My Chief Care

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My chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like virtue and wisdom–still less their opposites, pain, failure, sickness, and death. But in all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: “Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found, and in accepting this I can give back His love to Him and give myself with it to Him. For in giving myself I shall find Him and He is life everlasting.”

By consenting to His will with joy and doing it with gladness I have His love in my heart, because my will is now the same as His love and I am on the way to becoming what He is, Who is Love. And by accepting all things from Him I receive His joy into my soul, not because things are what they are but because God is Who He is, and His love has willed my joy in them all.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 17-18

Yes. But it can be hard to do.

It becomes easier when one obtains a clear, compelling, truthful, robust, rich, more-fully-comprehensive, sought-after, earnest, biblically-shaped, experientially-informed vision of God. Merton writes the above because he possessed such a vision, a vision of the God “Who is Love,” revealed as Trinity, one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yielding to God and actualizing the divine will becomes an “easy yoke,” to use imagery from Jesus, when one knows intellectually and existentially that God is out for our ultimate good in any and every circumstance in which we find ourselves.

How do we get there? How does it become easier to make my chief care “the thing God has willed for me?” Thinking on God is a beginning. Having thought, and entering a place of worship, not only points us toward our destination. It is itself the path. We do not only make this or that decision as a sacrifice or offering to God. We ourselves become the living sacrifices who are by grace transformed into the image and likeness of the Christ, who leads us in the doing of God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.

It is one thing to know the good. It is quite another to become the kind of person who is able to do the thing God has willed. In Christ, becoming the latter is our invitation and opportunity, opened to us by virtue of the resources made available to us by Jesus, presented to us in his kingdom.

Merton on Meditative Prayer

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To meditate is to think. And yet successful meditation is much more than reasoning or thinking. It is much more than “affections,” much more than a series of prepared “acts” which one goes through. In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart–it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 48

As someone from a tradition that stresses the necessity and importance of conversion, maybe we could use more meditative prayer.

In Secret

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“Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge. Places where they can kneel in silence. Houses of God, filled with His silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily. Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

I’ve been in many a silent church, a place of worship, ground designated for meeting with God. Most of these spaces have been found in cities. Those spaces are a gift. During my youth ministry years I traveled to Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, Minneapolis, and Houston to serve in urban contexts. If I’m in a downtown and I come upon a church, I pull the door. If it is open, I go inside.

A church building is, on the one hand, just a building like any other building. On the other hand, whether it be a simple A-frame building located in the countryside or an elaborate cathedral, there is something special about those spaces. There is a spirit to them, a character. There is a sense of history. Even if the singing in that space has long since ceased, and the prayers offered on those grounds have long echoed into silence, there is a resonance. It invites me to sit awhile, and wonder, think, pray.

Let there always be such spaces.

Merton’s Life and Holiness

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In 1963, Thomas Merton published Life and Holiness. The book is a brilliant, succinct encapsulation of the Christian vision with five major sections: 1) Christian Ideals, 2) The Testing of Ideals, 3) Christ, the Way, 4) The Life of Faith, and 5) Growth in Christ. There are passages which address matters of relevance in the 1960s which could have just as well been written today. Such is the timelessness of truth.

From the outset, Merton makes clear that the primary emphasis of the book is grace, “the power and the light of God in us, purifying our hearts, transforming us in Christ, making us true sons of God, enabling us to act in the world as his instruments for the good of all men and for his glory.” Merton also stresses “the nature of work and its place in the Christian life” and how “one’s  daily work is an important element in the spiritual life.” Merton well understood that a life of holiness is one that encompasses human activity in every sphere, not only what which we traditionally associate with the sacred.

I appreciate the ways in which Merton exhorts the reader to strive after holiness, or growth in grace. But he balances that exhortation with a reminder that God is the catalyst, the carrier, and the one who grants completion to that work. Merton writes, “If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness of life is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need. If we do not become saints it is because we do not avail ourselves of his gift.”

This notion of sainthood is one which Merton addresses directly. It is a common temptation to elevate our exemplars to heights which we believe are beyond our reach. Merton says it well:

The popular idea of a ‘saint’ is, of course, quite naturally based on the sanctity which is presented for our veneration, in heroic men and women, by the Church. There is nothing surprising in the fact that saints quickly become stereotyped in the mind of the average Christian, and everyone, on reflection, will easily admit that the stereotype tends to be unreal. The conventions of hagiography have usually accentuated the unreality of the picture, and pious art has, in most cases, successfully completed the work. In this way, the Christian who devotes himself to the pursuit of holiness unconsciously tends to reproduce in himself some features of the popular stereotyped image. Or rather, since it is fortunately difficult to succeed in this enterprise, he imagines himself in some sense obliged to follow the pattern, as if it were really a model proposed for his imitation by the Church herself, instead of a purely conventional and popular caricature of a mysterious reality–the Christlikeness of the saints.

Merton sees that our efforts to imitate these “plaster” saints is ultimately silly. Rather, God is calling us to become most deeply ourselves in Christ. He writes, “It is the strict truth, and until we realize that before a man can become a saint he must first of all be a man in all the humanity and fragility of man’s actual condition, we will never be able to understand the meaning of the word ‘saint.'” Merton points to Jesus, who “was himself the most deeply and perfectly human being who ever lived on the face of the earth. We must remember that human nature was, in him, quite perfect, and at the same time completely like our own frail and suffering nature in all things except sin. Now what is ‘supernatural’ if not the economy of salvation in and through the Incarnate Word?”

