Thomas Merton: Being and Doing, Part 3

I continue to be amazed at the insight Merton had on the human soul. In this final reflection on "Being and Doing", Merton pushes all of us to reflect on work and rest, sound and silence, being and doing. His line, "If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth." My prayer is that our lives will not be a hell on earth. -JES

Matthew 12:1-6
At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ 3He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 3, pp. 127ff)
• One who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. One who is content with what they have, and who accepts the fact that the inevitably miss very much in life, is better than one who has much more but who worries about all he may be missing. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Music is pleasing not only for the sound, but because of the silence in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty. May we learn to pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much with what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes, but the biggest of them all is to be surprised at them: as if we had some hope of never making any.
• The relative perfection which we must attain to in this life if we are to live as children of God is not the twenty-four hour a day production of perfect acts of virtue, but a life from which practically all the obstacles to god’s love have been removed or overcome. We have this selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. If we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us – whatever that may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need. Happiness consists of finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given to us together with the one thing we needed.

On Being and Doing: Thomas Merton

Continuing to struggle with Merton, pushes me deeper to discover who I am and how I understand my vocation and calling. Merton's great, probing reflection for me in these thoughts from his work, "No Man Is An Island", is "The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness." May we always struggle to be only who God calls us to be (I wish that were always easy).

Isaiah 58.13-14
13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;*
14then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 2, pp. 120ff)
• It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our interior life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting immediate reward, to love without instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
• Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
• When we are truly ourselves, we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
• We do not live just to “do something”. We must engage in a wise alternation of activity and rest. We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual. Everything depends on the quality of our acts and expressions. There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform: and often it is quite beyond his power.
• The value of human activity depends almost entirely on the humility to accept ourselves as we are. The reason why we do things so badly is that we are not content to do what we can.
• The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the values of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. All he asks of any act he performs is that it be his act.
• The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul.

S3 for South Georgia - A Sanctuary in Time

“S3 has helped me develop the discipline and self-awareness to have an eye on my reserves. I believe that this is an important guard against burnout.”

– Rev. Dr. Jimmy Asbell

“. . .the difference between wandering through a barren land all alone or travelling with deeply loyal friends…”

– Rev. Creede Hinshaw

“What I did not know when we first began was that the time we would spend together investing in building relationship with God and each other would spill over into ministry and life.”

– Rev. Teresa Edwards

“The luxury of spending two or three days with people you respect, trust, and love has been a real gift. It has given us a safe place to fall and a nurturing place to grow.”

– Rev. Karen Kilhefner

I continue to grow in my understanding of Sabbath. As an ordained United Methodist elder, I continually experience the deep need for margin and reserves in my life. I don’t control when the crises will inundate me. As I pastor, I try to focus on the urgent needs of the week. Unfortunately, the reality of ministry tends to be extremely chaotic. Just two weeks ago, three tragedies struck in one day. But I was not overwhelmed. I was ready to minister. How? I am learning to remember and observe Sabbath practice.

I wish I could tell you that came naturally. It does not. My cultivation of Sabbath came through a unique blessing called S3. The S3 learning experience offered me and seven other elders from South Georgia the opportunity to create a sanctuary in time - providing a Sabbath environment for us. Through the S3 program, we were afforded a significant amount of time together over a two year period. Through Sabbath, study, and service (S3), the experience created deep relationships with God and one another.

We studied Centering Prayer. While other members of my group thought I didn’t get that much out of the prayer videos, the experience has broadened my spiritual practice. I am a better and deeper preacher. It encouraged me to develop contemplative practices in the local church. It transformed my ministry.

We gathered for Sabbath experience five times per year for two years. We played golf. We ceased labor. We experienced the gift of life and friendship. We laughed, ate, drank, and shared our lives with each other. Even though we no longer receive funding, we still meet three times per year. The same is true for every other S3 group!

We committed to service by mentoring new S3 groups. Our group started new groups in South Georgia and we are now laying the groundwork for birthing the S3 program in South Georgia.

S3 speaks for itself. Take time to call up and ask a S3 participant (South Georgia has 20 graduates), “What difference has this made in your life and in your church?” Every single one will tell you it has been effective and powerful.

If you are a lay person, encourage your ordained elder to participate. Give them the time and support to engage fully in S3. It will make all the difference in their life and it will make a difference in your church.

Very soon, we will have detailed information, a helpful video for churches and clergy, and an application on the conference website, www.sgaumc.org

Thomas Merton on Being and Doing, Part 1

During Wesley staff meetings each week, we wrestle with the writings of Thomas Merton who challenges us to BE in God more than to DO for God. This week, Tommy directs us to examine how we understand our being and if it is tied negatively to our doing.

Genesis 2.2-9
2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 1, pp. 117ff)
• We are warmed by the fire, not the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts.
• My soul is hidden and invisible. It is hidden from us. We cannot see our own eyes, but we know they are there because we can see. Our soul can reflect in the mirror of its own activity, but what is seen in the mirror is only a reflection of who I am, not my true being. Much depends on how the soul sees itself in the mirror of its own activity.
• Our soul only finds itself when it acts. We must act. Stagnation brings death. I do not need to see myself; I simply need to be myself. I must think and act like a living being, but I must not plunge my whole self into what I think and do, or seek always to find myself in the work I have done. The soul that projects itself entirely into activity and seeks itself outside itself in the work of its own will is like a madman who sleeps on the sidewalk in front of his house instead of living inside where it is quiet and warm.
• Being means nothing to those who hate and fear what they themselves are. They must struggle to escape their true being. They verify a false existence by constantly viewing what they themselves do. They keep looking in the mirror for reassurance, but they do not expect to see themselves. They are hoping for some sign that they have become the god they hope to become by the means of their own frantic activity – invulnerable, all powerful, infinitely wise, unbearably fruitful, and unable to die.
• When we constantly look in the mirror of our own acts, our spiritual double-vision splits us into two people. We strain to see and we forget which image is real. In fact, reality is no longer found either in himself or in his shadow. The substance has gone out of itself into the shadow and he has become two shadows instead of one real person. Then the battle begins. Instead of one shadow praising the other, it accuses the other. The activities that were meant to exalt us now condemn us. We can never be real enough or active enough. The less we are able to BE the more we must DO. We are now our own slave driver – a shadow whipping a shadow to death, because it cannot produce reality out of our own nonentity. Then comes fear. We who “are not” become terrified by what we cannot do. We had illusions of power and sanctity, but now tidal waves of nonentity, powerlessness, hopelessness surge up in us with every action we attempt. The shadow hates and judges the shadow who is not a god and who can do absolutely nothing.
• In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to BE in God and to do whatever God wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of God’s reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.