The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton

Chapter 4. Seeing Differently: Recognizing the Holy in the Ordinary

66 Chapter 4 Seeing Differently Recognizing the Holy in the Ordinary I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place. —Thomas Merton, Turning toward the World Though it is exciting and perhaps even clever to identify spots of time in a writer’s life and thus infer or speculate on how singular events play a significant role in artistic or spiritual development, not everyone is a celebrity subject to such scrutiny. Yet all of us do have the opportunity to develop a new way of seeing, even to develop a habit of awareness that prepares us for contemplation and that allows us to reflect on ordinary events and times in our lives that subtly influence our thinking and recognition of the Divine. Certainly the Christian liturgical calendar, with its cycles of festivals and celebrations, supports this form of reflection. As I mentioned in chapter 2, Christians during Advent are invited to respond to the great call to awake in order to prepare for celebrating the mystery of Incarnation; subsequently, they are invited to a long, reflective Lent, as well as to rejoice during the fifty days of the Easter season, which culminate in the feast of Pentecost. Nevertheless , the rest of the liturgical calendar, though sprinkled with feast days of saints, is devoted to what the Christian church calls ordinary time. Too often we think of ordinary time as mundane, commonplace, time in between, time in the idle mode when nothing happens. In reality , ordinary time is when multiple opportunities of grace and vision are offered to those who, like the virgins awaiting the delayed bride- Seeing Differently 67 groom, are awake and alert (Matthew 25:1–13). The paradox of ordinary time echoes the great paradoxes of Christianity: the first shall be last; one must lose one’s life in order to gain it; the seed must fall into the ground and die in order to bear fruit; Good Friday must precede Easter Sunday. Ordinary elements of nature such as wheat, grapes, mustard seeds, and sheep are fodder for parables about the kingdom, as well as an invitation to recognize God’s unconditional, outrageous love and to participate in Divine Life. Incarnation itself, a core doctrine of Christianity, declares loudly and unequivocally how God has transformed ordinary flesh and blood into the God-Man. Living in ordinary time, that is, really living each moment, affords one the leisure of being aware of ongoing activity, of seeing and recognizing the “meddling” of the Divine One, whose uncontainable love brings humanity into being and who sustains each individual at every moment. Rainer Maria Rilke, one of Merton’s favorite poets, never tired of reminding readers that humans have the capacity to see the holy in the ordinary.1 The sociologist Andrew Greeley maintains that “Catholics live in an enchanted world . . . haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace.”2 An attitude of being aware of the “now” moment, of being alert to the Spirit-infused atmosphere in which individuals “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) invites believers to revel in being connected to God, to discover and live the paradox of how everyday grace surrounds them every day. Thus, it is important to examine not only the significant spiritual experiences in Thomas Merton’s life, often triggered by some poignant soul-stretching interaction with nature, but also his day-to-day experience of nature. Such ongoing interaction of being awake to the now moment predisposes him to encounter the holy in the ordinary. Central to forming Merton’s deepening habit of awareness and expanded consciousness is the ancient monastic tradition of chanting the Hebrew psalms. As Merton explains in his 1953 book on the psalms, each monk is challenged to “live on the psalms,” for they are the “nourishment of his interior life and form the material of his meditations and of his own personal prayer, so that at last he comes to live them and experience them as if they were his own songs, his own prayers . . . They are bread, The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton 68 miraculously provided by Christ, to feed those who have followed Him into the wilderness.”3 According to the monastic horarium, Merton seven times a day sang praise to God, praise often cast in nature...