confidence

“Lady Luck smiles on the few in this world,
I hope and I pray that she smiles on you.
I ain't gonna preach, no I ain't gonna teach;
I 'm just gonna sing about the things that I need:

A little bit of love, a little bit of hope;
A little bit of strength, some fuel for the fire.”

~ The Alarm, Deeside.


confidence and urgency

When progress is undiscernable, confidence is indispensable. Yet although progress and confidence need one another, these attributes are elusive, and there are no guarantees as to success. At least, confidence does not hinge upon outside approval. Individuals can derive their own courage, though it’s much easier said than done. Experience teaches me that confidence is abundant when it is not overtly needed, and that confidence is most needed when it is difficult to find. Feast or famine, and these are indeed deserted times for this burgeoning professional. By confidence, I refer to an unflappable, self-possessed inner assurance woven through one’s efforts and being. Last year, I wrote about what it means to sense the strength of one’s own forces, and that is surely tied to sustaining confidence. It is urgently needed now, as repeated defeats and rejected applications leave an erosive wake. Surely, I can find enough confidence now to continue trying- and even write about it- but I sense a depleting supply.

How is confidence restored, especially without success? How is determination maintained, the course kept, and hopes upheld- when no earthly rewards are assured? How to confidently navigate unwelcoming territory, and be simultaneously prosperous? By nature, crossroads and precipices prompt me to consider what has historically helped me to survive and find better circumstances. Not having material or influential privileges, I’ve relied on spiritual consolation, scholarship, writing, and creative imagination to endure hardships. There is no land in sight, and resources are thinning. When possible, over many years, I’ve made time for rejuvenating retreats. It’s important to know oneself, know what is constructive, and also know what to avoid. In addition, there is great advantage with changes of scenery and having friends outside of the daily confines. We are all able to encourage one another; we must all know that we are not alone. Among survival abilities is to find ways to look to an improved future- and to be willing to do so. Confidence is necessary fuel for the fire of meaningful life. St. Theophan wrote the following about the health of a soul’s ignited spirit:

“Cast aside everything that might extinguish this small flame which is beginning to burn within you, and surround yourself with everything which can feed and fan it into a strong fire.”

observed examples

Along with continually learning from my own lived precedents, there is also the active observer’s role. I try to retain the better things I’ve heard, seen, and read. These are parts of my inner arsenal called upon in times like these, and meant to be applied. In eleven concise sentences, the Forty-Sixth Psalm is an ancient, remarkable expression of calm resilience during unbridled turbulence. Amidst avalanches, ruptures, erosion, and desolation, there is a river whose tranquil streams will bless others and be blessed. Of this river, reads verse five, “she shall not be moved: God shall help her; and that right early.” The waters symbolize renewing life and grace. The waters run in a conduit, as with the human heart in an individual who calls to the Creator of all that lives, “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” The petitioner must hold course, be still, and know, confident in the refuge of faith. Rootedness in the unseen demands all of a finite individual’s drive, but the cowering and hydroponic alternative is unappealing. The currents of the Holy Spirit carry the attentive soul to places of bold confidence.

Recently, I enjoyed a week’s residency at Beacon Hill Friends House, and studying at the Boston Athenaeum. Carving out time for reflection, reading, and writing has been my most effective way to renew. Staving off burnout, while struggling to build a life and career, is itself an occupational effort. And that uphill effort includes artistic expression, kindred souls, and written words. Among the Quaker community, I saw that familiar combination of conscientiousness and activism. Venturing in any distance, out of toxic trenches, helps to remind me that I’m not alone.

At the Athenaeum, my week allowed for an immersion into some adventurous memoirs from the 17th and 18th centuries, filled with accounts of endurance and inspiring words. These studies remain prominently in my musings through the days of respite. Among my shorter readings was a tract from 1829 by Robert Aspland, on the theme Courage and Confidence. He emphasized that confidence is safeguarded by those who love truth and keep faith with “an undaunted spirit, rising above oppression.” Aspland considered it an encouraging sight to behold others who were “cheered amidst reproach and persecution, by their own consciousness of rectitude and benevolence.” By virtue of our very pursuit of holiness, we can find confidence. Aspland wanted his listeners to take heart:

“Faith built upon knowledge is firm and durable, and not to be shaken by accidents and privations and pains of the present imperfect state of being- that the consciousness of laboring in a good cause imparts satisfaction and comfort to the mind.”

