Another Year On...

Friends, if you enjoy this blog, you may be interested in my latest venture where I am exploring the parallels and convergences in the lives and writings of Thomas Merton and Henry Miller in my new blog: The Ex-Con and the Secular Monk.

SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE...?

So it's two days before the presentation at the library and I'm putting the talk together. Today I've been working on the powerpoint, developing it from an earlier presentation that was not as focused as this one, so tightening it up, taking out quite a lot of "trip" stuff as opposed to "journey" stuff and incorporating much of the material that I've included in this blog. And I find myself conflicted and a bit dissatisfied - maybe it's because I've been working on it all day and I'm feeling a bit drained, but I'm concerned that I neither take what is a simple but profound idea and make it complicated and inaccessible nor take something that is subtle and sophisticated and oversimplify it - make it facile. There is always a real danger in all of this of over-simplifying or over-complicating. I'm also concerned to get the balance right between providing enough of the story of the journey to enable people to connect with it but not so much that it becomes a series of travelog anecdotes; at the same time I want to provide sufficient academic and literary depth without making it heavy and inpenetrable. I suspect the balance will be achieved in the presentation rather than the preparation, but it's a concern as I look at the powerpoint as it evolves - the right balance between pictures and words; the right pictures and the right words!

And I'm asking myself: where is it going? How do I end it? What is the conclusion? In many ways the whole outlook of the journey can be summed up in the Leuty Lifeguard picture - or rather what that picture means to me. But there's so much more to it than that - in the pictures/visions of the journey and in the experiences along the way and since then in the processing of it. The recurring theme is about a "new way of seeing" - that is not really new at all, maybe it's a continually "renewed" way of seeing; opening our eyes to see as if for the first time; to see with freshness - with possibility (open to the gift within) - with purity of heart. It's about making the connection between a way of seeing and a way of being in the world - and I'm still not sure which comes first: an outlook bringing about a way of being in the world; or a way of being in the world changing how we see. It is about the connections between inner and outer - which in part is where the journey began: exploring the connections between inner and outer journeys - physical journeys and spiritual pilgrimages - the distinction between the "trip" and the "journey" as Elizabeth pointed out very early on in a comment on by blog.

This connection between inner and outer is something that I want to bring to the fore, and probably where this presentation should be ending up, as well as where it begins. There are some other things about inner/outer and above/below that I still want to include; and I can never go too far with this theme without running into Merton's "Thou art that" from his time on the northern California coast - where I once again visited on the way home with Christine at the end of the journey. My experience of this journey, and the visions I have seen, bring me to a deeper understanding that what I see before my eyes reflects who I am on the inside because of the way I look, the way I see the world. "I" disappear as a new identity appears. This links into what Merton says at the end of the quote I have cited repeatedly about "Purity of heart" being corelative to a new spiritual identity - "the 'self' as recognized in the context of realities willed by God."

I'd like somehow to connect this with my time in the desert, though I'm not sure how it fits. I'm also wanting to say something about Kerouac and how all this relates to him - seeing as this journey in a way (a big way) is because of him. How do I square the tragedy of his life, and the hell he went through at Big Sur, with the paradise that is before our eyes. Maybe he had to live it in order to show us the truth of the golden eternity that is always there - though as soon as I say that, or say anything in fact, I have that feeling of becoming facile again.... Maybe it's enough to quote the very end of his own Big Sur: "Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word."

EXACTING TRUTH

That quote of Merton's that I've been reflecting on continues...

"All prayer, reading, meditation, and all the activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by him. It means the renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacity in order to obey God's will as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth. Purity of heart is then correlative to a new spiritual identity - the 'self' as recognized in the context of realities willed by God."

Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p.68

All these activities that for Merton made up his life as a monk - prayer, reading, meditation etc. - are activities that we in the secular world might relate to spiritual growth. We may not be monks but as human beings we are spiritual beings who have the capacity for spiritual longing and yearning; to nourish our souls and become all that we can be. We may not necessarily use the language of "purity of heart" but we can surely connect this language to our own spiritual hunger, and recognize in it the need for surrender and acceptance - of ourselves, our situations, and perhaps even the "will of God" - though this is inevitably more problematic perhaps because it is the area of greatest surrender - I take it to mean a recognition of order, meaning and purpose and, another word I want to add, benevolence.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Inherent in the phrase "purity of heart" is the idea of seeing clearly in a spiritual sense. Merton continues, "It means the renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacity in order to obey God's will as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth" (emphasis added). Once more I discern these three elements: ourselves, our situations (the difficult demands of life), and the will of God; and it has to do with how we see - the deluded images of ourselves, the exaggerated estimates of our own capacity.

In his book Subversive Orthodoxy, Robert Inchausti says that "spiritual growth is largely a process of dismantling false identifications, cognitive distortions, and idolatrous conceptions."

This seems very close to me to what Merton says about renouncing deluded images and exaggerated estimates. Once again, in this very compact statement, I discern three elements: ourselves, our reality (our situations) and our view of the divine:

false identifications = how we see ourselves

cognitive distortions = how we see reality

idolatrous conceptions = how we see God

All three are about how we "see" and all three relate to one another. How we see ourselves both influences and is influenced by how we see our reality - our situations, the difficult demands of life - and both in turn affect and are affected by how we "see" God, or perhaps it would be better to say how we conceive God (our idolatrous conceptions), if we want to preserve "seeing" God for the true seeing of the pure in heart, to which all our efforts for spiritual growth, all our prayer, reading, meditation etc. are directed. Thus, as Merton says, "Purity of heart is then correlative to a new spiritual identity - the 'self' as recognized in the context of realities willed by God."

So the journey, this "on the road" experience of life, is about purity of heart, which is about learning to see clearly, seeking a vision of God; but this cannot be separated from how we see and experience the life we're living, the road we're on, as it relates to the "will of God," which in turn is about who we are becoming - our true identity when we strip away our false identifications and deluded images of ourselves.

LIVING THE THOUGHT

"All prayer, reading, meditation, and all the activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by him."

Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

"By prayer I do not mean asking, hoping, begging or bartering for that which one desires but, without formulating it, living the thought - 'Thy will be done!' In short, acknowledging wholeheartedly to ourselves that, whatever situation we find ourselves in, we are to regard it as an opportunity and a privilege as well as a challenge."

Henry Miller, Big Sur, p.205

Miller and Merton admired each others' work and exchanged letters in the early 1960s (The Courage for Truth). In one letter Merton enclosed a picture of himself, and Miller was stuck by Merton's resemblance to himself and to Jean Genet: "You too have the look of an ex-convict, of one who has been through hell and I think bear the traces of it" (July 4, 1964).

Jean Genet

Merton concurred: "Yes, I have often thought of the resemblence between our faces. I had not associated Genet with it, not knowing what he looks like. I suppose the person I most resemble, usually, is Picasso. That's what everybody says. Still I think it is a distinction to look like Picasso, Henry Miller, and Genet all at once. Pretty comprehensive. It seems to imply some kind of responsibility" (August 16, 1964).

Pablo Picasso

Elsewhere, in a letter to Chilean poet Hernan Lavin Cerda dated October 6, 1965, Merton comments that Miller is read for "kicks" because he has a reputation for being pornographic. "Actually," Merton continues, "he is a kind of secular monk with a sexual mysticism...."

I did not expect to come across a reflection on "Thy will be done" in Miller's work. Perhaps I should have known better. His thinking transforms the common view of prayer - asking, hoping, begging, bartering - into an attitude of mind and heart that finds expression in how we live our lives: "living the thought." It's a beatitude that connects with what Merton says about purity of heart being "an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by Him" - but it goes beyond surrender and acceptance to embrace the positive in whatever situation we find ourselves in - "to regard it as a an opportunity and a privilege as well as a challenge."

