leaving the chapel I stopped in the store to pick up a couple of Monks Brownies which are one of my favorite snacks and on my way to the car I took this photo of the Abbey Chapel silhouetted against the setting sun. I thought often today of the words of Thomas Merton as he described solitude.
The more I am in it, the more I love it. One day it will possess me entirely and no man will ever see me again. ~Thomas Merton