It was a while after reading all those Thomas Merton books before I figured out that the Spiritual Life is a path without end. The Hero Journey never ends; it just pauses sometimes to fill up the tank. It needs an enormous amount of fuel, especially in a nation as messed up as ours.
Between aging and the bitter culture wars – an aging “woke” is not especially important these days, I’ve come to see this planet (not just this nation), and human life as a life in which something has gone wrong, and seriously wrong. Every time I see an unhappy face, an unhealthy body, a dishonest politician, a hateful citizen, more bitter or despairing words, and every time I muster the strength to look at the news, a global tsunami of lies, I am reminded of this.
I’ve always reacted to the hatred outside by trying to balance it with good; it gave me peace. But it seems to be getting more intense, and the stakes seem higher at times. It’s the hatred on both sides that gets to me the most.
The Spiritual challenge for me has changed. Instead of seeking God, I’m working harder to stay grounded, focused, and happy. These are not easy tasks in our times.
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The occasional dazzling flashes of good, pure beauty, flowers, genuine goodness all remind me that there might be a God after all, and these things – they call it the news, but that is perhaps the biggest lie of all – only make the idea of God or the equivalent more urgent and the horror of cruelty, greed, oppression, hatred, and ugliness.
When I walk or look in nature, it seems some higher power had to make all this happen, God or spirit or nature itself.
It seems weak and almost traitorous to think of the good things in the midst of so many countless bad things. And I have no stomach for the gloom and whining of the left and the right, of the blue and the red. Even the weather has no common meaning. Whining at one another is the new American song, and it’s a new idea of patriotism.
Everyone thinks they are better than everyone else, and the art of listening or privacy is melting away. So is the art of learning.
But that’s the challenge and heart of the Spiritual Life – keeping the faith and the hope and the kindness alive. They have never been more important. And I have never been more optimistic about humanity and the future – I see a lot of the good every day.
Unless I stick my head and eyes into the ground, I can certainly not avoid seeing this turmoil and knowing it. I can’t really wrap up in my own dozing head and farm without feeling guilt for all those suffering and a sense of obligation, the shame of acquiescing, and the call to do something about it other than just working on my Spiritual Life up in the country. I’ll be honest: at heart, The Spiritual life is really all about the struggle to be happy.
It is the very opposite of hatred and greed. That is the biological and literal opposite of paying too much attention to the news and of letting the bad staff get too deeply into my head. That doesn’t give me to license to ignore it..
I hope that there is a God, and one day he will appear and call his increasingly broken humans out and remove them from the earth. In the meantime, I’m working on how to manage this or what to do about it. I’m skipping hatred. That IS my spiritual work in this era.
If there is a God or a Spirit, or the Ghost of Christ paying attention, I want to shout, “Here I am! Send Me In.” But I am too old for that and too experienced to think it will happen easily. Humans will have to rescue themselves, and I see that happening every day. There is no excuse for that, no better form of healing.
But my personal solution is becoming clearer by the day. Merton was right. Meditation is a conversation with what each of us has with God. It’s been the solution of philosophers for centuries.
History tells us that the action may be almost anything, from the self-offering of Mother Teresa, the creation of beauty by artists, or flower pictures from photographers, or saving a drowning mouse in the water tank, or helping a food Pantry get food to the hungry, or working as a Hospice volunteer to help people leave the world in dignity.
I might add that rescuing a dog or other animal counts. There is so much suffering in the world, and so few people volunteering to help out or step in.
Evelyn Underhill, one of my favorite Mystics, has written about this. I like her idea.
“Here am I. Send me!” means, she says, going anywhere, anyhow, at any time, within reason if possible, without it if necessary, for the purpose of being good and connecting with the divine.
The idea, she sais, is to do the difficult thing, offer an unpopular message, or not just to do the obvious.
To me, that’s the closest I’ve come to Revelation about how the good human – or the aspiring good human – survives and makes peace in an increasingly vicious and corruptible world.
My meditation work is helping me get there. I thank Thomas Merton once more for guiding me to it and Maria for sharing it.
I’ll get there yet.