We return to Aloysha in The Brothers Karamazov abandoning himself to divine providence - "Nothing is rejected, but everything accepted as from God's hand" (Inchausti).

NO LIMITS TO VISION

"To see things whole is to be whole."
Henry Miller, Big Sur

This is a very "journey's end" type of picture. Having driven across the country, north to south, east to west, in some gigantic genuflection on the map, this is where I ended up: The Coast. Specifically the coast at Big Sur, California - the "Big Land of the South." Journey's end - except of course that it didn't end there because there's always the next place; the story doesn't end, just a place you stop before what happened next... But in terms of my time on the road this marked the end of one journey before continuing on.

Sean, who had travelled across the country with me, had by now flown back to England and I was headed to a retreat with the hermits of the New Camaldoli. Kairos, the name of my trailer-hermitage, the time to stop and be still and process all of this "road going." The fullness of the present moment after the onrush on the road.

"Seeking intuitively, one's destination is never in a beyond of time or space but always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished."

Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, p.25

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Somehow in this kairos fullness of the moment everything was pregnant with meaning; everything was pointing the same way, saying the same thing over and over. A new way of looking at things - that was the recurring theme right from that snowbound day at The Beaches, Toronto and the Leuty Lifeguard Station - dismantaling the illusions of displacement; opening my eyes in the ice world of Gethsemani; and startlingly in the reflection in a Cadillac fender outside the Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee...

Reflections in Memphis

Union Ave, Memphis TN

Saturday, January 24, 2009

"This contemplative picture was taken mid-morning after Sean and I had visited the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee which you can see reflected in the fender of this Cadillac we found parked right outside. We’d set out from Toronto in a rented Jeep Cherokee about lunchtime the day before having been told that my own car (shipped from Vancouver) would not be available until after the weekend. We drove all night, pretty much due south and arrived in Memphis in time for breakfast. Then as pilgrims we headed up Union Avenue to the studio where the chords of “That’s Alright, Mama” still resonate in the hearts of true believers. Blue skies over Memphis, fluffy wisps of clouds and sun warmth on our faces: free at last, free at last!"

Zen photography? Perhaps. Certainly a new way of looking at things after driving eighteen hours from the frozen north through the night to arrive in the springtime of the south. And I love the image simply for what it is quite apart from the many associations it has for me. No limits to vision.

Henry Miller first went to Big Sur in 1944 and lived in various locations before settling on Partington Ridge in 1947 where he remained for many years. He would have been there in January 1949 when Kerouac and Cassady made their epic journey across the country; he was still there in 1960 when Kerouac spent some weeks in Bixby Canyon just up the coast in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin, the scene of his own harrowing as related in his book, Big Sur. For Kerouac the experience was a season in hell; for Miller it was paradise as reflected in the title of his experiences in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch - in his triptych "The Millenium" Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise.

No limits to vision ... no limits to paradise. One's destination, Miller wrote, is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things; and he links this new way of looking at things with paradise which I understand as a way of being - being at peace - a beatific state, a beatitude. A new outlook on the world and what happens in our lives - a new way of looking at things which is to say there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Miller's words and my own become intertwined, as his thoughts reflect my own and at the same time guide them along new pathways and give them shape and expression. He continues:

"Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminshed, untarnished."

Big Sur, p.25

Wow! This is heady stuff. We tend to associate ideas of "paradise" with "perfection" by which we often mean "without flaw" but here Miller challenges and changes that perspective. True paradise can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished, because it depends on how we see, how we look at things, whether we see them as flaws, imperfections or not. Once more it is about dismantling our illusions and seeing clearly.

The very next page Miller writes:

"There seems to be an unwritten law here which insists that you accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out."

