The spiritual practice has been in the spiritual crapper lately as it tends to do from time to time. Since at least Lent, the Daily Office blog has been doing me fairly right. And if it ain’t broke, as they say. Except that the spiritual practice tends not to break so much as just sort of whimper out. Become ineffective. Be overpowered by inertia and sleep. Those sorts of things. It’s a gradual progress, sort of like rusting, and I tend not to notice it until all my joints need oil and the bearings are squeeky. It seemed an appropriate time to drag out the Thomas Merton.
The Subdude had suggested this particular collection of Merton’s journals. It’s organized by days so that a person can have a little meditation with Thomas every morning, or evening, or at 4:20. Whatever you are into. Since the only chance I have of not being a douche all day long is to catch it first thing, I do it in the morning. The other morning when I pulled it out, the bookmark that Zonker had brought me from Egypt was at the page where I had set the book down last year, roughly the same date I picked it up this year. Do you believe in coincidences? Ok, yes I do, but this was a pretty cool one. In any event, the sage of Gethsemani and I have been hanging out low these couple of mornings.
And I was surprised to be admonished by the Trappist in this morning’s entry to take sides. His deal at the time was the atomic bomb and those who were creating theological justifications for the atomic bomb. I don’t remember specifics, but it seems to me that Merton was anti atomic bomb. He thought it important that people of faith provide a prophetic witness in the face of such powerful forces of destruction. That seems appropriate, but I wonder sometimes if what seems to me like a call to witness in the prophetic tradition is not really an elaborate justification for self-aggrandizement. Not that this is what Merton is doing, just what I can be guilty of. The past 18 months or so had pretty much gotten me convinced that I was better off leaving politics alone; however, if Thomas Merton is right then maybe I need to consider if there might not be a road that goes between complete disengagement and self-righteous self-seeking.