Saturday,
March 3, 2012
What to read for
today.
Chapter 9: We Are One Man
Questions for your
personal reflection.
Merton refers to a time “when you and I become what we are
really meant to be”. What or who do you imagine you would be on that
occasion? How would you be
different than you are now?
Sharing with others:
What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
This chapter continues the theme of the previous chapter,
contemplation as liberation from the egotistical self, not as isolation. But do I detect a subtle form of
isolation in Merton’s quest for a “true society of charity, not of cities and crowds”? What’s wrong with cities and
crowds? Are we to stand apart from
them? Form a contemplative elite
instead? At Walden Pond perhaps? In “Natural Music”, the poet Robinson
Jeffers asserts that we can hear the old voice of the ocean and the bird
chatter of the little rivers in cities too, provided we listen from the centre
of the circle.
Posted by Genevieve
For me , Merton did a lot of to-ing and fro-ing today. I understood that we can't be isolated from everyone to find the divine - that it's in the communion with others that brings it all together.
ReplyDeleteBut when he tries to describe the together and apartness being the same, the three in one-the one in three -the one god/trinity "thing"- he loses me
why can't God just BE - as someone said to me -trying to explain the infinite /divine/ perfection with language with its imperfections is an impossible task- so why try to improve on something that can't be
improved- love is the answer
post by william
OK - he did get a little bit out of control on the Trinity, but I thought there was some stuff in their worth considering such as the idea that the Trinity speaks to three aspects of the divine - like mother, maiden crone or the multiple faces of Shiva - and that it was a perpetual circle of relations. Then again, I guess you're right in that it didn't necessarily contribute to the chapter.
DeleteGenevieve
Posted by Second Thoughts
ReplyDeleteI liked Merton's line today that perfect contemplation is not a heaven of separate individuals each enjoying his private intuition of God. Through this book he has forever changed the way that I think about contemplation which used to mean getting away from it all and being by myself without interruptions. I think he is also changing the way I think about being "what we are really meant to be" which has nothing to do the kind of things you find in self help books. He says that when (if?) I am what I am meant to be there will no longer be any serious obstacle between me and others. That made me think about the difficult people that I know and ask myself, who is the difficult one, them or me?