AN INNER WORLD OUT THERE

GETHSEMANI

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ABBEY OF OUR LADY OF GETHSEMANI
FOUNDED 1848 0F THE ORDER
OF TRAPPIST-CISTERCIANS,
FOUNDED 1098 IN FRANCE.
NOTED FOR PRAYER, LABOR
AND SILENCE.

Thomas Merton was loaned a camera in the mid-1960s by his friend John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), and this opened up a whole new world for him. He came to refer to his camera as a "zen camera" - by which I understand him to mean that the images produced are somehow seen only in the present moment - there is no past or future reference in them; they somehow stand on their own as "pure" (my word) images. In other words you see the image and that's it. You don't need to interpret it or talk about it; it just is. The zen photography of Thomas Merton.

So he photographed the ring pattern on sawn logs, shadows and light, patterns produced by ordinary things but that were somehow extraordinary. Very abstract. Kind of visual haikus, but I would say even more so.

Following his lead, as I wandered the abbey grounds on that Tuesday in January, waiting to hear news of my stranded and forlorn car on the train, I began to experiment with my own camera in the snow and ice of that winter's day... In particular, I discovered the macro-feature on my camera that for me opened up a whole new world - a world that is more about seeing than, interpreting or understanding - or even experiencing - it just is.

A whole new perspective...

And more... That was just the beginning:

"To see things whole is to be whole."

Henry Miller,

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch (p.144)

"All prayer, reading, meditation, and all the activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart..." (Merton); Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "To see things whole is to be whole" (Miller). Two very different writers, and yet a strange confluence in perspective and spirituality, that finds resonance in my own soul. A way of being, a be-attitude, stemming from a way of seeing - ? Or providing a way of seeing? Which comes first - how we see the world, and so live in it; or how we live, and so are able to see the world? Or perhaps the two are the one and the same: to see things whole is to be whole.