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1. I had a Jesuit professor in Seminary in the Dominican Republic who told us: heresies are usually a “either this or that” approach while orthodoxy usually is an “this and that.” I appreciate that twofoldness that is at the same time paraodixcally onejess. I have always find myself uncomfortable with dualism and also with monism. Sometimes I feel that the talk of non-dualism in Christian circles approached more monism. The challenge is to hold the paradox (to our senses) of both. I liked that the author mentions this is the way of Christianity, the way of love.Loved the paragraph at the bottom of page 31 and beginning of 32 for this approach.
2. I appreciate this type of language. Having been a Roman Catholic priest before being received in the Episcopal Church I had to do a BA in philosophy and then an STB and an STL all of that I think must help, I least I hope! However even with all my academic studies there are things I know do not register and I just leave them as such. Usually I can come back to them, sometimes years later, and they suddenly have meaning. So I trust that what goes over my head is not meant for me at this time but my spiritual journey might bring it back to me at a moment I am ready. However there are some gems that I just underline and let them wash over me and inform my spiritual practices.
Thanks great beginning with today’s meeting.
Wanted to share a quote from early Merton and contrast it with another from a latter Merton (I have to thank my husband Fr. Hugh Grant for pointing this out to me) and its relation to the dangers of the esoteric path thinking themselves above or better than the rest of the exoteric world [notice that the two experience happen near the same corner!]:
“Leaving Gethsemani I was very sad…There is a huge gap between the monastery and the world, and Louisville is a nice enough town but I wasn’t happy to be thrown back into it…There had been a big robbery on Fourth St…I couldn’t figure it out, half the time, whether it was morning or afternoon. The sign “Clown Cigarettes” on, I think, Walnut Street, made me laugh wanly. There was a lot of sun. I didn’t want to see any of the city, or any of the people…It is terrible to want to belong entirely to God, and see nothing round you but the world, and not see God…The world is beautiful with the sunlight, but the objects in the sunlight are not beautiful—they are strange.”
Thomas Merton, The Journals of Thomas Merton, ed. Hart, O.C.S.O., Patrick, Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 356-357.Then years later:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…the whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as complete illusion: the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being, pseudoangels, “spiritual people,” people of interior life, what have you…The sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other people, that I am only a person amongst others.” To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking…I have the immense joy of being human, a member off a race in which God’s very self became incarnate. …And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun… ”
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1966), 156-158.I see this humility of the later Merton in what the author of MOTT says on page 6:
“Hermeticists know it well and do not flatter themselves to be better, to believe better, to know better or to be more competent. They do not secretly guard a religion, which to them is appropriate, to replace the existing religions, or a science to replace the current sciences, or arts to replace the fine arts of today or yesterday. That which they possess does not comprise any tangible advantage or objective superiority with regard to religion, science and art; what they possess is only the communal soul of religion, science and art.”For us Spanish and French speakers the accent is in the last syllable.
So it sound to me the “normal” way to say “Taró”. In Spanish we even pronounce the last “t” !
Knowing it comes from the French [and even further back from the Italian], I imagine that in English the shift to emphasizing the last syllable is a way to mark that provenance?Glad to be here!
I don’t recognize their names. You might know my husband (Hugh M. Grant) though who is an Episcopal priest. His home parish is St Barts in Atlanta GA and before going to seminary in 2005 he thinks he met you there.
Looking forward to his course especially as I take a three month sabbatical this year taking a month at the Camaldolose hermitage in Big Sur and another month at a cabin in the mountains here of WA. This will be part of my reflections.1) I am part of a community that focuses on the esoteric traditions of Christianity. I had known about it but never obtained it. I purchased it a year ago and started reading but realized this was a book to be read very intentionally and purposely. I would read a paragraph and just set it aside and meditate on how it would resonate in me.
2) Yes, Centering Prayer, Lectio, Hesychast prayer, breathing practices, visualization, et. are part of my daily practices. They have helped me stay grounded in my life and sometimes I feel they are part of an alchemical change that is happening in me.
3) To understand better this tradition in Christianity and how this may enrich and deepen my own practices in this journey towards (or uncovering of it already present!) of wisdom, illumination and theosis.
4) My wonderment is the joy of how we can find so much wisdom in so many diverse places and the sadness that sometimes in Christianity we limit our wisdom to very limited or “shallow” fountains and ignore so much depth and wisdom in our tradition.
