Thomas Merton wrote, “I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude - to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.”
Merton famously tried to escape the world and his own false self by entering a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. He kept writing and when his superiors asked him to publish his writing, he found himself in a pickle. His flight to the monastery had the opposite of his desired effect.
The man who tried to die to his small self by taking a wool robe and a new name - Fr. Louis - became a best-selling author and sought-after spiritual teacher. People came to the monastery to find him. He moved to a woodshed on the property, which he christened St. Anne’s Toolshed. Eventually, he built a hermitage where he could find the solitude he sought.
In 1964, while attending mass after meeting with Zen Buddhist D. T. Suzuki, Merton wrote in his journal, “No one recognized me or discovered who I was. At least I think not.”
In a 1967 recording, he says, “I am struck today I think, more and more, by the fundamental dishonesty about a lot of my clamor.”
I am drawn to Merton for many reasons, his search for humility and his true self chief among them.
I feel the same pull.
It is one of the reasons I deleted all my social media.
It is the reason I am so torn about this newsletter and much of my writing these days. It is hard for me to separate my desire to write and my ego’s desire for attention, praise, acceptance, etc.
Dear reader, I may not get poems out to you every week.
I need to shift my expectations (and yours) and only send out poems and reflections when there are poems and reflections to send out - when there is something worth saying.
As an Enneagram Three living in 2023, I feel so much pressure to perform all the time. I feel the push and pull to perform my identity, to be the best at what I do, and to turn any hobby into a side hustle.
God is not calling me to do any of those things.
God is calling me (and all of us) to seek His face.
I stumbled on two quotes from the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska that echo a theme I mentioned in my very first post in the Psalter.
The first: “I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.”
I feel called to write.
The second: “When asked why she had published so few poems, [Szymborska] said, ‘I have a trash can in my home’.”
I feel torn about sending them out into the world as soon as they are written.
Dear reader, I know that I am not Thomas Merton or Wisława Szymborska, but I still struggle with the desire to find joy in the writing process and then toss some poems in the trash. I still feel the call to disappear into the face of God through humility in the midst of a world hell-bent on self-promotion.
I love to write and I enjoy sharing what I create but I must continually disentangle my writing and sharing from my ego’s needs and culture’s pressure.
I do not know what will come of it all.
But for now, in a radical shift of tone, here is this week’s poem.
This week the air conditioning in our house stopped working. With the help of a friend, we fixed it.
I got rid of the wasp that was busy building a nest in our bedroom window frame. I need to fix the front door. I need to steady the wobbly banister on the stairs. I need to write a sermon. I need to paint the living room. I need to disappear into the face of God.
This week’s poem is a sonnet about the joys of home ownership.
17. How long must water continue to flow How long must water continue to flow over the caulk and out of the shower and how many journeys to Home Depot returning at least every half an hour? A home is fun, an American dream, minus the sunshine or clouds or flying. Perhaps it's more like a get poor quick scheme a precursor for shriveling, dying. The portrait I’ve painted is not quite quaint. The truth is not nearly as dark or dire. For every bad thing there are two that ain’t, like the noted absence of a fire. The fact is this house was sent from above and we have painted its walls with our love.