Encountering Thomas Merton

My new (used) camera arrived a couple of days ago, and this is one of the first shots I took with it. It seems appropriate, somehow; a sort of baptismal image, a taste of things to come.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this Buddha statue, whose light guides my daily meditations. Because as much as I am drawn to various aspects of Buddhism -- the emphasis on meditation, on tonglen, on compassion; the peacefulness of it; the sense that it is our cravings that cause our suffering -- for me it lacks something that I, perhaps childishly, find really powerful and moving about Christianity: the sense that there is some entity out there which loves us, which calls us to its heart, watches over us, forgives us, and draws us into new life.

The language of Christianity has been horribly compromised over the centuries, and the institutionalization of Christianity has attached some very difficult connotations to words like God, father, Christ, and sacrifice. So it's hard to talk about my beliefs in a way that doesn't immediately awaken a whole ocean full of faulty assumptions.

... which is one of the reasons I was so drawn to the Gospel of Thomas when I discovered it. There was none of the story factor which so dominates and occludes the Gospel I grew up with: no virgin birth, no baptism or assumption, no crucifixion or resurrection. And useful as those concepts can be, they all seem to be fraught with controversy and confusion.

In Thomas we just hear the inspiring and yet utterly practical voice of Jesus, uttering familiar parables, calling us to unity, and gently chiding us for being stuck in the old ways of being. In Thomas we learn that the kingdom of heaven, unity with God, Love -- all are here with us, not in some other place or some other life or governed by arbitrary leaders, rules or practices.

One of the books currently on my table is Henri Nouwen's Encounters with Merton, spiritual reflections on the life and writings of Thomas Merton, another contemplative Christian who was drawn to Buddhism. And I was thinking about this longing I have for peace (and how difficult it can be to find peace in many technically Christian settings) when I read this from Merton's wartime journal:

We have no peace because we have done nothing to keep peace, not even prayed for it! We have not even desired peace, except for the wrong reasons: because we didn't want to get hurt, we didn't want to suffer. But if the best reason we have for desiring peace is only that we are cowards, then we are lost from the start, because the enemy only sees in our cowardice his first and most effective weapon...

When I pray for peace I pray for the following miracle. That God move all men to pray and do penance and recognize each one his own great guilt, because we are all guilty... we are a tree, of which Hitler is one of the fruits, and we all nourish him, and he thrives most of all on our hatred and condemnation of him, when that condemnation disregards our own guilt, and piles the responsibility for everything upon somebody else's sins!

Perhaps it is my cowardly longing for peace that makes me keep a slight distance from Christianity, that sets me in this place where I worship but remain otherwise disengaged. But I continue to worship, because I continue to believe that there is a God to whom I can pray for the strength and courage to continue on the path of peace; who can help me forgive myself and others when I cannot do that alone; who draws me into a sense of openness, of oneness with all creation, which in turn fills me with what Merton describes as "a constant purpose, an unending love that expresses itself now as patience, now as humility, now as courage, now as self-denial, now as justice, but always in a strong knot of faith and hope."

I do appreciate so much about Buddhism, and I love the sense of peace that emanates from this gentle statue. But I find I cannot live without the faith and hope that comes from believing in a power beyond my own limited self.