Tag: contemplative

Posted on

Namaste

Today at Mass Fr. Bob’s homily was about how we are all brothers and sisters of the same father. That fundamental concept of the Incarnation is frightening to much of contemporary society. Subtle demonization of our brothers and sisters is a path to the point where their lives are viewed as worth less than our own. They are viewed not as the beloved of God, but as something less.

“I honor the place in you where Spirit lives
I honor the place in you which is
of Love, of Truth, of Light, of Peace,
when you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
then we are One.”

In each of us there is the spirit of God. Namaste is a greeting that invites us to consider the spark of the divine in those who we greet. It is a moment of mindfulness.

Posted on

Found him not

All this talk about Islam and Muslims has awakened a hunger within me to know more. One of my favorites is a Sufi mystic, Rumi. Rumi lived in the 13th century and though they were thousand of miles apart he was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi.

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not. With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only anqa’s habitation.

Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even. Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range. I fared then to the scene of the Prophet’s experience of a great divine manifestation only a “two bow-lengths’ distance from him” but God was not there even in that exalted court.

Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.–Rumi

Posted on

Fall on the Allegany


Today was one of those lovely October days that invited me to stop at a public park along the Allegany River in the Village of Allegany, New York. I took the picture with my Blackberry Curve and it captures the beauty of my surroundings. I stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts across from St. Bonaventure University and purchased a small cup of coffee and then drove to this park just west of the campus. My head was filled with many thoughts as I walked to this spot. Once I was there I was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace and stability. As I sat here I thought of Thomas Merton who once taught at St. Bonaventure University before he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky in December 1941.

Posted on

A pious monk

This came in today’s mail. I received this in another mailing just last week and I think it’s an appropriate response to all that surrounds us today.

I do not consider myself integrated in the war-making society in which I live, but the problem is that this society does consider me integrated in it. I notice that for nearly twenty years my society-or those in it who read my books-have decided upon an identity for me and insist that I continue to correspond perfectly to the idea of me which they found upon reading my first successful book [The Seven Storey Mountain, his autobiography published in 1948]. Yet the same people simultaneously prescribe for me a contrary identity. They demand that I remain forever the superficially pious, rather rigid and somewhat narrow-minded young monk I was twenty years ago, and at the same time they continually circulate the rumor that I have left my monastery. What has actually happened is that I have been simply living where I am and developing in my own way without consulting the public about it since it is none of the public’s business.

Thomas Merton. Raids on the Unspeakable. New York: New Directions Press, 1964: 172.

Posted on

When doctrine trumps the Gospel

One of the readers of this blog maintains that one cannot be pro-choice and a good Catholic or even a good Franciscan and that Francis would be appalled. Francis lived in a time much like our own when the church sanctioned murder in the name of Christ. It was called the Crusades. Francis went to the Holy Land and visited with Malik-al-Kamil at the time of the Fifth Crusade. Francis, who opposed all killing no matter what the cause, sought the blessing of the Cardinal who was chaplain to the Crusader forces to go and preach the Gospel to the sultan. The cardinal told him that the Muslims understood only weapons and that the one useful thing a Christian could do was to kill them.

It seems then as now the church can be very wrong. The Pope signed a Concordat with Hitler which guaranteed the life of the Catholic Church in Germany but in so doing he stood not for Christ, but for the political entity of the Catholic Church. We have Christian chaplains in our armed forces who routinely bless members of our armed forces who will kill or be killed in battle. That’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s not love your enemies. That is political expediency.

Senator Obama is pro-choice. Pro-choice is not pro-abortion,  it is pro-choice. Senator McCain is not pro-choice and he’s going to get a pass from some narrow minded Catholics who can turn their back on their brothers and sisters whose blood cries out from the killing grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. Demonizing the poor and marginalized is okay as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can defecate on the Constitution of the United States of America as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can turn your back on the Gospel of Jesus Christ as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can race bait and slander as long as you’re not pro-choice. If that’s what it means to be Catholic then I don’t want to be one.

I’m reminded of another brown man more my brother than some of my own race who said,

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

Posted on

Loving their own noise

Loving their own noise. Tonight’s presidential debate seemed like a lot of noise to me. I listened to perhaps thirty-five minutes and then I turned it off. Debates usually lack substance and this one seemed more devoid than others. It was like Senator Obama was debating a five year old. Same rhetoric of the last thirty years. Drill-drill-drill is how we solve global warming. Bomb-bomb-bomb is how we solve global terrorism. Deregulate-deregulate-deregulate is how we provide health care. It’s just noise. It’s meaningless. Wall Street dropped another five hundred points today and that’s just illusion. Only silence is real. Only stillness is real. The rest is just noise.

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.

–Thomas Merton, Seeds (Shambhala, 2002), 65

Posted on

A heart of flesh

This quote came in SoJo Mail today. I like it and it’s what animates my life. I cannot be still when I hear the forces of injustice railing against us. The us in U.S. is what I’m speaking of.

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

– Ezekiel 36:26

Posted on

A question of relevance

Are monks and hippies and poets relevant? No, we are deliberately irrelevant. We live with an ingrained irrelevance which is proper to every human being. The marginal [person] accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, and the office of the monk or the marginal person, the meditative person or the poet is to go beyond death even in this life, to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death and to be, therefore, a witness to life.

Thomas Merton. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart and James Laughlin, editors. New York: New Directions Press, 1969: 306.

Posted on

La Posada



The resting place at the top of the mountain at Mt. Irenaeus. La Posada is one of my favorite places at Mt. Irenaeus although it has been many months since I hiked here. I decided to walk along the Mountain Road following brunch today. It was a great day to be in the woods. Everything really smells like fall and there were lots of chipmunks scurrying in front of me as I walked along the road. This hermitage is the most rustic at Mt. Irenaeus and the furthest from chapel and House of Peace. It was built in 1993 by Steve Andrews and an Amish fellow named Milt. There is a journal inside the hermitage and guests are invited to write a reflection. Today I read Steve Andrews’ reflection and it was very lovely. I’ve spent several nights here on many different occasions. As I walked along the Mountain Road I came to a fork in the trail. As I stood looking I thought of the words of a prayer that hangs in the House of Peace.

Grant me the ability to be alone.
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day.
Among the trees and grasses, among all growing things
And there may I be alone.
And enter into prayer
To talk with the one I belong to.

Posted on

Ave Maria

Long a favorite of mine is this short prayer. Today I carried a rosary in my pocket for protection from darkness. St. Francis had a special devotion to Our Lady. The mother of Jesus holds a special place in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s the missing element in fundamental Protestantism. Why this mystical element is removed is puzzling. Women are central to creation. The Jewish Ruach Hakodesh is a feminine spirit. The Jews fully appreciated the mystical significance of women in the creation. Women are relegated to lesser roles in many of the world’s religions despite the fact that if we didn’t have women we wouldn’t have any children. Men aren’t made to bear or even to raise children. Women are the nurturers. There are feminine elements in men as there are masculine elements in all women, but women excel at nurture.

Mary was the ultimate woman having born the Christ who came into the world not so much to save as to demonstrate how we were and are to live in relationship with each other. The world killed Christ as it did Gandhi, Martin Luther King, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and others who chose to model and follow the example of Christ. Sarah Brightman does a splendid rendition of the Ave Maria. The monks at Abbey of the Genesee end their compline prayer with a special prayer to Mary.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXuw9icKXnU&feature=related]

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum