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we are, as a group, rounder slower grayer balder than ever. some of us wake up each day to major health problems that will never ever go away until that last day. some of us are just old. a general first or second impression might suggest that we are past our prime. but i'm not in a position to judge objectively because i love these guys. they have been my teachers, my friends, my heros, my bosses, my brothers in one incarnation or another over my past 37 years of conscious connection to All Things Carmelite... ...and i've just spent the bulk of the past three days reconsidering who we are as a group and who i am as an individual one of us...and i come away with no great insights, nothing to write home about...aside from the deepest respect and reverence for the humanity of us all...and that in itself is something of a wonder...because we are so plainly a broken bunch, a mortal crowd...imperfect in the most obvious ways. nothing human - in its lowest sense - is foreign to us. nothing human - in its finest sense - is completely missing. look...i said to myself...these are the ones you have become and are still becoming. these are the ones who have given you so much of yourself, i said. and it's true. because i became a carmelite as a teenager (i took first vows on the day before my 20th birthday), their influence has been - and continues to be - profound. in fact i feel funny saying "they" and "their" for the way those pronouns lift "them" away from me...and i do not desire that distance. michael's homily this morning touched me to tears. he pulled the veil off of what had been an OK pretty good and nice couple of days, helping me to see the beauty and goodness - the necessity even - of our "sinister" way...the "left-handed" way by which we have come to god - and continue that path - through our own adulteries, our own betrayals of the promises we made as younger men. his words flew to something solid and real from something bought at a certain price. i'm not doing it justice. at any rate...i am humbled to be a part of this absurd and glorious mess we call Carmelite...i love our contradictions ...and know i belong...somehow...but i also know that i am not worthy...i've barely scratched the surface... |
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Thomas Merton |
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