Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 18

pp. 83 – 85

“It was this re-discovery of Nature’s Christliness which Blake desired so passionately when he sang—

‘I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.’”

“Quia per incarnate Verbi mysterium nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur.” …for through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, the new light of Thy glory hath shone upon the eyes of our mind so that while we acknowledge God in visible form, we may through Him be drawn to things invisible.

Says Underhill, “The essence of mystical Christianity seems to be summed up in these lovely words.”

They embrace both immanence and transcendence and begin to express their mutuality. This Incarnation is no commercial transaction, but is the Reveal of Reveals, the only Reality worth revealing.

A Year With Thomas Merton - April 2

Our Responsibility Toward Creation

"Obedient unto death...." Perhaps the most crucial aspect of Christian obedience to God today concerns the responsibility of the Christian in a technological society toward God's creation and God's will for His creation. Obedience to God's will for nature and for man--respect for nature and for man--in the awareness of our power to frustrate God's designs for nature and for man--to radically corrupt and destroy natural goods by misuse and blind exploitation, especially by criminal waste. The problem of nuclear war in only one facet of an immense, complex and unified problem.

There are very grave problems in the implications of certain kinds of Christian outlooks on "the world." The crux of the matter seems to be what extent a Christian thinker can preserve his independence from obsessive modes of thought about secular progress. (Behind which is always the anxiety for us and for the Church to be "acceptable" in a society that is leaving us behind in a cloud of dust.) In other words, where is our hope? If in fact our hope is in a temporal and secular humanism of technological and political progress, we will find ourselves, in the name of Christ, joining in the stupidity and barbarism of those who are despoiling His creation in order to make money or get power for themselves. But our hope must be in God. And he who hopes in God will find himself sooner or later making apparently hopeless and useless protests against the barbarism of power.

April 15, 1965, V.227-28

A Year With Thomas Merton - March 2

The Comfort of Frogs

One thing the hermitage is making me see--that the universe is my home and I am nothing if not part of it. The destruction of the self that seems to stand outside the universe only as part of its fabric and dynamism. Can I find true being in God who has willed me to exist in the world? This I discover here in the hermitage, not mentally only but in depth. Especially, for example, in the ability to sleep. Frogs kept me awake at the monastery, not here--they are comfort, an extension of my own being--and now also the hum of the electric meter near my bed is nothing (although at the monastery it would have been intolerable). Acceptance of nature and even technology as my true habitat.

March 2, 1965, V.212-13

By the Lake Where Hardly Anyone Goes

Greeted by a territorial goose (is that redundant?). Feed it tortilla chips left over from my Chipotle's dinner last night. Sit in the somewhat trashed gazebo. Small fish flitting near the sunlit surface. Cool breeze. Watching a fisher bird dive and snag a bug? A small fish? Watching the fisher bird nibble up its wriggly treat. Goose swims up to the gazebo. Feed it some more tortilla chips. Spot a turtle sunning itself on a log about twenty yards away. Birds chirping. Faint aroma of honeysuckle. Goose swims over by the turtle. Turtle swims away. Goose starts hollering rather urgently. Thought maybe goose was calling for friends. Later on, turns out goose was calling for mate. Goose and mate glide along the water, away from me, making a swimming sandwich of their four fuzzy taupe goslings. Train: CSX, Hamburg Sud, Schneider, stackers. FedEx Ground. Someone's very important package is in there. Where is it going? Finishing up The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Good read, but not my favorite all-time novel. People have dreams, some realistic, some fantastic, some they live out. People have those dreams on afternoons like this.