My studies in sources of old, pulled from the deepest archival recesses of the Athenaeum, provide new ideas, helping to retrain my thoughts to light the way ahead. And indeed they do remain with me, not just in my writing, but also while interpreting my days. Around the city, the concept of confidence continued appearing in front of me. Various friends showed me how they participate in meal preparations, to feed thousands of people in need, from their bases of operation in large church kitchens.

In surely much lighter and more ephemeral ways, I noticed something about self-confidence appearing in the local sports pages during my morning coffee. As it happens in competitive sports, success breeds success. Hockey is especially a game of momentum. Apparently the struggling Boston Bruins, “were in the midst of a crisis of confidence,” so wrote Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald. The next day’s Herald included this remark by Stephen Harris about rebuilding the team: “That’s a multi-year endeavor that requires faith and patience and can be ruined by short-term, emotional desperation.” The team was losing a lot of close games, and their numerous shots-on-goal were undisciplined. The players talked about “going out there and finding ways to win.”

Suddenly they started winning their games. The morning after an unusual come-from-behind win, Chris Mason of the Herald observed how the Bruins were “emotionally connected to this game.” That hard-won confidence had to be built upon. More victories followed, yet the players seemed too humbled to swagger; but they owned their confidence. David Backes, a forward, observed, “A level of consistency has gone up, a level of execution, a level of belief.” Another forward, Frank Vatrano added, “We’re just playing. We’re not worried about making mistakes.” Their coach, Bruce Cassidy, stressed they must “ err on the side of aggression,” and, “keep up the emotion and confidence level.” These athletes are using language not unfamiliar in philosophy and theology.




stabilization

It takes profound discipline to cast aside flame-quenchers like a philosopher, and to keep up the confidence level like a hockey player. Conscientious individuals must decide how, when, or whether to compromise. Our workplaces are too often wildernesses of distrust and uneven ethics. Confidence is difficult to build amidst environments that undermine and undercut. Some have enough wealth and good fortune to walk away from hostile situations; the rest of us are forced to stand straight through indignity- and the rarer souls find ways to achieve along dead-end streets. The insistence upon accomplishment amidst belligerence implies the collateral damage of absorption and erosion. It is a solitary crucible, rarely comprehended- even by the survivor.

Reading back through recent years’ journals, a phrase caught my attention. Giving myself some advice, I wrote, “Create pockets of stability amidst inhospitable places.” These may take the forms of creative ventures, but they can also be work projects and transactions. Encouraging sparks come by way of the enthusiastic responses from those I serve. Confidence must be cobbled together with ingredients such as gracious words, beautiful scenery, savory tastes, and gratifying tasks. Another learned survival measure is to conjure up confidence by taking long views ahead.

By looking ahead, even if not at anything specific, I make efforts to see beyond these present trials. The looking becomes quite tangible, as I naturally reach for my lifelong language of photography, going to ocean ledges and city streets. Using different cameras allows me to change the ways I see. I’d like to know that I can transcend the limitations of what has been, and stretch them into what can be. My years since graduate school have been fraught with looking for improved and sustaining employment. Productive endurance while ceaselessly prospecting is as demanding as it is daunting. Perceiving beyond limitations and rejections is nothing less than vital- and I must persevere. While out photographing, I’m reminded of having practiced the craft since childhood. I’m self-taught, and made a living by it for fourteen years, rising to the top of my profession. Economics and a dying field forced a career change, and short of a miracle this may be happening again. The tension of a low-pulse job market, excruciating employment situations, and the passage of time recalls the torrents threaded by the calm river of the 46th Psalm. The wincing, writhing brand of tolerance is not effectively tranquil; that will not do, and it is strangely the opposite of confidence. For me, the object of this trial is to reach that better situation without bitterness or discouragement, emerging the better for having endured.

simmering

“I slept, and dreamed that Life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was my dream, then, a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,-
And thou shalt find thy dream shall be
A noon-day light and truth to thee.”

~ James Freeman Clarke, Self Culture.

