Dancing in the Water of Life (The Journals of Thomas Merton Book 5)

by Thomas Merton

Yet my job and that of the Church remains this: to awaken in myself and in others the sense of real possibility, of truth, of obedience to Him who is Holy, of refusal of pretenses and servitudes–without arrogance and hubris and specious idealism.

Our very creation itself is a vocation to union with Him and our life, and in the world around us, if we persist in honesty and simplicity, cannot help speaking of Him and of our calling. But the trouble is that there are no “pure” natural traditions and everything gets overlaid with error.

The mere fact of my manness should be an everlasting joy and delight. To take joy in that which I am made to be by my Creator, is to open my heart to restoration by my Redeemer. And it is to taste the first fruits of redemption and restoration. So pure is the joy of being man that those whose Christian understanding is weak may even take this to be the joy of being something other than man–an angel or something. But God did not become an angel. He became man.

What matters is not spirituality, not religion, not perfection, not success or failure at this or that, but simply God, and freedom in His Spirit. All the rest is pure stupidity.

Certainly the great thing as I see it now is to get out of all the traffic: peace movement traffic, political traffic, Church traffic, “consciousness-altering” traffic, Zen traffic, monastic reform traffic. All of it!

What is primary? God’s revelation of Himself to me in Christ and my response of faith. In the concrete, this means, for me, my present life in solitude, acceptance of its true perspectives and demands, and the work of slow reorientation that goes on. Each day, a little, I realize that my old life is breaking loose and will eventually fall off, in pieces, gradually. What then? My solitude is not like Rilke’s ordered to a poetic explosion. Nor is it a mere deepening of religious consciousness. What is it then? What has been so far only a theological conception, or an image, has to be sought and loved. “Union with God!” So mysterious that in the end man would perhaps do anything to evade it, once he realizes it means the end of his own Ego-self-realization, once for all. Am I ready? Of course not. Yet the course of my life is set in this direction.

God is the Father who fights to defend and rescue His child. The life of the Child of God is not in the “development of spirituality” but in obedience to the Good Shepherd who seeks him, knowing he is lost. It is in solitude that we recognize, with a shock, how lost we have been, and that now we are found, rescued, recovering conscience, returning to ourselves, to Truth, carried by Him who has sought and found us.

In the community I prepared for solitude. Now in solitude I realize at once that my true preparation is for the transfigured common life of the Kingdom of God. In the Spirit, no man is alone. Unfortunately, human community often stifles the Spirit and keeps men isolated in their individuality, while claiming to produce transcendent unity.

My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet), it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude and “awareness.” This can be realized in a life which apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or non-accomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes.