paint it purple

I am a fan of 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton because he closed the gap between himself and heaven.

Merton is the most intense god-seeker I’ve encountered upon recollection.  He wanted nothing less than a complete oneness with god, no lapse, no rift, no gap in the relationship with the Creator.  I like Merton because he became a god-chaser with no religious upbringing.  In other words, ‘he wasn’t indoctrinated.’  Merton had no ideas, and no idea about how to run after god — a blank slate soul.  This is why he’s fresh.

He says, “My God, it is that gap and that distance which kill me.” (Seven Storey Mountain, 421) 

I am amazed at how unperturbed I am with my gap between me and the god who is there.  The reality is that I am comfortable being disconnected from god most of my day.  What is even more disturbing, I get the feeling I listen more for the voice of god than many of those I am around.  No wonder we have no soul to offer the world. 

Merton would prescribe solitude — flee, escape our busyness.  This produces within us my favorite quote of Merton… “a marriage of the soul with God, which gives the saints a miraculous power, a smooth and tireless energy in working for God and for souls…” (ibid, 415)

I want that “smooth and tireless energy.”  I don’t want to be another American religious business person, complete with cell phone plastered to my ear, jabbering on about budgets and programs, staffing and growth factors, the latest books and church news, hip models, sophisticated theologies and what philosophical trends tell us… managing a complicated schedule and looking important, useful and powerful.  Instead, I want to be a holy man, a mystic, a shaman… a monk, yes… an uncloistered, suburban indigenous abbot.  I want to be attractive to souls, not the Christian industry. 

I go to China, I visit Buddhist temples.  I pay my two yuan, and enter and watch.  I watch desperate pray-ers.  I listen to the uninterpreted prayers, I smell the incenses, watch the thick blue smoke waft slowly upwards.  I will tell you this:  I don’t hang out around the ticket booth and wait to see what the day’s take was.  I don’t sit and count how many customers came and went through the temple’s doors.  Instead, I pray for all the searchers (myself included) who are there desperate for the transcendent. 

I think this is what our culture really craves — to close the gap between them and the god of heaven all around us.  I pray therefore,

“O LORD, open their eyes so they may see.” …and they looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around…”