1

A few weeks ago, I wrote about regathering, and the term implies that of spirit, strength, and wit. And there is more to this necessity than constructively responding to societal currents. The need to personally recalibrate reaches to and through the core of being. Deep in the protracted trenches of seeking and weighing opportunities, I’ve arrived at yet another costly pause. The proximate past has been spent on mere sustenance far more than on creative productivity. Solvency tamps down sentimentality, and suddenly taste buds become dulled. When old, long-bolstered sentiments and ambitions lose their fortifications, they enter the crosshairs of questioning. I’d worked through graduate school to begin a second career, while watching my first one dissolve. I can identify the symptoms, and have been seeing them again. The labyrinth has so many barricades and blind alleys. Are there too many to be realistically hopeful? The days descend into winter darkness, and it’s time to find new dreams. New dreams and aspirations, to replace what now look like outdated notions, are not materializing fast enough.

2

Alas, as with all too many matters of personal urgency, needs are delayed, time is passing, and grace looks deferred once again. There are too many rehearsals and not enough performances. It is as though invisible root networks below ground exponentially outpace humble shoots that may see light of day. “What’s the new dream?”- has become something of an obsession. The sentence appears daily in my journal entries. The idea visits conversations I have with close friends- especially those I trust for advice. This gives me a chance to listen to how others navigate their own scrapyards. Nobody really has an answer for me, but I don’t expect more than good exchanges of ideas and stories. Indeed, I’d love a crisp and unambiguous directive. It would surely save time.

And taking time into account intensifies the unrest. The passage of time tells us there really is no sitting still: treading water is like falling backwards, and both are inferior to progressing ahead. During a recent lunch hour, an elder friend of many years told me, “I know it’s painful to stay put, but you’re wise in doing so.” Of course, the next step must be an upward step, but will that happen, and how much longer the wait? Patience is an honorable trait, yet by definition it means unhurried. The line dividing patience and impatience is wavering and not always defined. Imaginably, one could impatiently want to know the limits of patience. The popular idea of “buying time” smacks of something more like a costly rental. My thoughts turn to recalling times when patience has benefitted, and times when rashness piled on to existing setbacks. Lengthened journeys provide troves of anecdotes.

As with writing and reading, mulling and musing can only happen between obligations. Daily slices of time- early mornings, late nights, and lunch breaks- provide chances to reflect and make notes for me to subsequently stitch together. Quite like cooking a rich soup, thoughts are as spices and morsels added and changed over a span of time- not all at once. Soups and stews are best when they simmer, rather than rapidly boil. With time, the tastes of the different ingredients affect each other, and the whole mixture develops a texture. The depths of contemplation simmer, rather than flash in pans. While intensely impatient to see improvement and achievement, it is taking additional effort to stir and simmer all the ingredients. They have been seasoning for a very long time. Perhaps it is that new dreams cannot instantly manifest by just adding hot water. Watching for pots to boil is the opposite of simmering.

3

With any dilemma, great or small, the light of experience is among the first navigational tools to reach for. At my intersection with How Shall I Do This, there’s a tattered road atlas called What Worked Before. A creased, stained artifact, but still somewhat useful. My sense of direction becomes more vital, and I can effectively improvise. But I know not to stand still and wait for boiling water; it serves me better to keep going. Observations are simmering and there are opportunities for helpful distractions. Long walks and road trips allow for some reflective solitude, and certainly writing outdoors as well. As with listening to friends, I’m able to see more of the breadth of this world. Travelling provides some freedom both to confront and deflect the unknown.

Recently, within the space of two weeks, I made two road trips- the first for a professional conference at which I lectured, and the second was a 2200-mile Thanksgiving round-trip to and from the Midwest. The shorter trip had the melancholia of closed ends, but when I drove a stretch of 1100 miles only five days later, I did so with the eagerness of seeing loved ones. Although being en route to a specific location demands exact turns at crossroads and certain lanes at interchanges, there are tastes and views that rise above the quotidian labyrinth. The open road provides thought-provoking adventures. Changes of scenery, weather, and sound to add spice to that simmering soup. This may also be true for others. While refueling my vehicle in a faraway state, a man asked me, “Are you really from Maine? I used to know someone from there.” At a diner, a waitress asked me where my accent is from. Evidently, I am part of that change of scenery and sound, too. The road is also an interior adventure, and while reconciling with detours and delays, reminders surface about past dreams that fell by the wayside. Looking across the windshield, What’s the new dream? It simmers yet, and there are immediate urgencies such as keeping an alert eye on the road.

