All posts tagged Thomas Merton

  • Pope Francis: Lincoln, King, Day, Merton

    LKDM

    Pope Francis: Lincoln, King, Day, Merton
    Brian Zahnd

    Pope Francis building his prophetic address to Congress around four Americans — Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton — was brilliant. Here were some of my favorite moments from the Pope’s speech.

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    I would like to mention four of these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.
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  • The World As It is (An Advent Poem)

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    The World As It Is
    (An Advent Poem)
    Blind Man at the Gate

    I take the world as it is and still believe

    Debauched and beautiful, sordid and seemly

    Where Kerouac is a secular saint

    Heard uncensored telling his story

    On the road with Dean Moriarty

    In the long run Merton took a better road

    But still the beat goes on…

    Take your stand on whatever smidgen of faith you have

    Smack-dab in a world of hustlers and hookers, users and losers, liars and lovers

    Don’t waste your life on a pastel watercolor faith

    That runs if touched by a tear or a drop of sweat

    Can you take the world as it is

    And still believe in God?

    Can you take people as they are

    And still believe in love?

    Or do you only play at make believe?

    A world of terracotta saints

    Of little houses on soundstage prairies

    So not at home in the world as it is

    That you can’t wait for it to be left behind

    That, my friend, is no real faith

    It’s scripted B-movie phoniness

    Rated G (for gullible audiences)

    A real faith lives in a real world

    The world as it is

    Sordid and seemly

    Debauched and beautiful

    It’s the little town of Bethlehem

    Good enough for the Son of God

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  • The Unquiet City

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    I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world… I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world… They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. —Jesus (The Gospel of John, chapter 17)

    Tonight I was reading Thomas Merton. I never read Merton without profit. He is undoubtedly the greatest of the modern Christian mystics. He is one of the wise ones. We should listen to him.

    Anyway…

    While reading from New Seeds of Contemplation I came across this little gem in the chapter entitled “A Body of Broken Bones”…

    What is the “world” that Christ would not pray for, and of which He said that His disciples were in it but not of it? The world is the unquiet city of those who live for themselves and are therefore divided against one another in a struggle that cannot end, for it will go on eternally in hell. It is the city of those who are fighting for possession of limited things and for the monopoly of goods and pleasures that cannot be shared by all. There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men.

    I don’t know about you, but I still need to be saved.

    I need to be saved from the unquiet city.

    Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

    BZ

    (The artwork is Holiness by Linda Nardelli.)