Photograph of Merton in ball cap by Ralph Eugene Meatyard
© Meatyard Estate
"Whatever I may have written, I think it all can be reduced in the end to this one root truth: that God calls human persons to union with Himself and with one another in Christ, in the Church which is His Mystical Body. It is also a witness to the fact that there is and must be, in the church, a contemplative life which has no other function than to realize these mysterious things, and return to God all the thanks and praise that human hearts can give Him. It is certainly true that I have written about more than just the contemplative life. I have articulately resisted attempts to have myself classified as an "inspirational writer." But if I have written about interracial justice, or thermonuclear weapons, it is because these issues are terribly relevant to one great truth: that man is called to live as a child of God. Man must respond to this call to live in peace with all his brothers and sisters in the One Christ."
Edited to add, for clearness sake, before the message of this quote becomes bogged down in semantics...
...too much angst over the difference between "A Christ" and "The Christ" becomes tedious once you realize that both are contained in the phrase "One Christ." Let's take a clue from Merton and bend our minds eastways for a moment as we consider the meaning of unity and of being united to God. And remember that "Christ" simply means "anointed". That's far more interesting to think about. One is annointed with Chrism, which means "oil mingled with balm". Oil...a source of Light and food. Balm...comfort, healing.
Hmm. There's lots there.
17 comments:
"Man must respond to this call to live in peace with all his brothers and sisters in the One Christ." And in the simplicity of this phrase... all hell breaks loose as humans fall out on the definition of " One Christ... " I find discomfort in Martin's ascertain on his blog recently, that some Liberal Friends don't believe in God... , I long for a less dividing way of speaking of a unity in God, when, as we seek the ultimate blessing of peace, Christ becomes such a divisive word, and so many respond with " just accept Christ" rather than seeking the unity which Jesus spoke of through taking water from she he took water from at the well... If only it could be simple.
PS I hope this does not sound argumentative, rather, I am heartbroken about the trend away from the healing that we sought in the coming together of the 1950s after the schism ended. It seems to me that many Friends are seeking to so define their faith as to create new divisions, and I am so earnest in my prayers that we start to actively seek unity through simplicity.
Friend, this is a quote about unity.
Stick the word "love" in for the word "Christ" whenever you run across it, if it bothers you. Stick the phrase "family" in for "Church" whenever you run across it, if it helps. I warmed to this quote because it emphasized the
...one great truth: that man is called to live as a child of God. Man must respond to this call to live in peace with all his brothers and sisters...
The great joy and mystery of faith is the continual expansion of our knowledge about what it means to live as a child of God, in the continual enrichment of our understanding of what it is that hides behind all of our words, and in the continual deepening of our life in the One.
That's a great photo of Merton, who's long been one of my heroes. Thanks for posting the image and the accompanying words. They put me in mind of my favorite quote of his, from his journals:
"What I do is live. How I pray is breathe. What I wear is pants. This is not a hermitage; it is a house. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament. That is to say: the wind moves through the trees, and you *breathe* it.
I know, Kev. It's an amazing photo. He looks so strong and rough-and-ready, full of humour and holiness. And that's one of my favourite quotes as well, if only because there's something marvelous about the phrase "What I wear is pants."
I completely agree with you, and rather than being personally bothered, I refer to Richard's blog entry, about a meeting where Richard, Arthur and I gave ministry, and a Quaker who had been away for awhile was bothered that ministry had become Christocentric, where three of us had found unity in the meaning underlying Richard and Arthur's sense of THE Christ, and mine of A Christ, the term as much as what is said, causes division, and I think we need active work in meetings towards understanding that it is the message under the language which we should seek to understand, not fall out on, ( in the words of the old Hindu devotional song, Raga Pati) the names we call God.
I wonder if it is not this seeking of definition of words rather than root meaning which divided Merton from Quakers, with whom he expressed some lack of unity, as memory serves... I should ask Richard about that...
Maybe I can say this with more clarity in this way... we Friends seem to be a people de vided by a common faith. Much in the way the world recently, was a place where half the world was oppressed for reading Marx and the other half oppressed for not reading Marx, and the true Marxists were shot down in a "Marxist" China for protesting against patronage...
I suppose I come back to the bibles as a Rorschach test... as much as thee and I and others seek unity, as we put words to the knowledge within, those words divide. So, I, am seen by those who have not talked to me very much, to be a "Jesus-centric " Friend, in unity with others who seek to proselytize in meeting, should I not foreswear the word Christ, and what is left? John Maynard's silence is one response, but is that the only way to unity in Quakerism? I don't think so... I don't think it is right to ignore messages strongly spoken in the heart... But we keep trying to be faithful... and kind.
:)
I think the point is that we should never seek to cut off any of the names and words that we have for God. God knows we need them all.
The edit is wonderful and right to the point... I would love to see M& W at 15th include that in the little pamphlet about coming to meeting for the first time, and encourage folks to read it who have been Friends for a long time... I've hardly seen a meeting where someone, of late, does not object to the mention of Christ in a message. In fact, the same semantic struggles can be waged over words like the "light" when that becomes an idol in the minds of Friends. There is a lot there, and Merton is just a wonderful pond in which to swim...