4

The urgency for a new dream coincides with obsolescence of the outmoded. Old, long-held hopes are not necessarily “bad.” Ambitions can be time-honored; they can be sculpted out of otherwise useless heaps. But, on the other hand, releasing expired aspirations is an unburdening action. Even after many years of hard work and investment, the way forward implies cutting losses. It makes for a raw liminality: the process of shedding invalid notions is one that runs parallel to testing spirits and discerning new dreams. Paring down, building up, and simmering something fresh amounts to a reformation. For me, it must take shape in midstream- without the luxury of stopping. Prayer on the go. Highways with a commuter mug and finger food. Beneath the rapid paces is that imposed simmer. It can’t be microwaved. How infuriating. Still more mystifying are my ungranted, relentless petitionary prayers. I’m reminded how the transit of letters to me have nothing to do with how often I look in my mailbox. Such things, alas, have their own simmered timing. I’m left simply to hold course and redeem the time.

5

Awareness of my unsuccess is counteracted by taking stock of the good that is in my midst and that which I create. Fortune may yet tilt in my favor, and the response will be that of the immense gratitude of a lifetime’s worth of honest effort. There still seems to be time. Well, there will have to be, and while held off by simmering, my end of the bargain is constructive productivity. An admirable mind, named Charles Henry Brent, once expounded upon the words of Zechariah the Prophet who said, “Turn ye to the strongholds, ye prisoners of hope.” To this, Brent observed, “You can win your humanity only by finding your highest opportunity in your more evil days. We are prisoners of hope.” With faith comes strength, and from there follows longing. In this context, longing refers to a fuelled aspiration that drives and strives and pushes ahead for a better life. Longings have goals, as well as sources; discerning new dreams implies evaluating both. Indeed, there are expectations, and that’s a risk in itself. Perhaps this is a test of undefined extremity. But even now, rather than grouse about dashed dreams and enumerating the graphic details, my thoughts must point toward new ambitions. The simmer of the dark ages has got to boil over into renaissance. For the moment, the taste of the new has yet to manifest. It’s still simmering.

divine mercy

“For the days pass, and never return...
Take the Adventure, heed the call,
now ere the irrevocable moment passes!
‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you,
a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life
and into the new.”

~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.






place

Pilgrimage blends together intention, travel, and place. Before any setting forth, before thoughts of destinations, there is longing, calling, urging for a communing with the wellsprings of creation. This type of thread has wound through countless lives, in entirely unique ways, over immeasurable time spans. The will to pursue purpose and fulfillment is as individual as a human spirit itself. We seek and we discover, as we are capable. As a soul develops, there follows an increasing ability to discover and appreciate. As well as an iconography accompanying roads, paths, and thresholds, there is double-meaning in the word intention, the term used both for purpose and for prayer request. Such concerted movement, driven by the seeming otherworldliness of prayer, represents a propelling ideal: hope. And that forward movement must continue, especially when there is no hope in sight.

Carving out some time, I chose to sojourn in the Berkshires, remembering the beautiful merging of the mountain landscape, the town of Stockbridge, and the Divine Mercy Shrine. The National Shrine of the Divine Mercy is a public place of prayer, and community of the Marian friars and brothers. The Catholic order originated in 17th century Poland, and established their community in Massachusetts during World War II. The congregation’s charism is based upon the devotion of Saint Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who died at the outset of the War. Her journals document her life, vocation, visions, and an extraordinary prayer that appeals for divine mercy for all persons. Her confidants successfully hid from the Nazis, and were able to spread the written prayers of Faustina. She was declared a saint by Pope John Paul II, in 2000. Some of her remains are in the church in Massachusetts.

My history with the Divine Mercy devotion dates back to an extremely difficult life-trial I had to endure thirteen years ago. Unable to right my ship on my existing resources and nerves, I sought the advice of a wise and trusted friend. My advising friend, Sister Sylvia, listened and offered her reflections. After one of our long talks, she gave me a recording which had been made at the Divine Mercy shrine church. I’d never heard of them before, though I knew the region of western Massachusetts and southern Vermont quite well. Sister Sylvia knew how much I love the outdoors, and encouraged me to make a trip to Stockbridge. Indeed, I followed the advice, made the pilgrimage, and have returned several times since.






prayer

The devotion prayer itself is sequential and repetitive. I find it to be a confluence of east and west. The practice of meditating upon the refrain, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, echoing the blind beggar’s prayer in Luke 18, is an ancient practice in Eastern Orthodoxy. A life’s adventure with that simple, poignant prayer is in the Russian classic, The Way of a Pilgrim. Saint Faustina’s Divine Mercy prayer uses the sequence of decades, as measured in rosary beads- a practice codified by Dominican friars in 13th century France. Faustina’s prayer refers to the suffering Messiah: “For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” Extending personal prayer to all persons reflects the young sister’s anguish of having lived through a world war, and witnessing the horrific beginning of yet another. In her journals, she emphasized persevering with this devotion,“to obtain mercy, to trust in Christ's mercy, and to show mercy to others.” It is a message of compassion in the midst of persecution and cruelty.

