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Route of Evanescence
Spiritual Journal of a Catholic Priest
July 4, 1970
On board the QEII - sailing home from Belgium
...from IV Samedi Soir
Office du Soir
"Dieu, viens a mon aide.
Seigneur, a notre secours.
Gloire au Pere, et au Fils, et au Saint-Esprit,
au Dieu qu'est, qui etait, et qui vient,
pour les siecles des siecles. Amen."
Come to my assistance...help! Tonight at table the discussion centered around the growing student unrest on the university campuses - and this as but one aspect of a whole worldwide upsurge, a coming change in man's way of looking at things, of his modes and customs. His life has come to another crossroads of his own (and Another's?) making; and so he must choose tomorrow. It combined itself with an apprehension which - nothing new - has intensified with the coming of ordination, an apprehension pointing toward ...death, but, not simply that, rather an awesome sense of responsibility.
At any rate, the scene painted by the two professors, one of religion and the other of the history of art, frightened me a great deal. Again the weight of responsibility and just good old fashion fear fell upon me. Then, as I read the opening of the Divine Office, several names were ushered before my soul's eye, among them: Gandhi and King. There came with them some sense of courage, the courage to be for a time such as ours. But why these men? Because both point to You, Father. And both say that to dismiss You from ordinary, daily events is to lose the sense of being man, to fail in fact to be man. But how is this so?
Your Presence, they say, is most important if one is not to be helpless before injustice and aggression. How can this be, and why? What do You do for people? Who are people before You? What is man before God? To stand before You, does this distinguish one?
Do You save? Or does man save if he but agree?
If he but listen and answer?
If he but open his eyes and see?
If he but open his mind and understand?
If he be but converted and live?
If he be but open to his fellow men?
If he be but himself and live?
When You save me, it is I who am acting; it is I who am responding to what I might term a voice, a possibility, a very perhaps. But what am I being converted to? That answer makes all the difference in the world. And the ultimate response is: to You. To do so means courage before the face of history itself - of time, our times, all times, yesterday and tomorrow.
July 6, 1970
On board the QEII
People are interested in religion today, but how many people believe in the full sense of that reality called belief?
Speaking of myself, I no longer "believe". You, Father, are so far from my life! At this moment I am lost in a welter of misery. Everything I've been doing seems to make little or no sense. Responsibility frightens me to no end. My weaknesses, my shame, my sin is before me always! There is a weight, a ponderous, massive, impersonal weight seeking to destroy me and apparently all about me.
All that I've learned, all that I've thought, and above all, all that has been "revealed" to me seems powerless to save me from this situation. I feel lost. That for which I've been preparing, for so long, now seems lifeless and rather uneventful. The people I'm returning to all seem uneventful, unreal, and unimportant to me... It's not simply this ocean voyage that is making me feel this way. No, there's more gathering about to pull me down than that.
There's a past that refuses to be baptized in these waters of the Atlantic. There's a primordial personal history that will not be relieved, nor rejoiced in... But only the dull weight of sleep seems to interest me. History holds no consolation. What is it that is holding me down? Perhaps, and more than likely, it's the fact that I've taken a vacation from listening: to You, to men, to time. Because I do not listen in prayer to You the world, living, seems bleak, ominous, unfutured, except for the horrible sensation of the closeness of death.
A growing feeling of helplessness before all situations is rising within me. What am I to do? Where am I to turn? Fool! Remember Gandhi's words: to eliminate God from your common daily affairs means to lose your sense of being man. And that's what's slipping away! Pray! An action which states in no uncertain terms that You, Lord, are present! Lord, You save! Save me - save us all!
July 28, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - first parish assignment (ordained July 12, 1970)
Bishop Carter, in a recent issue of The Catechist magazine, noted that we must seek an image of the mature Christian man and woman. In summary the Bishop said that this ideal must be a searcher: a man/woman who looks for God in the midst of his people.
Every man searches for:
love
family
security
better government
economic systems, and so on.
Is God the fullness of these? Certainly of stable or constant love; surely of the family. But how in the quest for economic and governmental well being?
Today, one who involves himself in these matters - all these - is considered an adult, a mature and responsible person, and such must be the Christian. Yet he draws this into the fullness of human living and understanding, into faith. He says that the fullness has a name, a relationship, a unifying personal fullness: Christ in movement toward the Father. Hence, the Christian seeks this fullness; he seeks the pleroma of Christ in the world. The fullness of this I believe is the spiritualization of human activity. If Genesis is true, if the Prologue of Saint John's Gospel is true, there is no such thing as a "secular moment".
