July 6, 2018
Over the course of the past several days I have been thrown headlong into the pages of Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. My heart has melded with every word on the written page as the mixing of two metals into an alloy. I cannot say what Mr. Merton has done for me in language fit for the right expression on pixelated canvas. As of late, my life has in many ways wandered in a desert of my own making because of my uneasiness with, what was, back then, my present circumstance. All this to say that for some time now after having wandered and lingered in the badlands of spiritual despair, existential unrest, and mental confusion I feel the great weight of this experience lifting as the promise of a fulfilling and hopeful happiness pours into my soul through the spiritual wisdom of Mr. Merton’s story and his pressing call to the life of contemplation.
Today I read something quite moving because of how it related to my thirst for a life of depth and meaning and purpose. Mr. Merton writes in his Epilogue,
…you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.
Mr. Merton speaks of contemplate tradere, or the sharing of the fruits of contemplation. There is contemplation and there is action and the best of both is the marriage of the two into a life of fruitful sharing. And even if I were to be completely dumb of speech I could still live this life through the writing of and copying of spiritually beneficial reflection on a life of contemplation.
My life has of late been rid with doubt about God, but more so my understanding of God and about scripture, but more so my expectation of what I believe scripture is supposed to be for me. It has not been until recent that I have come to understand the idol that I have made of my version of God and his holy word.
God was to be for me a sort of glorified and merit-based adjudication committee. If I had done some great and wonderful and spiritual wholesome act, then God by virtue of his position as adjudicator, was to pass on to me the fruits and benefits of my reward. Likewise, in reverse, if I had done some awful, sinful, and loathsome thing, then God was to unapologetically pronounce the just dues of my prodigious punishment. God was to me a holy score keeper, tracking my every move, tallying my positives and negatives and giving me a score and crowning me with a reward. If I dedicated my life to serve God, then God should provide me with a wife of my desiring at the time of my desiring. If I did well in my studies and showed God how serious I was by my fruitful labor, then God by virtue of his tally sheet ought to recognize that I deserve some sort of high post and position of honor in a church or some community of great prestige. If I was honest to my wife about my moral failures, then surely God would cause her to understand and love me more than she did before knowing about my moral defects. Life is a series of just interactions between the Creator and the created. And, by virtue of my virtue, God would be on my side and I would have my way, eventually.
For me the Bible was God’s revealed truth. It came from the divine realm and could present no falsity. This to the degree that whatever the Bible said was true, no matter how fantastic or unlikely or unfalsifiable or legendary. If it was in the pages of holy writ, then it was gold, all gold. Digging in the caverns of the genealogies was the same as digging in the mines of the parables. God made the world, not by some natural process, but by divine fiat. God would never lie to us in his word about the truth of reality. If the Bible said that circumcision is a requirement for proper relationship with God, then it must have been from the foundations of reality that God’s eternal wisdom required genital mutilation. If the Bible said the sun stood still, then it stood still, no matter that our earth moves in relation to the sun rather than the reverse. If God commanded the slaughter of a wicked people group who were unclean and an abomination then they were indeed unclean and an abomination and deserving of annihilation. My Bible was inerrant, divine, and unable to profess falsehood. If Jesus walked on water, he walked on water, no matter that humans cannot walk on water. If God requires sacrifice to pacify divine anger, then God requires sacrifice. My Bible guaranteed I was right and everyone else who did not believe it the way I did was wrong. And being right surely is powerful and safe.
So here I am on the other side of a deconstruction of sorts and in need of a reconstruction of fruitful being in the life of God in my soul for the sake of Christ and his world of men. I have wasted away in hopes that I would find some other meaningful replacement to my life of faith. I could not go far. I could not see the light of day in the darkness of meaningless existence. I only felt the cold, harsh world of death and decay and morbidity of mind and heart and soul and strength.
So to Mr. Merton and his impassioned and magnanimous devotion to share the fruit of his contemplation with the world I say a hearty, Praise be to you Lord Jesus Christ. May God be with you and with your spirit and I hope to meet you in the age to come. Amen.
I would like to now reflect on the ways in which one goes about infusing their life with the work of contemplation and the sharing of the fruits of that contemplation.