Often I worry a good deal about what happens next here at the factory know as the State, but there is not much I can do regarding it. Lacking any real political power and the prevailing winds being what they are I must simply act stoically. In that vein I found the following piece by Thomas Merton. I came upon it when I was looking for some reading to end my day the other evening. I think it has broad applicability in the lives of those of use facing the 21st century in all its bustle, confusion and in a much broader sense despair.
“In our age everything has to be a "problem." Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by forces from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt, traveling from the area of anxiety to the area in which there is no anxiety or perhaps it may mean learning, from God, to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety.
Fundamentally, as Max Picard points out, it probably comes to this: living in a silence which so reconciles the contradictions within us that, although they remain within us, they cease to be a problem.
Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.
Silence, then, belongs to the substance of sanctity. In silence and hope are formed the strength of the Saints. "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). “
Perhaps in some ways this seems to imply I should not blog. Hmmh?
2 comments:
LOL, I cannot imagine silence from your end. I would have it no other way.
I am usually loath to read blogs. I have come to view the internet as 10 Billion people shouting. I don't particularly care to know what most others think, and rightfully assume that they do not care about my thoughts. It's part of accepting your insignificance in the world, or the space/time continuum. I believe that only by accepting it (your insignificance) can you make a difference. If you look at it from a sub atomic level, just the fact that we are here changes everything in the universe, and that should be enough. If you try to measure it, you change it. If you just accept it, and move on, you are more likely to have a more harmonious impact. It's the nuggets that you find along the way, that you decided to carry with you, that alter your course. Small nuggets of thoughts like "the factory know(n) as the State". Things that are put into words that find harmony, or give clarity to, your own musings. Things that give you a new perspective.
One could make the argument that life is a struggle. Life IS struggle, and most of us only know we are alive by struggling. If we find ourselves in a state of non-struggle, we create it, either internally, with others,or in the case of our political leaders, internationally. Humans are problem and anxiety junkies. We create books and movies and amusement rides to scare the crap out of ourselves. Learning to lve in a state of non-struggle is what I think the Buddhists are shooting for.
Part of my need for silence is avoiding these very blogs. I have a restless mind, and unlike you, do not seek works like Merton to end my day, because I would keep myself awake pondering until all hours. In a world of screaming people, I tend to be drawn to the silent in the corner. I can only assume that on the sub atomic level I am a negatively charged electron trying to remain inert.
But I have found a few nuggets here, and may pass this way again, so keep writing.
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