I know that I have not even begun to scratch the surface of the meaning of this. But I believe Psalm 52: The fool says in his heart "there is no God"... who seeks God.
The problems of the whole Church must remain mine. The provincialism, the narrow ethnocentric attitudes of this parish must not become my future. All forms of narrowness must be set aside; it won't be easy. Lord, let a quiet, but critical spirit reign within me.
But listen, to get to know your people better. Seek out what they think, how they feel. Get to know the old and the young especially, without overlooking the middle aged. And try to keep before them "the way" to the whole Church and its concerns. Keep "the way" open by example.
One can keep talking about musts until hell freezes over, but action must be taken, even if very small acts, but now and here. Move yourself! And keep this Jewish text before your mind's eye:
Pirke Avot 1:14
Hillel said: If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
July 31, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year in the priesthood
He sat there bored. Then his face glowed with the grace, joy, and vigor of youth; they were mirrored in a smile! The saintly woman, who for a millenium served the school's cafeteria, pressed a little glass of punch into his hand, and with it a dish of simple parochial school cafeteria lunch. Was the food offering a sacrament of joy? It effected happiness in an instant, it drew a child from the dark waters of boredom. At that instant, in that otherwise unnoticed and seemingly unimportant moment, joy became flesh and dwelled among us.
Will he, or the cafeteria matron, or I remember this long into the future? Will the effect of that little nudge and plain food make the world any better? Will the smile and the beaming promise of the boy's face touched by the wrinkled, gnarled fingers of the cook be the stuff of the history of salvation? Will this moment be remembered in eternity?
August 6, 1970
Feast of the Transfiguration
"Faith" haunts and hounds me these days. It seems to be a question directed at me from everywhere. No matter what the circumstances may be, conversations, reading, you name it and there is the same question. For some unknown reason only one word rises like the cross from the complexity of these daily events: "Faith". Within the daily happenings there is a sense of something more. It evokes attention, demands thought and a response akin to a conversation; its very presence is the question: "Have you faith in me?"
The history we are making is like the potter at his wheel, clay in hand. History is the context for revelation; history, the continuum of events interwoven, is the place of salvation. I believe this continuum has a name, it is an all-encompassing relationship. The name and face of history I call Jesus the Risen Christ. And this Person is the relationship which exists with You, Father. This very movement of the pen is relationship with You... the very context within which I live and die. History has a name. History is Somebody growing to completion. History is revelation of none other than You, and is at once the gift and the seal we are for You. A sense of history's name, an awareness of presence... this is a gift.
September 7, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Again the nostalgic urge to return to the streets of Louvain and Paris haunts me... There, nestled in the bittersweet sense of loneliness, I found myself creating a life of aloof spiritual union. There I was irresponsible to a great extent, above the flow of life, above involvement in people's lives. There were my classmates, of course, but we were pretty much cast in the same mold, had much the same backgrounds. Nevertheless, there I saw myself much alone, alone with only, dare I say it, You as my consolation, my Companion.
Perhaps, but that "being-with-You" has been a gradual socialization, i.e., classmates, old friends, and now this parish community. I see this present context as a direct out-growth of what our relationship was/is before this time and place.
Here I find myself swamped by the petty problems of people trying to "one-up" each other, of people struggling with the way things were "yesterday", of people working hard to make a go of things for themselves, and some genuinely for their families. But here there is little or no sense of tomorrow, no or little sense of the future (read the Kingdom of God). Whereas in Louvain or Paris I can look back and recognize an orientation toward growth, a constant urge for tomorrow and its fulness. What was there in that milieu that evoked an eye toward the future? How was it that the future was present as a sort of "groping for"? How was it that people actually thought about tomorrow, and seemed more sensually alive to today? I look back and see that there was a growing in the Spirit and not merely a constant concern for the immediate, the matter at hand.
Yet, I must ask myself this question too: "Am I trying to create there anew here? If this is the case then I am trying to produce a future which is in fact merely yesterday.
Or, am I trying to find in this place the Spirit, or signs of the Spirit, whom I believe fills the whole world? I pray that this is the case. Indeed it must become my effort, for these are unique people, they are merely, wonderfully only themselves!
Nevertheless, we share a common Christian vocation and our response to the Father's Love, to You, must be Christ's. The expressions will be ours, not those of Louvain or Paris, for we are responding here and now to You who are the fulness of our life, to You who are always unique, other than our plans, but stirring within and above them. There is, therefore, an awesome richness here hidden from my eyes.
