In Merton's Hermitage with Griffin

 My essay in the spring issue of The Merton Seasonal is called “In the Hermitage with John Howard Griffin.” In reading about how Griffin felt living in Thomas Merton’s hermitage for months as he worked on Merton’s biography, I debated whether I would ever want to stay there, if given the chance, as well as if I would want to be a hermit somewhere else.

The Merton Seasonal comes out quarterly from the International Thomas Merton Society. Each issue focuses on exploring Thomas Merton's writings for today's world, and on reviewing new books that have come out about him. If you don’t have a yearly subscription to the Seasonal, you can buy this issue, as well as other earlier issues in stock, for $5 per issue, or 3 issues for $12, 5 issues for $18, postage is included to U.S. addresses.

 Checks made payable to “ITMS” should be sent to: Dr Paul M Pearson. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, 2001 Newburg Road, Louisville KY 40205

Easter Dawn

 

Easter Dawn

The air is cool and hesitant.

Stars twinkle out slowly 

as the black sky gives way 

to the promise of the hidden sun.

Feelings of longing, belief,

and hope fill my body 

and surge with unspeakable joy!

Expectant grays give way

to the pink, orange, and yellow of dawn

as the light of the young sun 

rises slowly over dark shadowed trees.

People gather as the sky deepens to blue.

The excited chatter and songs of the birds 

lift our hearts that rise 

with the steady strokes of wings,

rising towards the unknowable 

Presence.

Mark Liebenow

Listen

 In the morning, before you begin your activities, find a quiet place where you can listen to the day opening up. - Mark

Find a Bench

 

Find a bench where you can pause your busyness. - Mark

Simplify Your Life

            Simplify your life. Listen. Take care of others. - Mark

Prayer

        I don’t know how to pray. I only know to sit in a quiet place and listen.  - Mark

Slow Me Down

I come to this season wanting to soak up its atmosphere. I come to be moved and surprised in simple, yet subtle, ways.

But I have to be patient and wait for the Spirit to reveal, in its own time, what it will reveal. I cannot force insights to come. I cannot entice wisdom to descend. I have to trust and be receptive of gifts that I don’t anticipate and which I may not think I need. I have to be open to the unknown. This is a time of active waiting, and I confess that I do not wait well.

Slow me down that I may listen. Slow me down that I may hear. Slow me down that I may be present to this moment and to the people here.                                     

Nature As Revelation

John Burroughs wanted people to go outside and enjoy the nature that existed around them wherever they lived, whether this was farmland, forest, ocean, desert, or a city park. He was concerned that people were staying indoors too much.

He wrote this in the late 1800s.

I think he’d be more concerned today, because we drive, rather than walk, to the local grocery, if we still have a local grocery. New housing developments often don’t have sidewalks. Most of our houses don’t have porches for sitting and chatting with neighbors walking by. We don’t linger after dinner to watch the sun set over the trees, or see the moon rise. Our children don’t go outside to play, and many are afraid of being alone in the woods.

Doing Nothing, Just Sitting In the Woods

Some days, when’s a lull between the usual rush of activities, I don’t know what to do. I’m restless and look around for something productive to work on. Then I see the woods.

In midwinter, the woods in central Illinois are bare and brown. The sky is generally gray, and on most days there isn’t enough sun to satisfy my cat. Without leaves in the way, I can see a mile over to the next hill where there are more brown trees. Brown doesn’t interest me much. I prefer green.

Refuge in Nature

Your place of refuge may be different than mine, but it’s necessary to go there when something has twisted your life into knots. It could be grief, loss of a job, a health diagnosis, a relationship coming apart, or a crisis of faith.

Wherever you go for renewal, to feel comforted, accepted, and inspired, it’s likely to be a place or an activity that brought you pleasure before trauma struck. Now it becomes therapeutic.

For one person it may be carpentry or gardening, for another it may be working with horses. Maybe it’s going to the movies, the ocean, or the golf course. Whatever it is, this is where you can step back, focus on something else for a time, while at the same time, work your way through the problem in the back alleys of your mind.

The Spirit Land

Sometimes we hear the voice of a family member who has died, or we feel their presence. Is it real?

Out of the blue, I think to send something nice to a friend in another state. When it arrives three days later, it’s exactly what she needs. Is something more going on than coincidence?

We are more connected to each other than we think, both the living and the dead.

Soon after I arrive in Yosemite, a coyote always appears, either sitting along the road to welcome me in, or trotting across the meadow with a glance. Molly says Coyote is my spirit guide. She might be right. Some people say they never see coyotes. I see them all the time.

As I hike, I feel the companionship of Nature’s spirit, and let it guide me where it wants. The wind comes near and advises me about tomorrow’s weather. Taking a break, I fall asleep along the river, feeling I have come home.

We are not limited by what we can see.

Sweetness of Living

Native life in the barren Arctic is a constant battle to survive. To the Inuits who live there, the brutal struggle to stay alive is balanced by the sweetness of living. A long life is never assumed, not even an additional year. There was gratefulness for what each day provided. For them, it was not enough to survive if they did not also find something to celebrate.

My great grandparents felt the same way, I think. Life was hard when they moved to Wisconsin in the late 1800s and created a farm in the prairie wilderness. Yet the physical life and the fresh food they grew helped them live long lives.

Wilderness Questions

When I sit on the side of a mountain and watch clouds journey across the sky, thoughts come to mind that I like to ponder. Some are whimsical, but others, I’m sure, have profound implications.

Skyscrapers have been compared to mountain peaks because they’re both tall and massive. When we first see them, we are gob-smacked with awe and admiration. But if we put them side by side, the buildings begin to seem one-dimensional and uninteresting. We can hike into mountains, and they also have forests, rivers, and alpine meadows. And deer, birds, and coyotes, and bears, moose, and squirrels.

Adventure of Solitude

Many of us go into nature to unwind and be refreshed, but when we try to talk to others about how nature is transforming us, we find it hard to express the changes in words.

In Breaking Into the Backcountry, Steve Edwards takes on the challenge of describing this inner movement. He invites us into his days as he takes care of a cabin in the wild backcountry of Oregon for seven months. With no one around, he is forced to deal with the silence, isolation, and unresolved struggles in his life. As John Muir, one of Edwards’s heroes, said, the journey into nature is also a journey into ourselves.

Getting Close to Nature

Yosemite Valley is a place of solitude, a place where I come to make sense of the tragedies and horrors going on in the world.

            *

Before dawn I stand by the river to get a feel of its movement through the valley, then head off on a hike through the wild beauty of Creation. After the walking meditation with the mountains, the listening conference at the waterfalls, and the conversations with chipmunks on trails through the forest, I return in the evening to the river. I sit with the day’s experiences and discover the threads that tie them together.

Looking at the river in front of me, seven dark rocks run in a line across the light-colored ridges on the sandy bottom like a sand garden in Kyoto, with flowing water replacing the movement of the air. The ridges and different colors of pebbles on the bottom create patterns that occupy the mind while my spirit is free to wander.

Dropping in on Kathleen Norris

A few years ago I was traveling home from Montana to Illinois when I decided to detour three hundred miles to Kathleen Norris’s town of Lemmon, North Dakota.  I didn’t tell her I was coming.  I just stopped in.  Not that I saw her, and I doubt that she even knew I was there.

Norris is the author of such books as Dakota, Cloister Walk, and Amazing Grace, and moved to North Dakota after living in the bright, shining din of New York City. I wanted to see where she writes of isolation and spirituality in a place she describes as “the high plains desert, full of sage and tumbleweed and hardy shortgrass.” 

Half an hour from her town, I drove into a thunderstorm and the world went dramatic -- dark and moody with hard driving rain.  As I came around a bend in the road, a slant of sunlight burst through the clouds and lit up a patch of the prairie.  I pulled over to the side of the road to watch.  The hillside sloped down to a low ridge of brown rock that cradled a small marsh with cattails and sedge.  The rays of the sun shimmered on the wet, green prairie grass as blue sky returned in the west.  A strong wind pushed the black storm clouds east and made it hard for birds to fly anywhere.  The rough, unforgiving land was stunning.