Thursday, June 12,2003
At six I go up to the Mac and find a large building that very much looks like communal living. Warm enough, inviting enough, but way too big for normal life. Courtesy of Susan’s invitation, I partake in their common meal on the last night of their weekly visitors’ stay. She tells me she is not impressed by the level of spirituality; says it is more like her idea of a church summer camp. There isn’t for her what she had hoped.
After the meal, she and I find a quiet place to talk. I am quite open with her. I tell her I would like to build a bridge between what I call the metaphysical types and the Christians. She says to me – meaning to help – that all my searching is because I am angry with God and haven’t accepted God. This doesn’t ring true to me. (Later I think maybe it was projection: She does not seem to be a joyful person.) She says I need to give up my will and be willing to do whatever God wants. I tell her, I did that years ago. Finally she asks me to answer one question: Have I accepted Jesus as my personal savior.
This question is asked with all good intent. She likes me, she really would like to help me, she really thinks she is giving me the word. The effect is the opposite of what she would have wished, but, oddly enough, it is just what I need. For I realize, as she asks me this question, that there is no responding to it, because the only honest response would to be ask her what the question means. To her it’s perfectly obvious, and she will take any questioning as an evasion or an attempt to play word games.
Quite suddenly I realize, it’s useless to ask what she means, and useless to attempt any bridging across that gulf. With Christians, even discontented, spiritually awake Christians, it always comes down to the same point: Accept Jesus as your personal savior and all else is resolved. For Christians know; they have the key; they cannot learn from you or even from your questions, because they know. Nothing you know of feel or have experiences is of any use to them at all. So, beyond a certain point, there is no dialogue with them; it is like arguing with a communist.
Her well-meant charge to me has the unexpected effect of suddenly freeing me to be who I am. I will waste no more time trying to build bridges. I will say what I know. If Christians want to claim the Bible and God and Christ and goodness and holiness and charity, etc., let them claim all they want. But I will calmly take what is mine, whether they pretend to ownership or not. If there is no bridging over to the churches, there isn’t.
So let us take what we need and lump the rest. The medieval contemplatives and others who strove for what I would call higher consciousness may serve to be our guides. The disputation over facts of existence etc. we can leave to others. Let us leave the Christians alone and be only our truest selves, and if we are good our goodness will shine forth, and we will attract others of like goodness. If we are not good – if we fall into anger, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust – we will draw to us what we are. By our fruits let us be known.
Furthermore, and henceforth, let us boldly appropriate whatever in Christianity is good, as in any other religion or way of belief – taking it as our birthright, regardless of apologies or exegesis.
I do believe I may have just gotten what I came to Iona to get. Ironic, isn’t it? My goodness, I’m energized, and liberated! Enough trying to bridge incompatibles! I’m free! We’ll see what it comes to.
So, I read Merton discussing his reading, and think, what is he talking about? (Susan didn’t use the term “the wrath of God,” but she did say that God is angry and getting angrier. She didn’t seem to know that anger is one of the seven deadly sins. Perhaps this is Catholic theology.) So much of Merton’s world depends on God versus the devil, with all these medieval arguments I have no patience with. It is obviously true that I don’t have the background to understand it all – but we don’t need background today, we need the water of life and health, and we are not being given it. Scholarship can go too far, and destroy what it examines.
It will be telling, whether this mood lasts. It would be nice to be really on my feet. What a relief, to look forward to saying just what I think, to one and all, right or not, provisional or not, informed or not. Surely this must have been a great block in my writing? And it stemmed from talking to Susan, which stemmed from her inviting me to supper, which stemmed from my giving her the book, which stemmed, originally, from my trying to give her some energy because she was tired. All but the first cause took place today, right after I came down from the mountains. It feels like some blockage, either in will or in communication, has been blown out.
I decide to try to do two long walks tomorrow, to the north and to the south. I pack, so that I’ll feel I have plenty of time during the day tomorrow, leaving out only what I will use on Friday and travel in on Saturday. I continue reading Merton, still amazed at the time and effort he expended on what seem to me inessential questions – nearly nonexistent, because not really real – that seemed real enough to him and to those whose books he is reading. But then, he was an intellectual and I am not.