Currently Reading On the Apostolic Preaching By Saint, Bishop of Lyon Irenaeus see related

You come through the doorway, hardened with pain. And I plead and cry and beg, and you push, and you ignore, and you try your darnest to get rid of me, flesh against stone, until tears soak into my words and I am choked, and my voice is a hoarse whisper. And you break, and we cry, and we hold. And words pile upon words as I lie close to you till it seems that for a few glistening moments we are one again, until the poison within us turns them into stale air hanging in the cool autumn evening; till you wrap your heart against your chest and shut yourself out as I tell you that I am sorry I couldn’t do better.

And the sorrow within wells up and runs everywhere across my face, warm rivulets of rejection and pain, till I am left with no more tears left to cry and nothing more to say. I am empty yet strangely full. The warm tears have run cold, and yet my head is clear. I hear You say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.” But what is the use of being a peacemaker if I could make no peace? I have peace it is true, an ephemeral sense of wholeness, perhaps nothing more than the fragile bliss that catharsis allows us. Yet it is precious and holy, and I cling to it as I fall asleep in our bed, alone tonight.

Currently Reading Sacred Marriage By Gary L. Thomas see related

<24 December 9.00pm>

Have been having some fruitful time to process and think things through. It's really nice to have time to just lie and think and allow your mind to roam freely over stuff. Not worry you understand, but just let thoughts and ideas flow, pulling threads of thought together, and letting new ones flourish. I'm pretty sure I could be a contemplative. The life appeals to me. Thinking, worshipping, writing, manual labor, good, wholesome, life in harmony with God and human beings. Not that I have delusions about the ease of the monk's life, but there's a simplicity and connectedness (if that's not too touch-feely vague a term) to their life, a quality of satisfaction and fullness of spirit that greatly appeals to me. Perhaps the guy who was speaking in the video they showed us was right. It is such an ordinary life, because in many ways it is the kind of life we are all called to. It is perhaps that they have come to find a way of living that when lived as it should be, is as close as we come to the life of fruitful labor and joyful simplicity that we would have had apart from the fall. Again, all this sounds like I'm idealizing it, and perhaps we should to some extent because we are all called to be contemplatives in action (which is a famous saying of I forget whom, one church father from the middle ages, "contemplation in action").

Not perhaps that the average Catholic is much more spiritual than the average Protestant, but they at least in the core of their faith and within the church have deep roots of spirituality that go back thousands of years which we Protestants are really just beginning to recover. Blame it on Luther and his perhaps overzealous disbanding of all the monastries and nunneries, but whether you blame the Reformers or their less subtle descendents, we have to get in touch with a lot of tradition that the Catholic and Orthodox sister and brother are already at home with. On the other hand, we bring with us a greater reliance upon the book of the church from which comes many correctors small and large to the tradition--which is not of course infallible. As the monks here evidence however, the best of Catholicism is very much in love with the Bible and deeply revere its authority. We on the other hand, good moderns that we are, are rather suspicious of anything that is traditional and antiquarian, and have little respect for the fathers of our faith who have blazed the path before us. It is not that we don't have our own traditions but perhaps more that we disguise them as something else--creed, doctrine, teaching? What we generally have lost is the traditions of the great catholic church that go back to the early church fathers in an unbroken line of faith, marred at times no doubt, but yet holy and sanctified by the Holy Spirit at work down through the ages. Never beyond correction, but with so much insight and authority that we ignore them at the peril of losing who we are.

I wonder whether the time is right for a monastic order within the Protestant tradition, that is in touch with the traditions of the church universal, and that of our Catholic brethren. Could such a movement be a catalyst for revival and renewal of the church as monasticism has been in the past? Or perhaps what we need is a renewal of monasticism within the church, in the lives of people who are fully in the world and yet not off it. Not that the Catholic orders are not, many are (though the Trappists definitely aren't), but they certainly have a more other-worldly sense to them that Christians within family, church and life in the world at large do not. There is a growing interest in monasticism, mainly perhaps because many are beginning to understand our impoverishment spiritually, but also because of the spiritual anomie of this generation (mainly but not limited of course to the West). Perhaps we need both.

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2 more hours before Christmas Eve mass. I haven't ever written this much for... fun? Perhaps the clarification of my own thoughts and to put out a lot of what I have been thinking into a concrete form. I dare not think about one day my journals being published like Merton's. Perish the thought!

:)

Currently Reading The Imitation Of Christ By Thomas a Kempis see related

<24 December 6.40pm cont.p3.>

A source of a little guilt early on this retreat was partaking of the Eucharist, as it states clearly that the members of other churches that are not fully united with the Catholic church should not partake as the Eucharist is a symbol the unity of the "faith, life and worship". I had been going to the Mass every morning (sans one) because of my prima facie theological belief that we are all fully one in Christ whatever the institutions may say (a belief which I think many of the brothers here would agree with, whatever their institution might say). It did make me feel a little guilty (and does still a little perhaps), wondering whether I was breaking their hospitality thus. It struck me recently however that I don't really claim membership to any one church, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox. When people ask me that, I always say, I grew up Methodist... but I'm a Christian! Thus, really, although technically I do hold membership in the Methodist church in Malaysia, my allegiance is not to that church, but to Christ and Christ alone, and his church universal. Thus, I feel that as long as I am in a church that I believe to serve our Risen Savior, and one that can see me as a fellow believer, by my participation, I both receive their communion, and validate their standing in the body of Christ.

Besides, my theological positions and stances are really very very close to Catholic dogma in most of the issues that really matter, like the relationship between tradition and Scripture. There are ways at which I part company with their traditions, particularly over the veneration (which practically is almost worship--whatever the technical distinction is) of Mary. I am however, utterly with Wesley when he says something to the effect that, "in essentials unity, in non-essentials freedom, and in everything humility". If my brother wishes to ask Mary to pray for him, or St. Bernard for that matter, I may not particularly think that it is a Scriptural idea, but it is not exactly un-Scriptural either, and it is not something we need to break fellowship over. In all the ways that matter, these beloved monks and all true Catholics are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and my heart is that we will all break our ridiculous pride, and bring our hearts together for the sake of our Savior, whose heart is more broken than we can know over our petty quarrels.

Thus I partake of the sacred body and blood of my Savior here knowing that we all will one day be united before his throne of grace--and hopefully before.