Yet again, what am I trying to do? Am I merely recreating, or making straight the paths for You to establish your loving Presence in our midst? Is this ministerial effort one of creating the future, or recreating the past? And merely my own past at that! Or is this an effort to create our future? To fashion our lives into Your Tomorrow? I don't know. But I want our Tomorrow. You...are the future of your people, so then your future must be given priority. Your Son is the way. Your Spirit is the drive. Fashion yourself a people. Will I to be swamped? Will I to be some salt, some light, some leaven? Only You know.
September 7, 1970
5:00 p.m.
From The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, by Henri de lubac:
We must understand that 'everything that happens is worthy of adoration.'
We must realize that the soul begins to know God only when it is really forced to suffer diminishment in him.
Such diminishment comes from all corners of life. I feel cramped, but even in this condition, there is a slow growth going on within. A growth of the Spirit, a growth which seeks critique of the inadequate tempered by silent sympathy, but sadly accompanied by disinterested scorn!
A movement grows which seeks to silently implant in the heart of each a silence of challenge... the challenge to see and to hear God, and to respond with the heart.
If you wish, it is an underground movement, it is a revolution, but above all I believe it is a conversion (metanoia). This movement is hesitant, but only because it is before the Face of God and demands the virtue of prudence and patience, and a profound preparation of heart. But above all it is a word, a word which says: You! You, O Lord, act. It is You who convert the hearts of men and women. You it is who change the face of the earth. It is You who strike the interest of men and encourage them to go in search of You.
You bother them in events. You move their minds, Even when all seems to be going according to plan, they are surprised to realize that what is happening is more than their efforts.
Concretely, in my present assignment, the condition of diminishment is a man who is too protective, but wise and of great value in his own pastoral way. Yet he is one upon whom the sun must rise and set. He is a priest who sees himself as the pulse of these people. He tempers his people, me included. He has perspective, experience. He sees facts and consequences which others do not factor in. But he is afraid to go forward, to walk into the future. And me? Am I afraid to put my hand to the plough?
September 17, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Swiftly my imagination carried me from Pittsfield to Orchard Lake, to Louvain, to the many cities and villages visited throughout Europe, to London, to Scotland, especially the Elgin streets of last September, and the monastery of Saint Andrew's Valley. And then, across the Atlantic back to Pittsfield and on to Indian Orchard it took me. I thought, were I to return to one of them forever, would I be happy? At once my spirit within opened wide its arms to embrace new unseen haunts. It called out that more must be caught up in its history... But why?
Your voice calls from beyond trees, mountains, and wooded shores. Wherever You are, there your Word seeks to serve.
But how provincial and hidden I am. Where can I reach out to embrace You in all? A vision rises in my imagination, at once ominous and yet the answer to my request. A monastery I've never seen, and through it to a court yard marked with a solitary cross... for all the dead who sleep there!
September 30, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Silence - let it grow within me. Silence is the very ground of growth. Out of silence comes all that is of the future of man. Why? Because in our world of today, God is seen as silent, hushed, of his own will, his own desire. God is the future of man. Silence is by no means the absence of negation of communication. Rather, it is the very ground from which all communication grows.
October 6, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
A quote from Cardinal Suhard: "Witness means: to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."
October 10, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
In the Fall of the year, the Word of the Lord draws very near to all the trees about us. In the stillness of the night and the very early dawn, the Word whispers: "I love you." All the trees blush and burn and become golden! They say "Yes" and a resonant love have been struck, sealed.
But the "Yes" begins a dying, for they are stripped naked and exposed to a kind of death and sleep, but only to rise new in a new year, in a new Spring time.
So it is with young lovers. Their "Yes" begins a dying in self and a rising alive and vibrant in another. And so it is that they no longer fear death, for the true lover dies but once in his beloved. When the Fall of their Springs comes, it comes only as they have fashioned it, a "Yes" to each, to the One, and so they do not die, but are raised up, once and for all.
October 20, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Does a wise man waste the breath given him by Yahweh on a foolish man? To battle windmills? No, for the problem of the man who is called "foolish" is that he cannot see, he wills not to see. And so in his foolishness he is blind.
Does the wise man say that he is wise? No, his actions prove him to be only who he is. The wise man is he who follows after the Lord; who seeks Him with all his heart. In the private of his chamber, the wise man prayers, he converses with his God.
You alone are Lord.
But patience, patience.
And courage, courage.
October 22, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Objective:
never to out do... but to love.
To love is to do all that is expected of anyone.
To do so not in any abstract sense,
but in the concrete,
in the here and now,
with these people,
and not to wait for
an unpresent multitude to come.
October 26, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Fall takes its time
stripping the trees
allowing them to adjust
preparing them for winter.
In contemplation
slowly each word becomes
increasingly inadequate
to express the mystery
which only silence
can truly behold.
