Moments - Just Celebrated
February 26, 2008
"I was running past the high: hurrying
past the very
transcendent moments I was seeking."
John Jerome
Thomas Merton, the well known Trappist monk and
activist, tells about a revelation he had
while sitting
alone in the woods with his Coleman lantern.
He is
confronted with the fact that Coleman has
constructed
its lantern with a pragmatic intention over
and above
the simple provision of light. The packing
box declares
that the lantern, "stretches days to give
more hours of
fun." Merton asks rhetorically, "Can't I
just be in the
woods without any special reason?"
He goes on to say that, in fact, "We are not having fun, we are not 'having' anything, we are not 'stretching our days,' and if we had fun it would not be measured by hours. Though as a matter of fact that is what fun seems to be: a state of diffuse excitation that can be measured by the clock and 'stretched by an appliance.'"
Perhaps Merton is on to something here. The possibilities are limitless: Fun-inducing appliances, coupled with an industry which helps us justify our time. Our closets are filled with gadgets designed to do just that. Don't tell Apple or Microsoft that you heard it here first.
What is it about our insidious need to assign value to every act or expenditure of time? As in, "Did you get anything done this morning?" Or, upon returning from any vacation for R & R, we are quizzed, "Well, what did you do?" We lump anything not of value into that great compost bin contrived to amass our wasted time.
A nap is approved if I've worked hard enough to deserve it, or am feeling under the weather. A day off is condoned if it is my due. A loll through the garden is acceptable only if I pull some weeds on the way through. A wasted afternoon is allowed so long as it doesn't happen too often, and I seem duly contrite.
But it's deeper that all of that, isn't it? It seems that our perception of what is "real" is distorted. Real becomes anything "of use." In other words, that which has market value, or is of pragmatic significance. The afternoon then, can no longer be "just" celebrated. It has to be "used judiciously." Which takes some mental gymnastics when that use is soaking in a hot tub reading mystery, or watching your six-month old son gurgle and slap at a mobile, or admiring the hummingbirds as they wage turf wars near the feeders off the back deck.
Fearing wasted time is a tough demon to exorcize. This makes stillness the sacred necessity with a price tag. But once you've wasted an afternoon in the garden, "have tasted stillness" you get the sense that the medicine is itself blessedly fatal, so instead of fighting it with some stern and dour sounding work-ethic-inner-voice, we might just as well plop down on a garden bench and squander a few minutes (or even a day), and give this slowing-down- vaccine a whirl. It begins to work its power as the fragrance of the winter blooming shurb Sarcococca rolls over you in waves. It is a surprise attack, for it takes you a minute to locate the source, as the plant stands some thirty feet from the deck where you are reclining. So you smile and lean your head back as a red tail hawk navigates the unseen currents high above. He seems content just to float, and his flight works as a sedative which calls for a short afternoon nap. The warmth of the afternoon sun settles around you and a duo of hummingbirds provide grand theater with the cajoling and obdurate chatter that accompanies their ongoing turf war. Just before you drift off, you hear the bees' determined buzzing as they squeeze their chubby bodies in and out of the tubular flowers of the Penstemon that sags and slouches near the garden bench. As Kurt Vonnegut's uncle taught him to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
"Life is this simple. We are
living in a world that
is absolutely transparent, and God is shining
through
us all the time. This is not just a fable or
a nice story. It
is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, forget
ourselves, we see it."
Thomas Merton
He goes on to say that, in fact, "We are not having fun, we are not 'having' anything, we are not 'stretching our days,' and if we had fun it would not be measured by hours. Though as a matter of fact that is what fun seems to be: a state of diffuse excitation that can be measured by the clock and 'stretched by an appliance.'"
Perhaps Merton is on to something here. The possibilities are limitless: Fun-inducing appliances, coupled with an industry which helps us justify our time. Our closets are filled with gadgets designed to do just that. Don't tell Apple or Microsoft that you heard it here first.
What is it about our insidious need to assign value to every act or expenditure of time? As in, "Did you get anything done this morning?" Or, upon returning from any vacation for R & R, we are quizzed, "Well, what did you do?" We lump anything not of value into that great compost bin contrived to amass our wasted time.
A nap is approved if I've worked hard enough to deserve it, or am feeling under the weather. A day off is condoned if it is my due. A loll through the garden is acceptable only if I pull some weeds on the way through. A wasted afternoon is allowed so long as it doesn't happen too often, and I seem duly contrite.
But it's deeper that all of that, isn't it? It seems that our perception of what is "real" is distorted. Real becomes anything "of use." In other words, that which has market value, or is of pragmatic significance. The afternoon then, can no longer be "just" celebrated. It has to be "used judiciously." Which takes some mental gymnastics when that use is soaking in a hot tub reading mystery, or watching your six-month old son gurgle and slap at a mobile, or admiring the hummingbirds as they wage turf wars near the feeders off the back deck.
Fearing wasted time is a tough demon to exorcize. This makes stillness the sacred necessity with a price tag. But once you've wasted an afternoon in the garden, "have tasted stillness" you get the sense that the medicine is itself blessedly fatal, so instead of fighting it with some stern and dour sounding work-ethic-inner-voice, we might just as well plop down on a garden bench and squander a few minutes (or even a day), and give this slowing-down- vaccine a whirl. It begins to work its power as the fragrance of the winter blooming shurb Sarcococca rolls over you in waves. It is a surprise attack, for it takes you a minute to locate the source, as the plant stands some thirty feet from the deck where you are reclining. So you smile and lean your head back as a red tail hawk navigates the unseen currents high above. He seems content just to float, and his flight works as a sedative which calls for a short afternoon nap. The warmth of the afternoon sun settles around you and a duo of hummingbirds provide grand theater with the cajoling and obdurate chatter that accompanies their ongoing turf war. Just before you drift off, you hear the bees' determined buzzing as they squeeze their chubby bodies in and out of the tubular flowers of the Penstemon that sags and slouches near the garden bench. As Kurt Vonnegut's uncle taught him to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
Thomas Merton
Poems / Prayers
You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
GK Chesterton
"Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church,
or closet,
not exercised only in prayer and meditation,
but that everywhere I am in Thy presence."
Susanna Wesley
Peace,
Terry Hershey
