This morning I woke to a blanket of snow, cold toes, and a mysterious scuffling outside my sliding glass door. After making the leap from my bed to the couch, where my robe was surreptitiously slung, I wrapped myself in the chilled warmth, stuck the frozen feet-digits into furry slippers, and sludged myself toward the window. A deep breath and two stuttering starts later, I flung open the curtain to reveal--a squirrel on the porch, tapping himself against the window and trying to get at something lodged in the screen-door-track.
I didn't know what to do so I froze, watching the squirrel dig his way at the metal. Within a few moments, he must have realized I was watching for he snapped his beady little black eyes up at me, blinked through the glinting glass, and went streaking across the snow and into a neighboring tree.
Now, two hours of meditation, prayer, and reading of Thomas Merton later, I'd nearly forgotten about the encounter; however, as I sat down to write this morning's post, a sharp, angry trilling from the tree outside sent me racing to the window: the squirrel has managed to dislodge a bird from one of the overhanging branches. Twittering angrily, the bird swoops around the giggling squirrel, who seems quite content to sit upon the disputed branch, batting an occasional lazy arm at the fluttering feathered creature.
I don't have a creative transition at the moment, so I dive right in:
This morning, Merton said "There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and mercy of God to the whole world."
Just previous to this, he had been addressing a common cry of the people of the world: "If a merciful God exists, why are there so many wars? Why such suffering and pain and sorrow if the God who created us all is the source of ultimate Compassion and Mercy?"
"On the contrary," Merton says, and I can only imagine a calm smile that does not reach his eyes, for in his eyes rests the wise sorrow that comes only from empathy--only in asking these same questions can he have ever even begun to touch on an answer. "On the contrary: consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out his grace upon us?"
I'd like to say my greatest spiritual struggle was long ago, and my 'own mental Pompeii' (image courtesy of Merton) lies buried beneath years of distance. In reality, I am still within that struggle; however, I've come leaps and bounds from where I was even a year ago. This time last year, Merton's argument never would have sufficed: I was convinced that the creation of humanity evidenced a bored Creator, who decided to draw up a people destined to fail--by His own malicious dictation--and forever required to praise and glorify that same Creator in order to not perish eternally. Therefore, Merton's explanation would have inspired in me a sarcastic, angry response about how God allowed "sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice" so that we would eternally need him.
Which is true. But for different reasons than my last year's mindset would have asserted. Allow me to digress for a moment ... I promise its relevant ...
Innate to the desires of every human being is the drive for independence, the seeking of freedom, the craved absolution of all bonds so that we may flit about in liberty. The desire is the core of humanity's existence--it is my belief that, though Christ's death on the cross is certainly a great sacrifice, the Creator's most significant sacrifice came at the beginning of our existence: He denied His right to manipulation, to dictation, to Order and gave us that Freedom we crave. We have Free Will to choose as we will [ which, of course, led to the required sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, due to our inability to choose paths that won't lead to personal destruction and eternal condemnation! ]
The only way we can completely embrace that Freedom is through the Surrender of that Will: Christ demonstrated this very thing in the Garden, the night before His crucifixion. "But not my will," he says. But not My Will.
The point is: war and pain evidence God's grace as powerfully as the face of the flower; as bold as the compassion of the saint. War and pain may be the direct result of our Free Will; but, God's grace enters, regardless, and grants us the embrace of a stranger, the smile of a child, the repentance of the sinner.
"... there is no positive power in sin, only negation, only annihilation: and perhaps that is why it is so destructing, it is a nothingness, and where it is, there is nothing left--a blank, a moral vacuum" (Merton Seven Storey Mountain).
Lord, make me not a "moral vacuum" but a conduit of grace. Occupy me. Only through emptying mySelf, through pouring all of Me out can I be completely filled-to-the-brim:
with You.
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