Considering its origins and its biblical focus, the prayer itself is intense. At the shrine church, the daily hour of Divine Mercy is at 3pm, following the 2pm mass. It is a solemnity, and to pray for mercy is to bring one’s burdens, along with those of others, into focused intercession. As a place of pilgrimage, many come from a variety of distances to the church, and the printed texts are in a number of languages. At times, I notice the others praying in the church, and am struck by the plaintive, earnest, palpable reverence shared by so many different people. The times of liturgy and prayer bring those in attendance together as a momentary community of fellow pilgrims. I, too, brought my intentions on this pilgrimage- along with those dear to me who asked me before I set forth from Maine. Some ask for healing, others for spiritual growth, a graduating student worker asked me to pray for him. As for me, it is for sustaining and healthful employment. Things have become quite urgent, and retreating to the community was for refuge. In all, the congregational cries for mercy incorporated mine, too. True to the legacy of Saint Faustina, we do not live for ourselves alone, but must uphold the intentions of others in need. So many people struggle.






pathways

After exiting the church, following the intensity of the services, I regularly walked the nearby woods. Balancing the structured prayers is contemplative open air. The region is replete with hiking trails, rock ledges, and the Housatonic River. Early spring weather is consolingly moderate. Rural New England is especially calm during the off-season. My week in Stockbridge mingled the built sacred space and nature. As many pilgrims do, I lodged at the Red Lion Inn, enjoying the leafy village as well as walks to the shrine, which is in an area called Eden Hill. To relax my thoughts, I brought some light reading with me; just before leaving, I borrowed The Wind in the Willows from the Boston Athenaeum. I’d never read it completely before, the story became a companion along river trails and on the front porch of the Inn. As I found, the adventure takes place along a river. Words and imagery in the story strikingly matched the landscape in the Berkshires.

Hiking along the Housatonic, I made sure to look upward at treetops and mountains. The new spring growth in the forest sweetened the breezes, and with temperatures in the low 40s, I was not bothered by bugs. Such favorable conditions freed me to air my thoughts. It was a good thing I gave myself seven days, as I needed at least the first three to stop the workplace racket that followed me into my solitude. Gradually, the beautiful scenery, the equally beautiful prayers, and warm hospitality I received began to supercede residue from the situation I had interrupted for the retreat. As my steps followed a river curve, permitting a longer view, I told myself, “Don’t talk to the past. Just don’t. There’s nothing for you there.” Somehow, that became a refrain in a stream that flowed alongside the daily three o’clock Divine Mercy devotions.

Although the Divine Mercy prayer is repeated many times, it is so concise and poignant that my every pronouncement is entirely heartfelt. Along the trails, and even as my thoughts strayed, I noticed how the prayer would return to me. Recent years of tireless caregiving and employment turmoil generated a persistent insomnia. During my immersion of mountain air and the prayers, I found the retained refrains for mercy lulling me back to sleep. Involuntarily the words speed up and slow down. The prayer is with me, right to this moment of writing. A retreat is neither escapist, nor is it a problem-solving venture; it is an intentional pause, a surfacing for air. I return to the same difficulties that I’d interrupted, yet with some experiences for reflection, a little more strength, and new reminders of the broader universe. Matching the harsh roads of daily life is the terribly unreasonable holding on to hope. One cannot exceed one’s all, save for a trusting faith that extends beyond the all. That is the opposite of negotiating with things past.

strangers and pilgrims

“And the tougher it gets
And the more that I sweat
And the harder it fights
And the deeper it bites
I’m one step closer to home;
And you can tie my hands
Or whip my back
I can’t give in
’til the sky turns black
I may get lost
I’m one step closer to home.”