Slowly the words of men
are stripped away
so that when death The Silencer comes
it but proclaims:
Here is Silence
Here is the Mystery of True Life Alone...
With no chatter
only purity of Life.
October 30, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Abraham, Abraham - how could you believe alone?
The priest is called to believe in the midst of his people...
Yet the powers that be are those what would believe alone -
and their faith is no faith for me.
Their faith turns me to stone and hate...
To breaking the chain that holds me fast to my times.
Christ, why does your message go unheeded?
Why would fools strive to live and believe alone?
My adult believing is very gift
coming in the midst of history, of time
of the moment alive with another's breath.
Here and now: isolation and no belief together.
October 30, 1970
Part II
The human milieu is both awesome and terrifying. The influence which individuals have on one another can be the most painful experience endurable, or the most precious. Yes, even the most painful is most precious. Why? How? Let this quote be enough:
"...on certain days the world seems a terrifying thing: huge, blind and brutal. It buffets us about, drags us along, and kills us with complete indifference."
Since my dignity as a man, O God, forbids me to close my eyes to this - like an animal or a child - that I may not succumb to the temptation to curse the universe and him who made it, teach me to adore it by seeing you concealed within it. O Lord, repeat to me the great liberating words, the words which at once reveal and operate: Hoc est corpus meum.
"We have only to believe."
Surely the one lesson to be kept in mind thus far: You become what you hate.
The objective of my life must not be criticism, but passing aside the obvious inadequacies of self and others and move forward as one who lives a pure life by God's grace. And that life is pure if it is by faith alone. (This is not a reference to Luther's famous phrase, rather it's a reference to the Beatitude of Singularity of Purpose, Purity of Heart.) For then one has only one objective, one relationship: to be a man of faith, faith in Jesus Christ.
November 8, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
The very reason why the scribes were condemned plagues me. The knew it all, there was, for them, no element of surprise, of wonder remaining - there was no further knowledge of God's dealings with man that could be had of which they were not already aware.
To the extent that you close yourself off from the very possibility, to that extent have you no future, no chance, no tomorrow.
Grow open; grow wider! Come, Lord, come!
The moment swirls with nameless faces, and within it a light and a breath... from One who is Other. The moment breathes with the breath of another. Time billows about me, and is going beyond. Soon we shall all belong to the ages! Soon we shall breathe the breath of Another, You. Can we bear it? Shall we curse? Shall we rejoice?
December 2, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
"Lord, if it is You, call me to Yourself!"
"Come."
So into the storm of history goes a man, goes faith.
How many times has this same inspiration come? And where do you now stand. Well into the storm, out on the waters. There's more than enough room for more.
December 16, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
A disquieted heart frantically searching for love, for satisfaction - but unable to find rest or love of living because it's unable to love its own true self. A heart that cannot affirm itself is no heart at all. And a heart that cannot encompass in the full breadth of its embrace the whole of humankind cannot love itself for at the very core of all hearts are the many hearts of men.
The "involution" of mankind is concomitantly the evolution of mankind as well. The more man develops a true "within", a true disciplined and self-accepting heart and mind, to that on-going degree will he more readily advance along the evolutionary path.
There is but one raw fact of life: man, all men and women, must grow into self-acceptance in order to become truly human, and no man can achieve this alone, alone no one becomes truly human, he needs the fullness of mankind united in the same effort.
There is no more "right" and "wrong", no, only what is better and best for humanity in the dialogue state, i.e. man achieving the truly "conversational" level.
December 16, 1970
Part II
Another vision of today's advent: irresistibly I was drawn to prayer this morning, and almost at once my heart broke into song - and finally, as I prayed the Psalm - a "warmth" drew near and caressed my face and drew me into itself.
At once I realized I was singing the praises of "The Warmth." It was keenly personal, having all the satisfaction of the embrace of another human. There, in its midst, I imagined that I could see many humans, including my own father. All of me was involved, and for again for one of those split seconds I was lost in a real love affair with another, yet more than man.
In a brief span I became afraid. Did it mean the Lord had drawn near to take me to Himself once and for all? Death dogged me again. And I withdrew for I feared the full consequence of this nearness. Was it You, Lord, or had I but drawn close only to my self?
December 21, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - the first year
Unhappiness... because the days just sleep by. There is a desire to grow and develop in the mystery that surrounds and challenges me. And yet there is no community seeking the same. Perhaps that's too categorical, but at the moment that is what I feel.
My heart needs simplicity and one-wordness; it cannot grow in a proliferation of words and deeds. It needs solitude and common-minded company. It needs the one Word spoken to it: You!
