Column Two will be an addition to our blog: prayingalonetogether.blogspot.com.It will be presented each week. We will continue with the prayer commentaries every other week.
In Column Two we will have various reflections on the spiritual dimension of many topics. We will begin with some selected passages from Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. This book was published in 1966. Merton describes it thus: “This book consists of personal reflections, insights, metaphors, observations, judgements on readings and events. The material is taken from notebooks which I have kept since 1956.”
Merton’s comments and insights from time to time are laden with a heavy historical perspective. Generally, however, they are relevant to our times. I will follow with my response to Merton’s wisdom.
Merton died before anyone challenged his absolute exclusion of inclusive language. I am sure he would have been a fierce advocate had he known better. I reluctantly present him in his original form. Here is the first passage from Conjectures, pp.72-73.
We all are convinced that we desire the truth above all. Nothing strange about this. It is natural to man, an intelligent being, to desire truth. But actually, what we desire is not “the truth” so much as “to be in the right.” To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we are not able to act always in this respect. According to our nature. What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices, our limitation, our selfishness. This is not “the truth.” It is only an argument strong enough to prove us “right.” And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.
Why do we want to prove them wrong? Because we need them to be wrong. For if they are wrong, and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness become justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned. We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as “truth.” What we desire is not the truth, but, rather that our lie should be proved “right,” and iniquity be vindicated as “just.” This is what we have done to pervert our natural, instinctive appetite for truth.
No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent. No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war! And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us. Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.”
COMMENTS:
- First and foremost, I plead guilty and guilty over many years. I have been a real crusader on countless issues in the liberal/conservative divide.
- One small example: I have acquaintances who always were calling on me to listen to the Pope. This went on for more than thirty years. I would respond, “The Gospel says…” And so the exchange went on with little light and even less progress.
- I must confess I have not seen these folks in recent years for various reason but I do want to tell them now that Francis has the Keys of Peter, “The Pope says…”
- Over the years, I have come up with two insights that have helped me but not with the power of Merton’s perception.
- The first quote is, “There are not just two sides to every story. There are often four or five or more, the deeper we enter into the Gospel in responding to the situation. Reality offers many possibilities of new understanding and reconciliation when we bring an open and humble heart to the dialogue.
- Secondly, it has been helpful for me to realize the deeper we enter into the Gospel, most either/or situations flow into both/and possibilities that reduce the rancor, isolation and division that so easily blind us.
- Finally, in Mt 7:3-5 we have the story of the plank in our eye and the sliver in our neighbor’s eye. With the passage of time and faithfulness in prayer I have experienced deeper perception into my judgmental attitude. Reflection on this Gospel passage is an invitation to Teresa’s plea for self-knowledge. It is a long journey but this is the way home, accepting ourselves as we are.