~ The Alarm, One Step Closer to Home


An exploration of negation skates upon thin ice. The lowest strata, weighted to darkest depths, are opposed by lofty and liberating heights. Yet it remains for an earnest soul to comprehend spectra of the spirit. Navigating into the open seas of this new year brings me through straits that grapple with the old shoals of alienation. Knowing to steer such shores is essential. Terrain and tossing tides change constantly, emphasizing the critical value of compass accuracy. And thus there must be ways to manoeuver through the anguish of exclusion, en route to the vast embrace of oceans and horizons.

Belonging and acceptance, with their conditional properties, have haunted me since my earliest memories. Of late, it has pronouncedly surfaced how my self-perception has been tainted for too long by the black-sheep and bullied experiences of childhood, along with familial and social rejections of young adulthood. Coming to solid terms with a life’s course of a tacking outsider that never quite belongs does not mean resigning to the shadows. Not at all. It must mean exulting in disjointedness. But thriving along uncharted realms demands an urgency to deflate that lower, darker, defeatist nature that propels despair and bitterness. Throw it overboard.

For the voyage to really progress, the high road of positive growth cannot be delayed an additional moment. Take stock in the kindred, understanding souls you know, and count them among retrievable family members. As protracted and relentless as the journey may appear, our times are temporal. We hang our hats upon provisional hooks, and our season’s duration is unknown. Forever is something that defies cartographic description. One might justifiably say that dreaming and hoping are steeply priced, but I contend that stuffing-away and discarding hopes would be far more costly. While trying to discipline myself not to dwell upon dead-ends, I pondered the skills of how thoughts are squelched by those who busy themselves lest old hopes return to the fore. Perhaps this is what so many do with deposited longings left among inner recesses to decompose and blend into the mind’s depths- too far from the surface to be fished out. Then I wondered whether there is an appropriate age for the cessation of aspirations; it seems I’ve either missed that memorandum or blithely excluded it from my much more consequential messages.


Psalm 137 : Babylonic rivers


Consider the words of the exiled Psalmist who wrote:

“... they that wasted us
required of us mirth...
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a strange land?”

More than an indentured captive’s lament, these ancient words reveal a soul forced to produce. The rivers of Babylon, and their circumstances in the opening stanza, represent the inhospitable and unfamiliar. Quartered along the waterfront, the laborers found themselves without music in their midst, and sat on the ground, after hanging their harps on willow branches. But they were commanded to stand again, take their instruments from their hanging hooks, and deliver cheer to their captors. The heart of this somber psalm does not include any description of the work they had to do, but instead the pain of forcing joy out of sorrow. Surveying a hostile proximity has a numbing effect, but the emergence of memory brings the deluge. The psalmist and his companions wept when they remembered their lost homes. They had to sing joyous and sacred songs as strangers in an alien land. Although, as Matthew Henry once commented, “it argues a base and sordid spirit” on the part of the captors, it remained for the captives to sing beyond their anger and their expressed hunger for vindication.


Waters of Siloë

The Waters of Siloë, Thomas Merton’s history of the Trappist monastic order, contains instances of wavering between historiography and subtle autobiography. Contemporary readers are able to apply the benefit of retrospective knowledge about Merton’s life. His superior recognized the potential for Merton’s literary skills to draw popular attention to the monastery, and he set the young monk to publishing histories and translations, along with philosophical works. The results were phenomenal, with new postulants and fanmail flocking to Gethsemani Abbey. As for the dutiful Merton, the life of silent contemplation eluded him; the vocation which brought him to the monastery remained unfulfilled until his last years. While unable in good faith to disobey his order, Merton industriously delivered the goods- even adding the beautifully insightful works that continue to inspire. He found ways to sing the Lord’s song through his anguish, and occasionally his distress appears between the lines.

Providing a historic chronicle of Cistercian monasticism, beginning with the late 11th century, Merton describes the major leaders and communities from medieval Europe to foundations throughout the world. Amidst the general narrative of The Waters of Siloë is a thorough and sensitive portrait of an ordinary French monk named Maxime Carlier. Merton elaborates about how Carlier, called to a life of silent contemplation and monastic solitude, had been sent by his abbot to fight in World War I. Though chronologically impossible, one would think Merton knew Carlier personally by the book’s vivid comments about the latter’s spiritual life and intentions. Merton’s summaries of Carlier’s inner renewal reads remarkably like his own experience. Perhaps it was Merton joining Carlier, sensing that “somehow, I don’t know how it was, my soul entered upon a state in which all its desires seemed to be fulfilled. It enjoyed the delight of resting in a feeling of secret happiness.”

