Saturday Good Reads: “A Silent Action”

In my post Thursday on “The Un-Magic of Words,” I cited a quote from A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton by Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury. I had planned that post to be followed today by this one on the book itself.  What I didn’t realize was that yesterday would have been Merton’s 99^th birthday. It must have been something in the air.

Merton, writer, poet and Trappist monk, was born in France in 1915.  His father was English and his mother American; they had met at art school in Paris. Merton converted to Roman Catholicism while attending Columbia University, and entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastery in Kentucky belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappist.

Merton wrote books – a lot of books, some 61 in all, not to mention hundreds of articles and poems. One of his best-known works is The Seven Storey Mountain (1958). He became well known in for his opposition to the nuclear arms race and his support of the peace movement in the 1960s.

You can learn more about Merton and his writing at The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, which also has information on the International Thomas Merton Society. Beth Cioffoletti’s blog Louis, Louie is largely a tribute to Thomas Merton, and she includes articles, poems, photographs, and links to other Merton sites.

A Silent Action by Williams is a relatively short book of five previously published essays and a poem by Merton. Although they never met, Williams has spent 40 years reading, studying and writing about Merton. The five essays are:

·       ‘A person that nobody knows’: A Paradoxical Tribute to Thomas Merton

·       ‘Bread in the Wilderness’: The Monastic Ideal in Thomas Merton and Paul Evdokimov (who wrote about the rise of monasticism in the Christian church)

·       ‘New Words for God’: Contemplation and Religious Writing (and the one I cited in my post on Thursday)

·       ‘The Only Real City’: Monasticism and the Social Vision

·       ‘Not Being Serious’: Thomas Merton and Karl Barth

The poem included in the volume is “Summer 1966,” and a fine poem it is.

Bright post-examination weather; in the redundant
classroom, the only point seems here, the belly
of Kentucky heat, the shaven sweating mariners
singing Gregorian shanties in a slow
light evening.  What do I want?  What sixteen-year-olds want,
no doubt; but also: to learn how to sail that sweaty ship,
words falling moistly from the timber, shining,
Latin, American, French.  And the horizon that you think
(so slow the light, so slow the gestures and the voices)
night never quite closes on.

                      The same month
you made a landfall, emptied on to the shore,
gasping and heaving against a new hard element,
against the solid sand.  And now I read you, years on,
leap and flail, mouth wide, reaching - you once-fluent fellow --
for the words to fix it, finding in the unfixable
a bizarre homeliness.  You spent my sixteenth birthday
making a clean(ish) breast of things to the steel smile
of Abbot James.  You staged show after show
for friends, then cancelled.  Not to make sense is
what most matters.

                      What was I seeing,
then, that summer?  light from a dead star?
Not quite.  But who could tell the night, closing its mouth,
the hard sand, were, after all, where the hot songs
would lead?  Practise the Gothic scales for long enough
and they will conjure, surprisingly, this place, flat concrete
     blocks,
convenience foods, an empty page to look into,
finding the anger; painting, then blotting faces you might
     wear,
hers, yours, that only in fiction would stand still.
Not to make sense, inside the keel of sweating ribs,
not to make sense but room.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that I was recommended the book by my friend J of India. He also put me on to Cioffoletti’s web site. J blogs at Neither Use Nor Ornament.

Photograph: The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.

Loving Strangers - Online

We associate hospitality with opening one’s home to others, being a thoughtful and generous host or hostess, a welcoming personality that puts people immediately at ease and makes them feel comfortable. And hospitality is all of that, of course, and more.

What I find fascinating is that there are exactly four references to the word we translate as “hospitality” in the Bible, although similar ideas and concepts are implied in many other places. Two of the four direct references are included in St. Paul’s list of qualifications for elder (1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:8). A third reference is found in his letter to the Romans (12:13), where he gives a rather direct command: “Practice hospitality.” The fourth reference is St. Peter’s words (1 Peter 4:9), where he says to “offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.”

The literal translation of the Greek word used in these references is “love of strangers.” We are to be hospitable to each other, but we are also to “love strangers.” And because Paul knew the failings of the ordinary human, he made it a command: practice hospitality. What he’s saying here is that it doesn’t come naturally: we have to practice hospitality, and keep at it.

Some people are naturals at this. Some aren’t. I’m not. My worst nightmare is to throw me into a cocktail reception where I don’t know the first soul in the room. I’m always in awe of people who seem naturally able to work a room, talking with total strangers, and making people feel at ease.

What I’ve found, however, is that the internet can level the playing field.

