The Monk Above

... Is Thomas Merton.  I chose him, and the name, forgetting that Merton died by accidentally electrocuting himself by knocking a fan into his bathwater.  Some may speculate it was suicide.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was indeed an accident.  Better to be clumsy than to be hopeless.  'The Hopeless Monk' would be a different blog entirely.  I may have written just such a blog in my teens, back when I wore a black trench coat and scowled a lot.  Well... at least the trench coat is gone... and my penchant for reading Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Merton is worth looking up, I think, if you're not already familiar with his work.  He was a brilliant writer and his perspective is unique and worth investigation IMO.  I was introduced to him by one of my atheist friends in the 90's.  I've been a Catholic my whole life, but for some reason or other my friends always seem to be predominantly atheist.  (This has become a problem recently when I started thinking about the baptism of my 2 month old daughter, as the Church frowns upon non-Catholic God-parents... actually, their stance is that non-Catholics as God-parents are right out, and you can't get baptized without one.)

I've never screened my friends (likely anyone who does doesn't have any friends to begin with), and from time to I've wondered why I tend to gravitate towards people who have such disparate world-views from my own.  It could mean I'm ambivalent at heart, or just an outright bad theist. I rejected elements of faith that I found inconvenient when I was younger, but never could shake the feeling that there was Something - a Something very different than what was proclaimed to be worshiped at the churches I attended in my youth.  I thought the Gospels attested to this, for the church in the time of Christ was at odds with Him as well.  I thought the people who went to church were hypocrites, who very demonstrably did not practice what was preached in the edifices they attended every Sunday.  Most priests struck me as loveless and perfunctory, while the ones who did seem sincere seemed on a plane I could never reach even if I wanted to.

I finally realized one day that I was never going to be any better than the hypocrites I was rejecting.  I believe in Love, but ask me on any given day if I've managed it to practice it consistently.  Maybe on a good day I'll say yes.  I work at it.  Loving friends and family is easy.  I trust them to forgive me despite what pains I may give them, for they have forgiven me time and time again in the past.  And I forgive them as well, for I am greedy and unwilling to part the joy that they bring me.  But loving those who slap me in the face with a look or cutting words?   That's a different story. 

I'm rambling now, and I'm not sure where I was going in the first place.  Full disclosure, I guess.  I've erased a lot of similar posts from this blog.  I'm not erasing this one.  One of my favorite pieces from This American Life on NPR came from Dan Savage.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/379/return-to-the-scene-of-the-crime

He proclaims at the end that he is not capable of belief.  He talks about his mom on her death bed.  I think it's such a beautiful piece for the honesty and the love that is present in his words and his voice, even as he says he cannot believe.  That's exactly what the God of my understanding is made of - honesty and love, and I find Him everywhere....