December 24, 1970
Indian Orchard, Massachusetts - first Christmas as a priest
A few moments from now it's off to "the building" for Midnight Mass. Never has a Christmas been so without excitement and awe.
The bustle of the people has had little effect on me. The surroundings could and probably do have a great deal to do with it, but the element of mystery can no longer be regulated by season. Your challenge to grow and change has become too encompassing a reality to be reduced to a time. All time, the fullness of time, contains You, the Mystery of my life.
With the passing of years the Holy Thursday Mystery has become the central reality of my life. There stands the One who is All for me. Before You I can only respond as sinner. Father, You call, You come, You are enfleshed, entwined in our history, yet ever so much more. To You I do not abandon all moments. But in this moment, now, I offer my gift in return: all the moments You have given this name I call myself.
December 31, 1970
New Year's Eve - as a patient in Mercy Hospital, Springfield, Massachusetts
It's midnight in Switzerland now; the American College gang is no doubt ushering in the New Year. There 1970 has passed into the New. I wonder what will be in store for my old friends back there throughout 1971. May it be joy and peace.
Tonight a doctor left my room undoubtedly questioning the value of a Church whose members are "faithless", a body whose leaders are most inadequate to say the very least. But where does the real problem find its root? The answer: in the inability to be converted, to turn from the anxiety that the person must do it all, to the firm conviction that Jesus Christ has once and for all opened the path to full freedom, that man need not be anxious about anything at all. We simply do not believe. The fact with which Jesus Christ presents us is too much to be truly believed.
This fact is as broad and wide, its horizons, as all of creation itself... and beyond! It is as limitless as the human mind and imagination and infinitely more so! It is as all encompassing as time itself. It is as sure as the constant march of history - history become for the believer a definite, but boundless Who.
Many New Year's Eves have been spent with people... but always alone An envelope of loneliness has sealed me within itself. From its sharp folds I have never escaped. The You who is this "bleak" shroud has often spoken to me, but never have I been able to irrevocably answer "Yes, I will do as You ask."
Why? The Voice is garbled, a mixture of ambiguous days and moments, years, whose groans and giggles are as incoherent as that of the infant or the mad man. But it is gentle in its horror. It does caress in its brutality of presence.
Acting as a walling fortress, it keeps me far, far from people, at least at arm's length, for I fear for them and me. It is still "other"; it serves as a fine cutting tool, carving into my heart and opening sensitive fibers able to vibrate with love, yet a long way away from fully appreciating and treasuring the other.
Yes, it is one-sided, frightening when It speaks, and terrible when its imply surrounds. It is most awesome in its peopledness. It is a silent loneliness woven of persons present, and within, through, and beyond them - More!
But from where does this society arise? Deep within! More clearly is my vocation being realized that I am called into the society of man from the inside out. Tradition would call this the contemplative life. It is a life not only caught up in the deserts of the human mind, but a life caught up with the whole "within of the evolutionary process, or procession." The "Evolutionary Procession"... the myth of the Rising Sun, again. Christ does not come to meet his people. No, men move and grow with, in and toward His fullness; man transforming himself/himself transformed in the process of transcendence. The Spirit so profoundly breathing within us, bidding us grow into the Divine Coming of Age. The name of this divine coming of age? Jesus Christ! Christ is the sustaining, anxiety-removing growth within the darkness of alone-liness. To live Christ before the Father demands response that is real and creative. Real: my truest self in response to God's gift of life. Creative: what is it that is being fashioned if not the fullness of the person in society? There is a demand of my heart that the priesthood I live have a face in this darkness. A special face that seeks specialization: the face of a teacher, the face of a monk, the face of a parish priest, or only the face of a man at prayer?!
That dream of a year ago still haunts me. Within it a voice of terrible condemnation. It cried out: "There is not one man of faith, not one man of prayer here!" My response? I continued on with the obscenity I had a heart and companion for. Ironically, the greatest frustration, aside from the obvious sexual implications, is that of prayer. I want to pray, but I await a hand to come, lift me from my apathy and pray me! It does happen on occasion that my emotions and mind are swept into prayer. This is understood as You talking and my response.
Another form of prayer has set me aside for itself: the prayer of listening and watching. This is prayer which tradition would probably refer to as contemplation.
Where? Where shall I set up my seat of listening? In the fact which Jesus Christ presents us, the unbelievable but true! Yes, yes, but where in the world? The thought always arises: "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Must I then wander? Why not, you have till now.
September 8, 1976
St. Mary of the Assumption, Northhampton, Massachusetts - early in the seventh year of priesthood
An hour or so of fitful rest and now I am wide awake. September is here again and all the anxiousness that usually accompanies it is back to roost. There is that all too familiar geist moving within, whispering change: change afoot, another epoch is about to dawn in your life.
