Pastoral Thought--June 22

 In an essay entitled, “Meditatio Pauperis in Solitudine,” Thomas Merton wrote the following text for us to consider today. 

Now before we read these words together I offer a word of caution to you as Merton’s audience. Reading and considering Thomas Merton can be quite challenging if your mind is distracted. We often read at a certain pacing or tempo. There is a rhythm to most of what we read that we follow easily. This tempo or this rhythm is how we can sit with a favorite book and not recognize the passing of time. 

But Merton resists that construct and process. To read Merton is to be forced to slowly consider what he is saying. Reading Merton often requires us to stop in the middle of a thought or sentence and consider it gently. For his sentences are complex and his language reads slowly. This is to say nothing about how we interpret what we read from Merton’s writings for we can find a depth behind the words that we might miss upon the first-reading. 

So I encourage you to re-read Merton’s words again. Read them slowly. Take a moment and consider them again and hold them in your heart throughout the rest of the day. In the essay, whose title I began with, Merton writes: 

“You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done? . . . Because I no longer desire to see anything that implies a distance between You and me: and if I stand back and consider myself and You as if something had passed between us, from me to You, I will inevitably see the gap between us and remember the distance between us. My God, it is that gap and that distance which kills me.” 

One of the great challenges in our lives and faith is finding time to sit with God for no other purpose than to ’sit with God.’ Most of my day and practices speak against this type of thinking, but that does not mean that we should not re-examine them or ourselves. Like you, I am a person called to action and choice in my day. There are things to do and I often believe that I can take God with me into those tasks. 

But do I truly take God into those tasks? Do you? We know that God is there, but is God part of that moment or action? 

This morning before I headed over to the church I needed to stop at the grocery store for coffee, milk, cheese and a few other things. I turned off Jennifer’s car and grabbed the keys. Slipping out of the door, I neatly placed my AirPods back into my ears and continued the podcast that I began while driving. The subject of the episode was in fact Thomas Merton. I thought to myself, “why not take Merton’s words with me into Wal-Mart." Thomas would provide a necessary distraction while I shopped. But for the life of me, I cannot remember a single thing that the speaker said about Merton or about Merton’s text. . . . I am guilty of too much multitasking. 

With the best of intentions I listen to something that I hope will bring me closer to God. And yet no matter how hard I try, I cannot multitask my way into a deeper union with God. Like Merton, I feel the distance between God and myself killing me, and yet, do I make the effort to just ’sit with God’ or ‘be with God?’ Do you? 

I wonder as you read, and re-read, Merton’s words from above, if God might be inviting you to notice the places and times when you too have created the space between yourself and God, and that space too great? I wonder what choices you could make today to bring that gap closer together. . . maybe something what Merton wrote might be helpful? 

Blessings

Rev. Derek