Seeds

More words I wish I wrote:

We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.

The primordial blessing, "increase and multiply," has suddenly become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, and massed together, marshalled, numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, worked to point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment, surfeited with everything, nauseated with the human race and with ourselves, nauseated with life.

As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowed it off the face of the earth.

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable, 1966

The anguish we find...belongs to the disorder of our desires which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is acutally there: a greater fulfillment than any created thing is capable of giving. Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 1972

In the anguish of mourning the furies of the day are transparent. We see the cold steel fist covered in a soft glove of illusion. Everything I desired was to give praise to my time on earth. How high could I raise myself? On top of how much of my own creations could I stand above God's creatures? For all who live, God grants a window into reality where we can see our dependence on identity. Our altitude is meaningless to acquire the view. Merciful God leads those in mourning to the glass. When given the choice to gaze out for a while or back forever, I'm grateful to have leaned my forehead on the pane and seen truth.

The things I really need come only as gifts and I am open to receive them as gifts, and the ability to be open is God's gift.


Aaron and Patrick's Dad
12/18/06