A hint was dropped my way this morning that there is still a chance that I might be appointed a chaplain at the Newman Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Within I want to be hard and say: "So what! What a time in the year to bring about such a change." Then comes the conflict: I don't want to say no. That is a fine post and although I am still "unsettled I" much change has come about. I am more prepared to accept and grow with the challenge it will afford me.
Hunh? Look! There is, in the shadows of the room, an old man with brazen eyes. He looks on and nods his head. I see his lips moving. "Son, remember, the journey that you're on will take you nowhere and give you no peace. It will allow you to embrace no one, save Him Who called you into being. Trust Him alone. Love Him alone. Hope in Him alone. Embrace the mist that beclouds your steps now. And know that He is with you."
Lord, You know me.
You know what my tomorrow will bring.
You know what I will do with that gift.
My fear: I will do the same as with all the yesterdays and all the yester-people: nothing!
My feet no longer move. I am lodged in the mire.
Without sound or warning
I slip under, deeper, deeper.
You knew it was due.
It all began ten years ago this month at sea!
Ten years ago this month at sea!
Ten years of this? Ten years!
October 19, 1976
St. Mary of the Assumption, Northhampton, Massachusetts
Standing at the window watching an involved and hurried world go by...
But only standing and watching... hardly enmeshed in its passion,
in its hope, in its trial, in its joy.
Gradually the window becomes covered with dust
with the grime of earth's traffic
and my "objective" view becomes more and more distorted
until my vision is no longer that of real life blurred
only the reflection of my own isolation
in the blackened glass, uncleaned, untouched.
Only echoes now ring: "Unless the grain of wheat falls
into the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat."
No more effort is being made at dying...
Only the preservation of a distorted glass window
whose view is my mirror.
No grain, no wheat, no life for no death.
November 7, 1976
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
And now: The Newman Center at the University of Massachusetts. All that I have wanted, and more so. Into the very thicket of responsibility have I been plunged, and that as belonging to the same baptismal swoop! Perhaps now You, Lord, will challenge me with lasting conversion. Lord that I may, in silence, know You!
January 2, 1977
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
No stranger to God, to the Lord?
but a stranger to the land of human love, intimacy, emotion
to the land where humanity loves itself in that divine moment
of discovery and dance
for the sheer joy of living
to be stranger in the crowd and crush
of brothers and sisters.
January 7, 1979
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
A conversation overheard on the way to solitude:
Mundus: You're turning your back to me again. Why?
Monachus: My back?
Mundus: Yes. You're turning away from me.
Monachus: It's the only way I can see you, enjoy your body, every inch.
Mundus: That's mad!
Monachus: Perhaps. Your face distracts me.
Mundus: My face! Am I ugly?
Monachus: No. Far, far from it.
Mundus: What do you grab? What do you grope, shadows?
Monachus: Do I?
Mundus: Will you walk away?
Monachus: Never. I cannot leave you. That would be mad. I like to hold your hand. It's warm, alive. I can feel your blood flowing, beat after beat. Your rhythm makes me peaceful.
Mundus: But I want to make you peaceful - not my pumping heart!
Monachus: Then flow with your body!
Mundus: You have eyes! Look at me!
Monachus: They see only what you want me to see.
Mundus: Do you want a striptease?
Monachus: That wouldn't help. You'd still be hiding.
Mundus: Hiding? That would be naked truth - naked me.
Monachus: Truth is never naked. Bareass and shaved you'd reveal no more.
Mundus: Then you don't find me appealing?
Monachus: Very.
Mundus: Then look at me!
Monachus: By whose word? Yours?
Mundus: You don't need my permission.
Monachus: Doesn't everyone?
March 10, 1979
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
New rules for an old game:
The quest for happiness
To be powerless, realm-less
To have no grasp on life, but its grasp on me
To stand alone in the company of sons and daughters of the One Father
In the commanding, awesome Presence before me always
And there in silence, in peace, in life's thicket, in its swirl without end. Amen.
May 24, 1979
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
More than once I prayed to You that good friends would come into my life from Your hand. The harder I prayed, the more elusive the answer, the more empty the days became. Years were needed to answer...
Years required to fashion of me and others relationships according to Your own Friendship. Now... they are abundant and rich, verdant as this year's Spring, and fertile as the land upon which this Valley thrives. O Lord, my Lord, Your gifts of people are blessing as welcome and sensuous as the earth I must embrace. Their pleasure is Your Face.. Radiant! My grasp of them is grasp of You. Their closeness is Your own indwelling! When I ask why You have so favored me, one answer comes from the events that are these men and women: You love me!