Big Sur, p.26

You accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out - out of this paradise, that is. What he means here is not that someone is judging and casting out, rather we cast ourselves out of paradise by how we relate to it - "we make our own heaven and our own hell," he even quotes the popular saying. Once again we return to the theme of acceptance and surrender and embracing the fullness of the present moment to arrive at a new destination, a new way of seeing.

"Sit in your cell as in paradise."
(From a card on the table in each hermitage/cell at New Camaldoli, Big Sur)

DOXA - GLORY

AN INNER WORLD OUT THERE

GETHSEMANI

--- ---
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.

VISIONS OF GETHSEMANI

When it became apparent on the day after "The Beaches" picture was taken - a Friday - that the car was not going to be available until after the weekend we decided to head south in another rented vehicle to spend the weekend in Memphis, Tennessee before heading to Thomas Merton's monastery in Kentucky on the Monday.

Gethsemani in Ice

Trappist Monastery, Kentucky

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

"Thomas Merton was a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani from 1941-1968. This was the day when I heard that my car was finally ready for collection, and I set off for Toronto that evening in the worst ice-storm in living memory. The evening before, Father Damian (the Guestmaster) had been telling us that we were at Gethsemani not because we chose to be, but because God wanted us there. This is what he called 'special grace.' So, I reasoned, that if I had to go away it was because God didn’t want me there after all; he wanted me on the road instead. This was my extra-special grace. But before I set off I spent a peaceful day in and around the monastery getting to know the macro-photography feature on my camera. The snow and ice made everything even quieter; it was as if time itself has stopped – a moment frozen in eternity. I especially love this picture which seems to capture that moment with the depth of field between the ice-encrusted tree and the entrance to the abbey church."

In his book Contemplative Prayer, Merton writes:

"All prayer, reading, meditation, and all the activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by Him." (p.68)

Merton's life as a monk was aimed at "purity of heart" - this was what his spiritual path was all about, developing "purity of heart." He defines this as "surrender to God" which he equates with acceptance of the present moment - "ourselves and our situation" - as willed by God.

In The Beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel we read that the pure in heart are blessed for they will see God.

There seems to be a link between acceptance/surrender, purity of heart and true seeing - vision of reality.

In all of this talk about acceptance - even embracing - whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in, looking for the hidden gift within, I am conscious of and uncomfortable with the potential for this to come across as trite - fatalistic and platitudinous. A car stuck on a train is hardly a life crisis; driving through the worse snow & ice storm to hit the mid-west in living memory was a bit more scary (and I had to give myself a good talking-to); but everyday people are confronted by huge challenges of life and death - chronic illness, sudden calamity, injustice, torture, imprisonment, the loss of loved ones, the list is endless. Ultimately we are all faced with our own mortality - as was Neal Cassady by a railroad in Mexico in 1967, Merton in a Bangkok hotel room in 1968, Kerouac while watching the Galloping Gourmet on TV in 1969 - what poetry in our deaths. Actually I suspect they all faced their mortality way before any of their deaths; these were just the times and places of their final showdowns.

And yet... and yet, all of that notwithstanding, there is still huge power in the way we are able to accept what must be accepted - that which cannot be anything other than accepted because it cannot be changed - even though it may threaten to rip our very souls out from our mortal skins; the surrender that brings peace; the purity of heart that enables us to see clearly.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" - a beatitude; a be-attitude - a way of being that has to do with a way of seeing. A long time ago Kerouac made the link between the word "beat," as in the "beat generation," with the word "beatitude" meaning being in a state of "blessedness." And how are we to understand "blessedness"? It suggests to me a state of peace, and an invulnerability against all that would destory us and tear us down, it is the ultimate overcoming. It is the ultimate justice in overturning the fortunes and the values of the world, the ultimate putting right of wrongs, the last shall be first and the first, last. Blessed are the poor in spirit... blessed are those who mourn... blessed are the meek... blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice... blessed are the merciful... blessed are the pure in heart... blessed are the peacemakers... blessed are the persecuted... blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you. Make no mistake.