I Am Here Now
I've been reading a lot of Thomas Merton's writing lately, and if anybody knows
about mountaintop experiences, the theme of
today's
New Morning show, it would be this Trappist monk, teacher of contemplation
and action, and mystic. Many people first became aware of him through a book
titled
The Seven Storey Mountain.
We've been leading an e-course
off our website on
Practicing
Spirituality with Thomas Merton, so each day we send subscribers a short
passage from Merton's writing and also suggest a practice based on that text.
Before we began this course, I was familiar with Merton's writings about
experiencing the presence of God through silence and solitude and also his
pioneering work in multifaith dialogue. I also knew that he kept journals—we
have a whole shelf on them in our library—but I hadn't read that much in them.
The passages from his journals have provided the aha! moments for me during the
e-course.
Merton would totally agree with the
Adventure Rabbi on
New
Morning who says that "religion to be meaningful can't be
compartmentalized." He discovers meaning in everything, starting with his
immediate surroundings.
Here's a journal entry from March 19, 1948: "Now it is evening. The frogs still sing. After the shows of rain around dinnertime, the sky cleared. All afternoon I sat on the bed rediscovering God, rediscovering myself, and the office and Scripture and everything. It has been one of the most wonderful days I have ever known in my life" (from
A Year with Thomas Merton, edited by Jonathan Montaldo). Read that again -- he sat
on the bed and felt all this! Revelation is available right where we are sitting now.
On May 21, 1963, from his room at the monastery, he wrote: "Marvelous vision of the hills at 7:45 A.M. The same hills as always, as in the afternoon, but now catching the light in a totally new way, at once very earthly and very ethereal, with delicate cups of shadow and dark ripples and crinkles where I had never seen them, and the whole slightly veiled in mist so that it seemed to be a tropical shore, a newly discovered continent. A voice in me seemed to be crying, 'Look! Look!' For these are the discoveries, and it is for this that I am high on the mast of my ship (have always been) and I know that we are on the right course, for all around is the sea of paradise" (from
Turning Toward the World, edited by Victor A. Kramer).
It's as if Merton in this moment is doing
August Gold's practice for a mountaintop experience. He looks at what is right in front of him and asks, "What is perfect here?" and describes it. And then he says, "I am here now" and here's what I'm feeling. He gets a larger view (what a way to describe it -- "I am high on the mast of my ship") and sees the whole picture. And does he discover -- that we are surrounded by paradise.