Monday,
March 12, 2012
What to read for today.
Chapter 16: The Root of War is Fear
Questions for your
personal reflection.
How comfortable are you with Merton’s notion that
individually and collectively we are all a “mysterious, unaccountable mixture
of good and evil”? Do you accept
the proposition that we are all
responsible for the ethical and political problems of the world?
Sharing with others:
What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
Many years ago I heard Henri Nouwen
give a sermon where he said, “We are all responsible for war.” I didn’t get it
at the time. In this chapter
Merton is saying the same thing as Nouwen: when we look honestly, we have to see
that we all exhibit attitudes and behaviours that contribute to war, even if we
go about our business at home or on a local basis. I don’t think this is far fetched. It’s about shared responsibility. As long as I can point to someone else or invoke the
assistance of a powerful deity, I don’t have to actually do anything and that’s a comfortable position to be in.
Posted by Genevieve.
Posted by Second Thoughts
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this chapter several times, I saw something I had not seen before. Yes, Merton is saying that we are all responsible for war and everything else that goes on in the world, but he added something new or said something old in a new way (at least for me).
What he said was that in order for us to address the problems of the world, which we must do together, we have to be able to IDENTIFY with the other guy. So if he makes a mistake, we have to admit that we could make the very same mistake. If he does something evil, we have to admit that we have the potential for that very same evil.
Merton tells us that we should show this kind of humility instead of telling everyone else what they should be doing to set the world right. Our moral exhortations are just so much hot air. Merton calls them absurd.
The last paragraph of the chapter was a real winner too. Love other people instead of loving peace. Hate your own disorder instead of hating warmongers. What if we said that out loud in church on Sundays?
I wonder if we have lost the capacity to understand what peace would be like. I think Merton is telling us that we have to get past "me", "us and them" and truly look at others as ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI don't have to agree with you in order for us to be able to live together. I do need to trust in our common humanness, to love you, to trust you . I can really identify with Merton's thought about fear. If I'm constantly afraid of what you might do, we will never be able to have any meaningful communication. The question for me is what am I doing that promotes this attitude of distrust and what can I do to change that. Am I one of Merton's windbags?
post by william
ps-good point above- what would our service look like?
From Genevieve
DeleteYou, a windbag?