It seems Merton is speaking through his telling of Carlier’s life, expressing the inner torment of having to go to war and leave behind his heart’s vocation. Carlier’s troop even had to march past his own monastery, but he was not allowed to stop and see his brethren. At the close of the Carlier vignette, Merton describes a reckoning which may have been his own: what puzzles us as divine unkindness is actually the sacrifice asked of us en route to perfection. When we are kept away from our hopes and goals, we must continue to bear the cross and walk worthily of our calling. Carlier rescued many of his fellow soldiers, was decorated with the Croix de Guerre, and finally killed in action. Concluding, speaking his voice through his history writing, Merton adds: “then the veils of faith were suddenly shattered, and the noise of the world ended forever, as the Cistercian soldier entered into the sounding silence of a contemplation without obscurity and without end.”


The Cloud of Unknowing : being nowhere

The anonymous 14th century author of The Cloud of Unknowing set out to counsel novices in his community for whom spiritual life seemed arcane and frustrating. Among basic points of advice and encouragement, still applicable to this day, is the unusual exhortation to be nowhere. Strangers and pilgrims do well to set their hearts upon things above, and in so doing find their affections “transformed by the inner experience of nothing and nowhere.”

“But to this you say: ‘Where then shall I be? By your reckoning I am to be nowhere!’ Exactly. In fact, you have expressed it rather well, for I would indeed have you be nowhere. Why? Because nowhere, physically, is everywhere spiritually.”

Reconciling aspirations, accomplishments, and disappointments as one who is “nothing and nowhere” reminds the humbled sojourner of the liberating aspects of being both something and everywhere. “When your mind focuses on anything,” the author advises, “you are there in that place spiritually, as certainly as your body is located in a definite place right now.” He continues, “go on with this nothing, moved only by your love for God.” Tolerating- even thriving- amidst life’s setbacks seems a burdensome purgation, yet somehow a necessary darkness we must navigate through. The nothingness borne within an individual is a cloud of unknowing between humanity and divinity. From material nothingness comes spiritual plenitude: “For in this darkness we experience an intuitive understanding of everything material and spiritual without giving special attention to anything in particular.” The reward for patiently persevering through dark times is confidence about our own destiny.

one step closer

Though we are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,” the Epistle to the Hebrews equally offers reminders that the most prominent among our ancient forbears “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” While trying to make sense of my abundant failings and occasional instances of acceptance, the best thing is to revel in the very alienation that oppressed so forcefully in the past. Similarly to the authors referenced in this essay, we move about in worlds as yet unrealized. Rejections far outnumber acceptances, but the wilderness of refusal must be traversed for the cause of gaining the pearl of affirmative. Strangers and pilgrims have the noblest of patron saints, as well as the strongest spines.

Let us be, at least, contentedly disjointed- bringing out the open-endedness and positive aspects of being perennially out-of-place. Instead of lucrative contracts, financial founts, or real estate, my chief assets begin with faith, wits, and oddness. The flip side of exclusion is the “nothing and nowhere” of the Cloud of Unknowing. Though not fully belonging anywhere, somehow part of many places. Moored by mere threads means mobilization toward improvement. Riches and recognition recede in importance, compared to the freedom to choose away from what is unproductive in favor of pursuing what is constructive and good. The voyage requires unrelenting vigilance, no matter how unsure prospects and opportunities appear. Comprehending how the blessed nothingness exceeds the world’s everything may require more than human faculties, therefore trust will have to suffice as a navigational instrument. “For myself,” wrote the anonymous author of Cloud of Unknowing, “I prefer to be lost in this nowhere, wrestling with this blind nothingness, than to be like some great lord going about everywhere and enjoying the world as if he owned it.” We may wonder what is really owned, and by whom.

paths

"I saw also that there was an ocean
of darkness and death;
but an infinite ocean of light and love,
which flowed over the ocean of darkness.
In that also I saw the infinite love of God,
and I had great openings."

~ George Fox, The Journal of George Fox

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A prayer written by Brother Roger of Taizé:

"Jesus our peace, you never abandon us.
And the Holy Spirit always opens a way forward,
the way which consists in casting ourselves into God as into the depths.
And astonishment arises:
these depths are not an abyss of darkness;
they are God-fathomless depths
of compassion and innocence."