Contemplative Haven

gabrielle September 15th, 2008

“But creatures remain untouchable, inviolable.  If God wants you to suffer a little, He allows you to learn just how inviolable they are.  As soon as you try to possess their goodness for its own sake, all that is sweet in them becomes bitter to you, all that is beautiful, ugly.  Everything you love sickens you.  And at the same time your need to love something, somebody, increases a hundred times over.  And God, Who is the only one who can be loved for His own sake alone, remains invisible and unimaginable and untouchable, beyond everything else that exists.

You flowers and trees, you hills and streams, you fields, flocks and wild birds, you books, you poems, and you people, I am unutterably alone in the midst of you.  The irrational hunger that sometimes gets into the depths of my will, tries to swing my deepest self away from God and direct it to your love.  I try to touch you with the deep fire that is in the center of my heart, but I cannot touch you without defiling both you and myself, and I am abashed, solitary and helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me.

But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pure and perfect and they belong to God and they are mirrors of His beauty.  He is mirrored in all things like sunlight in clean water:  but if I try to drink the light that is in the water I only shatter the reflection.

And so I live alone and chaste in the midst of the holy beauty of all created things, knowing that nothing I can see or hear or touch will ever belong to me, ashamed of my absurd need to give myself away to any one of them or to all of them.  The silly, hopeless passion to give myself away to any beauty eats out my heart.  It is an unworthy desire, but I cannot avoid it.  It is in the hearts of us all, and we have to bear with it, suffer its demands with patience, until we die and go to heaven where all things will belong to us in their highest causes.”

[Thomas Merton:  The Sign of Jonas, pg. 238, Sept. 14, 1949]

Dear friends, this will be my last post at Contemplative Haven. As I stated on my “Mary” blog, it is time now for me to slip back into a more contemplative life, offline. I want to thank you all for the years of friendship, fun, angst, joys, sorrows, humour and prayer - you have all sustained me - each and every one of you. May God bless you and keep you, and may you continue to flourish in your contemplative lives.
 

• Merton
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gabrielle September 13th, 2008

As we were discussing in the comments recently, some of us are starting up an informal online book club.  We already have quite a few great selections in mind and I’m sure the list will grow exponentially!  So, we decided to start with one of Ann’s suggestions:  “Anam Cara.  A Book of Celtic Wisdom”, by John O’Donohue.  Everyone is more than welcome to join us, whether you have a blog or not, for any/all books we end up reading/discussing/commenting on.

This post is mainly just to get a bit of feedback in the combox re “logistics”, until we get going and see how we would like this to work.  I just retrieved my copy of Anam Cara from the library last evening, and I see that it has six chapters, each chapter divided up with many subtitles; just from skimming through quickly I can see that each chapter will be rich/meaty and take some time to properly absorb/reflect upon.  So here are just some thoughts/questions concerning how we might like to procede:

-  Would we like one blogger to “host” each book?  e.g., would Ann like to host Anam Cara since it was her suggestion and the author is Irish?  Then we could rotate, each taking a turn hosting a book;

-  Would one chapter per week of Anam Cara be okay, or is that too slow for some of your liking?  One post by the host per week (one chapter), and we could all do the required reading and head over to the combox?

-  If our discussions spark separate posts where we can express ourselves more fully rather than trying to put everything in the combox, is that okay, if we link back to the host’s original post?

-  Well, I can’t wait to get started, so please leave your comments/suggestions and we’ll get this book club off the ground!  Just as an appetizer, here’s a little audio from Sounds True, which organization John O’Donohue mentions in the Acknowledgements section of his book.  

• Book Club
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gabrielle September 10th, 2008

Solitude, says the moon shell.  Center-down, say the Quaker saints.  To the possession of the self the way is inward, says Plotinus.  The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn, says St. Catherine of Siena.  Voices from the past.  In fact, these are pursuits and virtues of the past.  But done in another way today because done consciously, aware, with eyes open.  Not done as before, as part of the pattern of the time.  Not done because everyone else is doing them; almost no one is doing them.  Revolutionary, in fact, because almost every trend and pressure, every voice from the outside is against this new way of inward living.

[Anne Morrow Lindbergh:  Gift from the Sea, pgs. 56-57]

• Contemplation , Silence and Solitude
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gabrielle September 8th, 2008

“Nativitas est hodie sanctae Mariae Virginis (Today is the nativity of Saint Mary the Virgin: First antiphon for Vespers of the feast). We have just come from first Vespers of Our Lady’s birthday. I am full of those happy antiphons, and glad because of the feast and because of what it means, for through her we come to heaven. Coeli fenestra facta es. (Thou art become the window of heaven: from the hymn O gloriosa Domina). I am glad that in our Order we still enter heaven through the window. I believe that line of the hymn was reformed in the Roman liturgy so that the rest of the Church goes in more decorously through the door. But we Cistercians still get in by the window….

This afternoon I was content looking at the low green rampart of woods that divides us from the rest of the universe and listening to the deep silence: content not for the sake of the scene or the silence but because of God. And now I hear a car in the distance, a solitary car coming down the road. The sound of action reminds me that I must soon wash my neck and go and read Monsignor Sheen to the retreatants at their supper.

That is how everything stands, Mother of God, after the first Vespers of your Nativity in the year 1947. Dona nobis pacem (Give us peace). Keep us in your heart until next year and the year after and until we all die in peace, disposed in the four corners of America in new foundations, and myself perhaps you know where, alone with you and with God. His will is my cell. His love is my solitude. Dona nobis pacem.”

[Thomas Merton: The Sign of Jonas, pgs. 62-63, Sept. 7, 1947]

• Blessed Virgin , Feastdays , Merton
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