Perhaps it’s because it’s not an official or physical “face-to-face” meeting, or possibly the “risks” are reduced, or you can always x-out and sign off. I don’t know the exact reason, but I’ve seen this on others as well. I’ve also seen the extremes; some people will and do say anything online, things they wouldn’t dream of saying in a face-to-face conversation.

I see hospitality practiced all the time on line.

Charity Singleton, for example. She blogs at Wide Open Spaces, and once a week she visits someone else’s blog and writes about on her blog.

Louise Gallagher, who blogs at Recover Your Joy, is another “practitioner” of hospitality. She will go out online, get inspired and write a blog post about what she’s found.

Jason Bourne blogs at Jason’s Spinal Bifida Journey, and I don’t think I’ve met anyone as enthusiastic about people and life as Jason.

Chris Goforth sends a good morning tweet on Twitter every morning. He blogs at Goforth’s Journal.

Friendliness, enthusiasm and encouragement ooze from Megan Willome. She blogs at Sabbath Says.

J of India blogs at Neither Use Nor Ornament. He lived most of his childhood and working live in England, and then retired to India, where he takes wonderful photos and posts them on his blog. We’ve had a few email conversations, and all I can say is, someone who places a quote by G.K. Chesterton at the top of his blog is OK by me.

There are many more people I could cite. But the six listed here practice hospitality every day. They make strangers to their blogs feel welcome. They leave encouraging comments. My life is richer because of them.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is hosting a weekly blog carnival. This week, the topic is “the gift of hospitality.” To see more posts on the topic, please visit Faith Barista. Bonnie’s an experienced practitioner of hospitality herself.

Illustration: Christ in the Breadline (1950) by Fritz Eichenberg.

My Bias Was Showing

One of the wonderful things about the worldwide web is the connections that can be made literally around the world. Most of the readers of this blog, for example, are based in the United States. But there’s a fairly sizeable contingent from Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and the People’s Republic of China.

And India.

J of India (that’s his name on the comments) is retired and living in India. He blogs at Neither Use nor Ornament, and it’s a blog that strikes me with wonder – the photographs of processions, religious ceremonies, launching of boats – all of the things that comprise daily life where J lives. He was raised and worked all of his life in England, and then retired to India. His blog, he says, is a diary of life on the Malabar Coast. For me, one of the most striking things about the photographs J posts is the color, almost an eruption of color. It’s absolutely fascinating.

We occasionally exchange emails on different subjects. Recently, after seeing one of my posts, he sent me an article entitled “Faith in the Darkest of Moments,” an account by Shoshana Garfield on how many of her clients, who had endured serious and awful torture, often spoke with utter certainty that God was with them. The first surprise was her conclusion – that these clients were perfectly sane, and that their accounts were generally true.

My second surprise was where this article was found – the Guardian in the United Kingdom.

Journalists for the Guardian would likely speak of their progressive leanings; my own experience (including direct contact with their reporters) leads me to believe that the Guardian makes the New York Times look like an apologist newspaper for the Tea Party. The Guardian leans leftward, and rather hard leftward.

So I told J how surprised I was. And he sent me another article, this one entitled “Richard Dawkins, the Protestant Atheist.” It was another surprise – the Guardian including (at least online) a perceptive characterization of Dawkins as being heavily influenced by the Protestant Reformation. It’s thoughtful and rather amazing.

And to punch the point home, J sent me what appears to be the religious page of the Guardian and a listing of a whole group of people who are blogging on the great works of religion and philosophy. The series includes blog posts on Genesis, Job, the Book of Common Prayer, Calvin, the Acts of the Apostles, Kierkegaard and others.

When I expressed my profound surprise, J said this: “I find the Guardian publishes many articles that, though often critical of institutional Christianity's attitudes, are strongly supportive of spiritual faith.” An exploration of all of these links proves he is right.

Three years ago, I was working one Saturday on a deacons work project at church – tearing out old rotted railroad ties that formed a wall along a very long driveway. About an hour into the work, a young man showed up to help (and carrying coffee containers from Starbuck’s – a true hero). As soon as he mentioned his name, my jaw dropped. He was the reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch whose beat included my company. He joined us in the work project and became a regular attender at church. He later moved to another job down south, and his replacement and his wife actually joined my church.

What’s the Post-Dispatch doing employing Christians? That’s as odd as a Republican driving a Volvo.

All of which serves to remind me that God can be found in the darkest of places, places far darker than newspapers. Although I have to admit I’m still amazed at the Guardian.

I owe J of India a debt of gratitude for allowing me to see – very gently allowing me to see – that my bias was showing.