Happy New Year...
Dear friends and Friends Amanda and Jeff:
Jeff, thee is speaking right to the core of what I am saying. Growing up in the Christian world of conservative Hicksites, before New Age Quakerism made it more than impolite to say Jesus in a meetinghouse, this was not the issue which divided meetings. I remember the great shock... I had to sit for a long time and wonder at my fright, when I heard that some Friends in the downstairs cafiteria ( I was eight or nine I think ) were discussing if one could be a Quaker and not "believe in Jesus". There was talk of some being read out of meeting. I found this a deeply disturbing thought, as the unique place of Jesus was universal among Hicksites at the time.
Then came the anger and expressed pain of Black Friends over the term "overseer:. Words matter.
Here is the question that shook me awake, literally, this morning. For several years we labored, with great difficulty over the use of the word oversight, in Ministry and Oversight, in the New York Quarter's meetings, in respect for Black Friends associations with "overseers". We examined word after word to replace the word oversight. The result was Ministry and Counsel or Pastoral Care. In the case of counsel - it is a very different word, and I see our work in M&C as not being oversight, now, but rather a more hands on working in an advisory capacity, where oversight steps in when things go really pear shaped. Words and abstractions do matter.
Now, I see similar reactions in Friends to the name Jesus and the term Christ. I understand much of the visceral reaction, in that, today in the world there is terrible things being done by people who say if you don't accept Jesus as a personal savior, you are not only damned, but you can be bombed in women's clinics, you can be killed like spraying bugs with chemical weapons in Iraq, your rights can be abridged... that those people seek to make the world a "Christian" world. We have seen Friends who say they'd rather see Quakerism a more Christian faith, and they don't mean in the message of universal love, but the singular role of Jesus as a personal savior.
So, when this leads to Jesus' message not being one of peace and unity, what do we do? I felt oversight was an important part of our present as well as our past as Quakers, but in the light of Friends who could not come to unity and peace while this word is employed, I had to ask myself if there is another way to unity without this word. I suppose, I have to ask if there is something so unique about Jesus' ministry that we would again divide as a Quaker community, a deeper division than the Hicksite split, over the continued reliance of Jesus' name when speaking of his ministry? If so, are we in reality a peace church?
I suppose it is the elepant in the middle of the meeting house we all try to ignore to hope it stops eating the upolstery. It seems it wont. I am sure we need to bring this to the fore when I see people walk out of meeting or buttonhole folks after meeting in anger. I should say, that I don't think Friends should do either of those things. I have never walked out of a meeting because of what anyone has said, and I think we are called on, as Friends to think deeper when a message makes us angry... but, when Friends DO react this way, it is a call for us to understand and labor. How we do that... well, that is why we blog, to put the question out there.
Joyous New Year in peace.
lor
But the question remains... what to do?
The question is how to transcend the language, the commentary, which is the root of the dispute, to arrive at the God at the root of our faith. As Hill el speaks of - after the golden rule the rest is commentary. We are verging, as a faith, on a divide on commentary, and frankly, I believe that is pagan, it is worship of the commentary not the mystery.
I heard a talk by a reform rabbi, ( more id latter Genie seems to have moved my notes on him! ) which was, to me, the juncture between the Quaker that of God and the Judaism of Jesus' day. And the remarkable thing is the profound abandonment of the magic lure of the pagan reliance on the symbol. He said that we enter the kingdom of God, not through the magic appearance of a Messiah, but through the act of recognizing God in all others. It was the essence of Quakers utopian roots. It was the message, not the abstraction.
How do we as a community teach that unity which is not tied to the ego of our abstractions?
If we don't how are we responsible to God in all others?
Hi Folks... I think this needs a separate post... so perhaps today or tomorrow I am going to have a query on my blog, about separations on the nature of Jesus and definition of Christ. I do think this is a vital discussion, as I think allowing division in our society on this is sin. More on this on my blog. See you there, I hope, Drop by Jeff and all, I think to avoid this is to avoid the message of peace in our society.
In the spirit of love and unity which was Jesus' ministry.
lor
This is why I think this discussion is so vitally important. In order to worship God, we, to be Quakers, should have no intermediary between ourselves and God in others. Those intermediaries are the barrier which divides us from each other and therefore divides us from God. So... the three positions in this divide in Quakerism I see as this...
