As a longtime Thomas Merton lover, I’ve often thought about the monk’s dilemma. To stay centered and grounded, he retreats from the world. But then, I wondered, what is the point of being centered and grounded if you are not in the world?
For me, the elemental challenge of spirituality – of being peaceful and calm in a battered and frenzied world – is that you are seeking something that much of the world is not interested in and doesn’t or can’t practice. So you are called upon almost every day to define yourself and what you want. It’s odd, lonely and disorienting. For a big chunk of my life I felt I always lived outside the circle. Now I spent a lot of time trying to stay out.
I am working on it. I get up early. I meditate every morning, light a candle, sit with the dogs or Maria, and then around 9 a.m., the world rolls into my life, and often, right over me. And most of the world is on a very different channel.
If you are in the world, and not a monk, you will run into people all day who believe they have to listen to Storm Center and “the news,” and who do not share a need to be grounded or centered. And who are very concerned with power, and who are not at peace. The gurus would call it bad energy. I have other names.
There are bankers and bureaucrats and Customer Service and people in places like New York who move through the world like a buzzsaw, and the world is just a lot of lumber.
I see the importance of these people. They remind me every day of the work I have to do. Of the patience I have to acquire. Of the fear I need to put in its place. And they give me the opportunity to give birth to myself again and again. It is not that I am in any way better than them. I’m over that. It’s that they challenge me to be better. To reclaim myself, again and again. It is hard work. It is good work.
I have no desire to withdraw from the world. That seems sort of pointless to me. I just want to live in it. I am beginning to understand that I will never get there. I am beginning to understand that that is the point.