By grace God not only conforms us to the image and likeness of Christ, but while doing so mends and remakes us in the divine image, as God intended for us to be, free from sin, and freed to live for the glory of God.

One of the matters that keeps us from pursuing this kind of life is distraction. In a paragraph that has held up, Merton writes, “We must reflect more deeply than we do on the effect of modern technological life upon the emotional and instinctual development of man. It is quite possible that the person whose life is divided between tending a machine and watching TV is sooner or later going to suffer a radical deprivation in his nature and humanity.” Hello, Twitter. This observation still rings true.

What, ultimately then, is a saint? Merton states:

The true saint is not one who has become convinced that he himself is holy, but one who is overwhelmed by the realization that God, and God alone, is holy. He is so awestruck with the reality of the divine holiness that he begins to see it everywhere. Eventually, he may be able to see it in himself too: but he will see it there last of all, because in himself he will continue to experience the nothingness, the pseudo reality of egoism and sin. Yet even in the darkness of our disposition to evil shines the presence and the mercy of the Saviour.

In my pastoral experience, those furthest down the road to sanctification are the least able to perceive it. They are too busy living a life of holiness, living a life that is focused upon God’s will and work. It is others in the fellowship who note those who shine like stars in the darkness (Philippians 2:15), who most evidence they have been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). They whisper, maybe with awe, “That person is a saint.”

Any person who has believed on and in Jesus Christ, who has placed their faith in him, is counted among the company of the saints. A saint is not someone who has arrived, but someone who is on the way. The further they have traveled, the more brightly they shine. Sainthood is the calling of every Christian, not as a static reality, but as a dynamic relationship with the Savior who sanctifies.

What is our next step? Where do we begin? The answer remains, as Jesus said so long ago, “Come, follow me.”

May Book Notes and Kindle Deals

Desk May 2019

That’s the view of my desk from today as I’m developing curriculum and studying the Gospel of John.

But, as you might guess, this isn’t all I’ve been reading. I continue to make my way through James Montgomery Boice’s Foundations of the Christian Faith at a pace of one sermon per day, and I’ve begun Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain (one of the Kindle deals below). With Merton I’m not as measured in my pace–more starts and stops. Merton’s autobiography is beautifully written, and I wish more Christians would write with his level of insight and artistry. In the CSB, I am now two-thirds of the way through Psalms.

Yesterday I began Robert Alter’s The Art of Bible Translation and I will soon begin a book by J. L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth. I’ve recently completed Jen Pollock Michel’s Surprised by Paradox, which you should pre-order, for as with all her work thus far, it is excellent. I also finished reading The Federalist Papers, which I am so glad that I read. Why? It boosted my confidence in the ideas undergirding the American experiment. This happens to be a wonderful place to live, which, if we uphold and build upon our founding principles, can be even more wonderful.

Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness was tedious for me, but I turned its final pages knowing I had encounter a tremendous woman of faith. After Day, I’m on to Merton. Another book I enjoyed: Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. A book that has value, but didn’t thrill me: Scott Rieckens’ Playing With Fire: How Far Would You Go for Financial Freedom?

As for May Kindle deals, I’ve noticed:

Lastly, here is a boxed set of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories in hardback that is marked down.

Reading anything good? Leave a comment.

Ciao!

Book Notes and Kindle Deals

Today I went shopping at a local thrift shop and spent less than six bucks on five CDs, one DVD, and four books. My best find: Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. I paid fifty cents for a hardback edition of the best novel I read in 2017.

Earlier in the week, on another bookstore visit, I bought a signed and dedicated copy of William Brackney’s A Genetic History of Baptist Thought for nine dollars. Why was I excited about this one? It was dedicated to Herbert H. Reynolds, who was President of Baylor University from 1981 to 1995.

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The title page, with signature, dedication, and HHR stamp.

I just finished reviewing Amazon’s Kindle deals for the month of January, and have chosen to link those I find notable. I’ll offer a sentence or two on each selection.

This is one of my favorite novels, so at $3.99 as an eBook I think it’s a steal. I’d go so far as to recommend this one as an actual book for your shelves. Berry’s depiction of a barber in the small town of Port William, Kentucky shows the meaning of vocation, community, gentleness, love of the land, and simple faith.

These are both $1.99, and either could be used as a daily devotional resource. Merton and Lewis are both insightful and worth allowing into your thought-space on a regular basis.

Rutledge has a gift with words, and she is a fantastic preacher. I have many of her books on my shelves.

I haven’t read this book, but I love Fred Rogers.

Brennan Manning has taught me a tremendous amount about God’s grace, and this book is only $1.99. Manning makes it clear that God’s love for us is far grander than we’ve imagined and that it is for everyone, even you and me.

For about the first ten years of my marriage I made it a goal to read at least one book annually on how to be a better spouse. There is another book out there by Gary Thomas that is more about those who are not married but open to be married that is also on sale, which might be of interest to some.

This week I finished Jeff Tweedy’s memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). Tweedy is a singer/songwriter, and leads my favorite band, Wilco. I also finished Ursula K. LeGuin’s So Far So Good, her final collection of poems.

Happy reading!