June 4, 1979
The Vigil of Pentecost 1978
(From a page written a year ago and forgotten)
Children's worry...
Politicians' dismay...
Philosophers' quandary...
Is there future
and that worthwhile?
But in contrast: Christians' joy: Yes!
And more abundant than imagination's most subtle,
most lucid vision!
With this hope
founded upon HIM
whose light and vision
death could not extinguish
tomorrow is
and its not-yet
prayed for
with more than zeal
FIRE!
The cry is heard in every century
born to His light and vision:
"Come, Lord Jesus, come!"
July 30, 1979
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Midas, Medusa, Me?
Unreflected embrace
greed-bred, lust-bred
parent of ice, of stone, the poor man's gold?
Psyche replete with primordial snakes
that poison, that possess, that enchant?
Fleece wrapped invasion
by passion's blind, ignored war cry:
me, mine!
Pillaging mind and spirit
of breath
of smile
of warmth
of flesh
of youth.
January 28, 1980
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Bitter the breathing
of the air of solitude
Whose Name I know
Whose Face is stamped
upon each I see.
Leprous the stench of solitude
which has become my food.
I batten upon the spoils seized
in my life's failures.
All I now account as nothing
for precisely that has become
the stuff of my solitude's loneliness
Whose Name I bear
Whose Face I seek.
Each of you, no matter your desolation,
have another's hand to hold,
another's face to kiss,
another's body to comfort.
Here there is but sand and ether,
here only desert of human comfort,
here only the relentless game
of solitude's hide and seek.
Behind each face each hand, each smile,
each touch, each holding tight,
I am left with only sand and ether -
stunned by Your swift advance
upon my moment of pleasure.
Did anyone compel me build
and pitch upon this desolation?
No. No, the question we all ask
brought me here.
And that one question I chanced upon
that day by the last water I saw:
"Rabbi, where do you live?"
Would I had not dared the moment's
thought, the moment's response
to His question: "What do you want?"
For now I know full well
wherein He dwells....
You dwell amid
all the realizable dreams
of my humanity's deepest longing.
You dwell upon the ground of all that
is truest in the mind, the heart, the spirit.
You dwell wherein the human spirit loves
fullest, richest, purest.
Ah what desert this is... what chaos,
for here in, for here upon
all things are ever being born,
being renewed, being born for all ages.
Life at its beginning, at its end is bitter
with its breathing of the air of solitude
Whose Name I know,
Whose Face is stamped
upon each I see.
Dare you still ask where this desert?
Dare you ask where this solitude?
The Cross alone... the Land Whose
Air I dare to breathe.
Tomorrow is nowhere else....
January 31, 1980
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Comfort?
Comfort from words and promises?
What promise, what word
can hold a troubled hand,
caress a frightened body,
speak of human suffering?
Is it only madness that speaks?
Illusion that shouts: Wisdom?
Words and promises leave me cold and empty
and bitter with the on-rush of loneliness
scarred with betrayal!
Yet... by Your Word the heavens were made
and by It You fashioned the earth.
Yet... by Your promise Israel went forth to freedom.
And so too will I in Your own due time
to creation
to freedom
to You
drawn on only by a Word spoken in the dark,
a Promise made in the night.
March 26, 1980
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
The night is still...
With a stillness the likes of which
I never before dreamt.
And its paradox:
the deeper the stillness
the greater the value
of all the little things
that men and women hold dear.
The deeper the stillness
the clearer each voice becomes
in the harmony of tongues.
April 4, 1980
Good Friday
Delight and peace
amid the burning awareness
that the Cross
is my doing among that of all
Words pale before accountability's demands
Action becomes as sand shifted
and found incapable of healthy seed.
Cross upon my horizon
Beginner's surrender: that alone
holds the key to all yesterday's
secrets and today's wisdom
and tomorrow's beauty
Ave, verum crux!
Today is the birthday of freedom
born in death
Today is the foundation stone
upon which every mind and heart depends
from pleasure to grave
Ave, verum crux!
May 5, 1980
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Tonight Your gamesmanship
is, to human eyes, cruel.
Not only have You hidden Yourself,
and me from myself,
but You have stripped me of any kind of
comfort, any sense of well-being.
I am utterly naked before empty space;
my eyes are so dimmed that even the nudity
and the space are shrouded in some
unfathomable mist.
But herein lies the ever present paradox:
even so I am not alone!
No, for emptiness and loneliness
accompany me through the night.
For a moment I thought I heard
another voice out there
but that was just the projecting
of a lonely spirit
trying to play creator-god once again.