1. There are those who say they are called to worship in Jesus' name.
2. There are those who say Jesus was an important teacher, like Fox.
3. There are those who say that they cannot abide hearing about Jesus in meeting.
I fit into the middle position for the reason that by it's nature paganism is divisive, as it places a false God, a human abstraction in the way of worshiping the one God, which transcends all language and image. To worship in the name of another may be to fall into the error of simply adopting a new form of Roman paganism. So, for me, position one is as in error as position three, which is to deny presence to that of God in Jesus, and those who place importance on his ministry as we do Fox's ministry. Some say that to be a Friend we must take Fox as gospel, as infallible. Well, this places Fox in the same role as a pope, at which I believe he would have bristled. Rather, I believe Fox, would have said, study and learn, and abandon those things that divide thee from God... and when we, in a modern age, can become aware of such forensic proofs that the Bible evolved in the hands of man's institutions, he would have said bend towards the truth, as error divides us. For some reason, the great difference between Christianity and Judaism is the Christian belief that one must believe the elements of a parable in order to glean truth from it, that there exists a real eye of the needle... in order to understand being trapped by one's baggage. Jesus I think, might have laughed at that, in life, and said, if that is the case, my message should only be spoken in Hebrew or Aramaic, so that the pagans don't wind up worshiping me! In Thomas he said, if you follow me, you don't follow God. I think it is more in keeping with the ten commandments ( and the eleventh ) to worship in God's name...
But, I remain open to new light in this...
Thine in the light
lor
Happy New Year...
PS Jeff... I'll see thy 200 words and raise thee 2,000
:)
lor
PS Then again, I've a Friend and friend, who through the use of a short tag trumps anyone's 10,000,... at the end of many people's messages in meeting, he stands and adds, things like ( here is an accrate quote... "Yes! And that light of which we speak is our Lord and savior Jesus Christ! " For some, this is a sort of use of Jesus' name like a baseball bat. again... :)
I'm so impressed by the tender tone of this exchange.
The passage that struck me most: "Now, I see similar reactions in Friends to the name Jesus and the term Christ. I understand much of the visceral reaction, in that, today in the world there is terrible things being done by people who say if you don't accept Jesus as a personal savior, you are not only damned, but you can be bombed in women's clinics, you can be killed like spraying bugs with chemical weapons in Iraq, your rights can be abridged... that those people seek to make the world a 'Christian' world. We have seen Friends who say they'd rather see Quakerism a more Christian faith, and they don't mean in the message of universal love, but the singular role of Jesus as a personal savior."
In communicating Christian faith from within a Quaker setting, I feel called to ask for two efforts from my conversation partners, but not called to ask for a third. Here are those three requests:
1) I ask people not to make facile correlations between Christians and violent or oppressive behavior. Violent, oppressive behavior has been practiced by members of the human species who bear the name "Christian" (whether sincerely or by ancestry or habit or manipulation) and by those who utterly reject that name. It is just not honest to imply that Christians of any stripe, including genuine fundamentalists, have been peculiarly obnoxious compared to other humans. If it seems especially ironic that Christians would behave that way, that's a testimony to the beauty of the message. Even those who have no loyalty to Christianity might be willing to help combat that unfair correlation just as they would help correct slanders against other groups.*
2) Friends generally fall into two camps regarding Quakerism's role in Christianity. (I've sometimes quoted Albert Fowler's excellent Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought, who writes along similar lines.) The way I put it: Some see Quakerism as an intensification and purification of historic Christian faith, and others see it as a relativization of historic Christianity. (No doubt there are some who see it both ways.
My request is for Friends who prefer the second option to recognize that the first option exists and has historical validity. Some of us believe that something powerful and Spirit-led happened to cause Quakers to come into being, and that the first generation of Friends were not trapped by language or prejudice into expressing a cramped and limited vision that can only now, in the light of contemporary sophistication, be more truly and generously unwrapped. We feel that respectful communication requires us to translate the profound insights of early Quakerism into a message that is both faithful to that first generation and comprehensible today, because for some of us, our discovery of the power of that message made us first-generation Quakers in our own time.
We know that we don't "own" the right to affix the Quaker label, and that others have taken the more relativistic path, with perhaps equal strength of conviction. However, if we are all asked to adopt the language of relativism in order to maintain fellowship, that requirement in itself will further divide us.
This may help to explain why I find it so ironic that the American Friends Service Committee uses the tagline "Quaker Values in Action." Period. Or ... "Quakers feel that what one believes or calls God is not as important as the practice of seeking God." Some in the liberal end of the Quaker spectrum are not above making dogmatic statements that are hardly consensus expressions of worldwide Quakerism. (Although the latter example could be a very fruitful discussion-starter.)
3) The request that I am NOT making: to proclaim a Quaker message that is not rooted in your own experience as well as the corporate voice of our community. In other words, I'm asking for respectful space for the "orthodox" Christian voice of Friends, not recommending that any prefab statement, even mine, be adopted as a blueprint. Our evangelism and social prophecy has power only insofar as it is authentic. And some of us in the evangelical Quaker movement have a lot of repenting to do about the ways we have unfairly painted those who don't agree with us.
Johan
* Several good books have been written to counter such popular distortions of history as the alleged anti-intellectualism, misogyny, and anti-environmentalism of Christianity, the unusual cruelty of Christian explorers, etc. The best of these studies do not conceal any of the actual horror perpetrated by Christians. One example: 6 Modern Myths About Christianity & Western Civilization--Philip J. Sampson.
I enjoyed this as far as it went. However, now I have begun to worry about you. Have you just been too busy to post?
Hi Amana
We've been looking at ol' Merton here for a while.
Missing your ministry.
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