The Courage for Truth

I've been meaning to write something about Thomas Merton, but capturing his prolific awesomeness in a blog post would be akin to drawing the map of the universe on an Etch A Sketch while riding a unicycle.  Maybe one day I'll work up the courage to try something.

Meanwhile, as today is the 50th anniversary of his untimely death, I'll just pull-quote a few great lines from The Courage for Truth, a collection of his letters to other writers.  These were written mainly in the 1950's and 1960's, but, as always, the truth of his words comes through clear as a bell.

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“How beautiful and simple God’s plan for humankind is!  That’s it.  Friends, who love, who suffer, who search, who see God’s joy, who live in the glory of God; and all around them, the world which does not understand that it too is Proverb, which does not find the Lord’s joy, which seems to seek to self-destruct, which despairs of rising above material things.  That wants to destroy itself in the fire, despairing that it can soar above material things.”  (p. 33)

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“Our mania for organization will be judged and all will be burned except love and friendship.  The small groups united by genuine love will remain everywhere and the rest will go, even in monasticism.”  (p. 46)

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“There is a lot of disordered animal vigor in the US, a huge abundance of it still, rambling and incoherent, discontented, baffled by its own absurdity, and still basically seeking something.  I think the search has almost been given up. ..” (p. 125)

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“We simply cannot look to the established powers and structures at the moment for any kind of constructive and living activity.  It is all dead, ossified, corrupt, stinking, full of lies and hypocrisy, and even when a few people seriously mean well they are so deep in the corruption and inertia that are everywhere that they can accomplish nothing that does not stink of dishonesty and death.  All of it is rooted in the cynical greed for power and money which invades everything and corrupts everything.”  (p. 144)

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“…the joy of being able to communicate with friends, in a world where there is so much noise and very little contact.  We cannot realize the extent of our trouble and our risk, and yet we do not know what to do – except to go on being human.  This in itself is already an achievement.  And we hope that since God became man, there is nothing greater for us than simply to be men ourselves, and persons in His image, and accept the risks and torments of a confused age.  And though the age is confused, it is no sin for us to be nevertheless happy and to have hopes, provided they are not the vain and empty hopes of a world that is merely affluent…” (p. 176)

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“I fear nothing so much as conventionalism and inertia, which for me is fatal.  Yet there is that all-important stillness, and listening to God, which seems to be inertia, and yet is the highest action.  One must always be awake to tell the difference between action and inaction, wen appearances are so often deceiving…” (p. 187)

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“The religion of our time, to be authentic, needs to be the kind that escapes practically all religious definition.  Because there has been endless definition, endless verbalizing, and words have become gods.  There are so many words that one cannot get to God as long as He is thought to be on the other side of the words, the words multiply like flies and there is a great buzzing religion, very profitable, very holy, very spurious… My whole being must be a yes and an amen and an exclamation that is not heard…That is where the silence of the woods comes in.  Not that there is something new to be thought and discovered in the woods, but only that the trees are all sufficient exclamations of silence, and one works there, cutting wood, clearing ground, cutting grass, cooking soup, drinking fruit juice, sweating, washing, making fire, smelling smoke, sweeping, etc.  This is religion.  The further one gets away from this, the more one sinks into the mud of words and gestures.  The flies gather.”  (p. 225)

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“What is vitally important is that you should be a Christian and as faithful to the truth as you can get.  This may mean anything but resembling some of the pious faithful.  But I don’t have to tell you, because you know, that there is only one thing that is of any importance in your life.  Call it fidelity to conscience, or to the inner voice, or to the Holy Spirit: but it involves a lot of struggle and no supineness and you probably won’t get much encouragement from anybody.”  (p. 269)

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“(P)recisely the greatest and most absurd difficulty of our time is keeping disentangled from the idols, because you cannot touch anything that isn’t defiled with it: anything you buy, anything you sell, anything you give even…Anyone who sells out to even a small inoffensive, bargain-cheap idol has alienated himself and put himself into the statue and has to act like it, which is he has to be dead…I frankly don’t have an answer.  As a priest I ought, of course, to be able to give Christ’s answer.  But unfortunately…it is no longer a matter of answers.  It is time perhaps of great spiritual silence.” (p. 277)