Tonight your game is being played very, very
well, very well indeed
so much so that I've begun to wonder
if I'll survive to play yet another round.
Then, again, the rounds seem endless.
Was that my heart trying to play god again?
Or did some one cry in the darkness?
Lord, it is so very difficult to remain alone
at the brink of the abyss.
My spirit will do anything but play alone
with You.
Hush, the night grows darker...
December 8, 1980
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
From an article in a recent issue of the Boston Globe, written by Colman McCarthy:
"As a religious person who prayed daily, Dorothy Day used her faith as a buffer against burnout and despair. Fittingly, it will have to be taken on faith that her life of service made a difference. She issued no progress reports on neighborhood improvement, summoned no task forces on how to achieve greater efficiency on the daily soup line. Nor did she ever run 'follow-up studies' on whether the derelicts of the Bowery renounced their drunken and quarrelsome ways. As her favorite saint, Theresa of Lisieux taught, results don't matter to the prayerful."
Hooray!
February 24, 1981
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Scattered drops of rain, scattered thoughts, directionless heart...
February 25, 1981
In the Poustinia at Mary House, Spencer
Snow: heavy and wet!
Everything has been dressed up
for the occasion:
A festival of Nature.
In the distance the scraping and shoving
of a snow plough,
here, only silence.
Earlier a tree branch cracked under the weight of the snow. If supple branches can break under such weight, is it surprising that a man's heart can break under the burden of loneliness?
Yet the sound was clear and sensuous; it had the resonance of sacrifice as it split. So too my life as it is broken in the loneliness of Your Love.
Now... transform my life into the silence of Your Love, and Your Love into silent service in everything that is mine to do.
May 26, 1981
Newman Center, University of Massachusetts
Sleep has no home here Tonight
it visits someone else's bed
but passion has made its
presence felt as never before.
As if unseen arms
were wrapped about me
As if the warmth and breath
of Another enfolded me
As if Love in its most erotic
guise had lay with me
for so real was the encounter
with the unsleeping dream
It was more, so much more than
hands and arms and lips in touch
Rather hearts, spirits, minds
frolicked under the blanket of night
Yet I was wide awake
and understood that I was
and am still sleeping to the
experiences common
to my clay companions
My Lover is hidden in the night's veil
His Face unseen, unseeable
without rival
His hands are shattered with all the pain
of suffering humanity
His strength is that of the weakest,
ugliest, humblest, poorest...
His Breath is all the winds
of earth and heaven
His Heat has fired stars in their birth
His awesome Weight presses into
history's thicket
into its silence
into its meaning: love evolving
in free and responsible self-gift
Empty, silent, naked
the dream slipped away
leaving me so...
As my Love evaporated
I stayed still, too overjoyed
by the distinct knowledge
that this is but the prelude
of things to come
in prayer, in service
in solitude, in anguish,
in love and its greatest hurrah:
death!
July 6, 1981
At Mary House, Spencer
Met a thumb-size wood toad in the driveway a while ago. He sat content, smiling as I swatted mosquitoes; he could smile, after all they're a snack for him!
I carried on a monologue with him as is my custom with strangers. Asked him if he knew anything about the stars and the moon that fired the blue-black night sky. He said nothing, but I suspect he knew more than he let on. The more I thought about his silence, the more I realized that, granting the awesome distances involved, there really wasn't any objective distinction between the moon and the stars and the fellow traveler. Each is part of the same reality: creation.
Perhaps it's only we with our primitive reasoning and passion for rugged individualism who need to know anything about the moon and the stars. We live under an easily understandable delusion. [We experience ourselves] as isolated, fragmented, separated - caused by the primitive nature of our objectifying consciousness. But then again, maybe it has to be this way for we, humanity, have opted for the knowledge of good and evil. We have chosen the experiential knowledge of truth and delusion.
As I muttered on the toad remained silent and unimpressed. The sound of an airplane motor drew my attention upward. It was higher than the soaring eagle of a day or two ago; blinking like a star it moved swiftly under the moon and night sky. I wondered whence and whereto? Without warning my imagination took me on eagle's wings along every mathematically possible radius from the moving pinpoint of light. At once I was everywhere and nowhere.
My fantasy done, I looked back down at the toad and was about to renew my monologue when I realized how much wiser he than I. There he sat content with the driveway knowing full well that he and it were inextricably bound to every other point in the universe. It's all his! Only I felt like I have been left out of someplace. Only I with my delusion feel that I have been separated from all that is and, hence, have to achieve something in order to feel and be real.
The way he kept ignoring me, I had the feeling he was secretly saying: "I toad you so!" [Could he have been a word of grace, or Providence saying: "Consider the lilies of the field..."]
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