Thomas Merton: Session 6

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Jim Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to our time here together, exploring the teachings of the Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, turning to Merton for guidance in our day-by-day lives. And in this session, I want to focus on the purgative aspects of being discerning that we're being interiorly drawn toward more interior mystical ways of experiencing and responding to God's presence in our lives. Discerning the gift of it, like how to recognize that it's occurring and how to understand the purgative, that is the purifying aspects of what we must undergo in order for the union with God we long for to occur. This will allow us then in the following session to turn to Merton's insights to the fullness of the union that arises out of that purgation. So that there is a purgation, there is a kind of an unraveling or an undoing of the ability to live on our own terms. And then out of the deep acceptance of that unraveling, then there arises the long for union that we're then called to live in and to share with others day by day. It is with this context then, is a passage in Thomas Merton. This is found in Merton's Palace of Nowhere, page 14 And again, as with all of these, at least some of them, you'll find a longer, more detailed version of this in the series I did with Sounds True, Merton's Path to the Palace of Nowhere. So this is page 14 of Merton's Palace.

And I don't have the original text right here with me, but you'll have it, you'll get it, they'll give it to you. Merton writes, I'll read it, then reflect on it. God, my God, God, whom I meet in darkness, with you it is always the same thing, always the same question that nobody knows how to answer. I have prayed to you in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the night time you have confronted me, scattering thought and reason. I have come to you in the morning with light and with desire, and you have descended upon me with great gentleness, with most forbearing silence, in this inexplicable night, dispersing light, defeating all desire. I have explained to you a hundred times my motives for entering the monastery, and you have listened and said nothing, and have turned away and wept with shame. Continues. Let no one hope to find in contemplation, an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart, like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. What I want to get at is this.

When Merton says, this is a key point, I think. God, my God, whom I meet in darkness, namely the darkness of this boundaryless state is so incomprehensible to me in the finite capabilities of my mind and heart that are being accessed by these longings. God, my God, that darkness, I'm actually blinded by the light of it. My finite eyes are blinded by the light of this infinite desire, which is an echo of God's infinite desire for me. God, my God, whom I meet in darkness, with you it is always the same thing, always the same question that nobody knows how to answer. And here's what I want to first point, insight, I think, Merton, here. It seems that when we first start out on this path, like we realize it kind of is tugging at us, like we're drawn towards it, these more contemplative and two-ier ways of experiencing, responding to God's presence, when we begin we have a lot of questions, understandably. See, how do I cooperate with this? How do I experience this in prayer? How do I deal with distractions? How do I come to terms with my confusion and knowing how to proceed? How do I actually achieve this in the midst of a very complicated situation that's going on within myself and in my family or among my loved ones? The challenges of life. How can I? I have a lot of questions here. See, this is why we're right at the edge of spiritual direction. See, where can I find someone well seasoned in such things to offer a reassuring word? I think Merton offers us that word. And where can I find this fulfillment? But as I go along this way, kind of patiently, in my Lectio Divina, my prayer, my petitions, my day-by-day devotional sincerity, setbacks, mid-setbacks, and call to sacks, and all the rest of it. You have your life, I have mine. Something starts to shift. We begin to realize that it's not us asking the question. Because the only answer we could get would be a finite answer. It's the only answer we could tolerate.