The Merton Prayer

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

“The Merton Prayer” from Thoughts in Solitude Copyright © 1956, 1958 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani. 

WHO BY FIRE | LEONARD COHEN

“Who by fire” is Leonard Cohen’s version of the Hebrew prayer "Unetanneh Tokef", chanted on Yom Kippur. It was released in the 1974 album “New Skin for the Old Ceremony.” This is one of the main songs of the album and one of Cohen’s best known songs.

The prayer Cohen heard as a child in the synagogue describes God reviewing the Book of Life and deciding the fate of every soul for the year to come – who will live, who will die and how. The line: “And who shall I say is calling?” can be understood as a break from faith in God. According to Cohen that element of doubt is what made the song into a personal prayer for him.

And who by fire, who by water 
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time 
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial 
Who in your merry merry month of May 
Who by very slow decay 
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate 
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt 
And who by avalanche, who by powder 
Who for his greed, who for his hunger 
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident 
Who in solitude, who in this mirror 
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand 
Who in mortal chains, who in power 
And who shall I say is calling? 
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by fire who by water 
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time 
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial 
Who in your merry merry month of May 
Who by very slow decay 
And who shall I say is calling? 
And who shall I say is calling?

Anzac Day | Grief and Hope

About halfway through the movie 1917 there is a haunting scene of exhausted young soldiers slumped down listening to one singing the song: “Wayfaring Stranger.” 

It’s the view of World War 1 from from the perspective of an insignificant shell-shocked trooper in the trenches.
It's Anzac Day again, and many of us will rise early to recall the Great War and the millions of lives that were lost.

The human cost of World War 1 was enormous. More than 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians died in the four-year-long conflict, which also left 21 million military men wounded.

There was also a human cost in a larger sense. The war remade the world for the worse in every conceivable way. It ignited the Russian Revolution, it laid the ground for Nazism. It made World War II pretty certain. It’s hard to imagine the second world war without the first. What is unmeasurable, is the huge personal and emotional toll on a generation in terms of ongoing grief and trauma.

Each generation — and each of us personally will in some way — experience grief and trauma. Whether its the loss of a loved one; or surviving a natural calamity like a massive bushfire or flood, or a life- threatening illness — or maybe by having the rhythms and hopes and dreams of our lives derailed by some unexpected and inescapable shock or crisis — the great depression or nine-eleven for some, the repercussions of the COVID:19 crisis for others, the war in Ukraine or the Gaza crisis or grinding poverty or oppression.

Regina Spektor - "Laughing With God."

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God

When they're starving or freezing

Or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls

After some routine tests

No one's laughing at God

When it's gotten real late

Their kid's not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane

Starts to uncontrollably shake

No one's laughing at God

When they see the one they love

Hand in hand with someone else

And they hope that they're mistaken

No one laughs at God

When the cops knock on their door

And they say "We got some bad news, sir"

No one's laughing at God

When there's a famine, fire, or a flood...

But God could be funny

At a cocktail party while listening to

A good god-themed joke

Or when the crazies say he hates us

And they get so red in

The head you'd think they're about to choke

God could be funny

When told he'll give you money

If you just pray the right way

And when presented like a genie

Who does magic like Houdini

Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket

And Santa Claus

God could be so hilarious

Ha-ha

Ha-ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God

When they've lost all they got

And they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize

That the last sight they'll ever see

Is a pair of hateful eyes

No one's laughing at God

When they're saying their goodbyes

But God could be funny

At a cocktail party while listening to

A good god-themed joke

Or when the crazies say he hates us

And they get so red in

The head you'd think they're about to choke

God could be funny

When told he'll give you money

If you just pray the right way

And when presented like a genie

Who does magic like Houdini

Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket

And Santa Claus

God could be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one's laughing at God in a war

No one's laughing at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God

When they're starving or freezing

Or so very poor

No one's laughing at God

No one's laughing at God

No one's laughing at God

We're all laughing with God

We Are the Music-Makers

We are the music-makers, 

And we are the dreamers of dreams, 

Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 

And sitting by desolate streams. 

World-losers and world-forsakers, 

Upon whom the pale moon gleams; 

Yet we are the movers and shakers, 

Of the world forever, it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties 

We build up the world's great cities, 

And out of a fabulous story 

We fashion an empire's glory: 

One man with a dream, at pleasure, 

Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 

And three with a new song's measure 

Can trample an empire down. 

We, in the ages lying 

In the buried past of the earth, 

Built Nineveh with our sighing, 

And Babel itself with our mirth; 

And o'erthrew them with prophesying 

To the old of the new world's worth; 

For each age is a dream that is dying, 

Or one that is coming to birth.

By Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844 – 1881). British poet

STILLNESS

Early this year, on a cool summer's day, I found myself down on the beach, a few kilometres past Lorne. I was all alone with the wind and waves, reflecting on the year that was passing and on the New Year about to dawn. I was thinking about the never-ending and overwhelming changes washing like waves around us: 

Flooding up in north eastern Australia; the seemingly insoluble Gaza crisis, the brutal war in the Ukraine, the post-covid economic challenges, high mortgage rates, global warming, the Myanmar civil war, cost-of-living pressures, the newly emerging risks of inadequately controlled generative artificial intelligence, instability in U.S. politics and on and on!

I was also reading the following: “Come and see what the LORD has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. 
9 He makes wars cease 
to the ends of the earth. 
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; 
he burns the shields with fire. 
10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; 
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46: 8-10 NIV)

It is hard for us to “be still” in the modern world, and yet it is what we need to learn if we are to be effective.

There was a fascinating feature article about stillness written some time ago, that I noted and kept: “The Joy of Quiet” by Pico Iyer. What would happen if we made the practice of ‘stillness’ a priority in 2024? 

Pico writes:

‘About a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness...” .... 

Intel (of all companies) experimented with conferring four uninterrupted hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning on 300 engineers and managers. (The average office worker today, researchers have found, enjoys no more than three minutes at a time at his or her desk without interruption.) During this period the workers were not allowed to use the phone or send e-mail, but simply had the chance to clear their heads and to hear themselves think. A majority of Intel’s trial group recommended that the policy be extended to others.

The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing). ....

The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. 

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s [sic] problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. 

... Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man [sic] whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man [sic] was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister. ....

So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.

Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. ....

It’s vital, of course, to stay in touch with the world, and to know what’s going on; I took pains this past year to make separate trips to Jerusalem and Hyderabad and Oman and St. Petersburg, to rural Arkansas and Thailand and the stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima and Dubai. But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it. 

For more than 20 years, therefore, I’ve been going several times
a year — often for no longer than three days — to a Benedictine hermitage, 40 minutes down the road, as it happens, from the Post Ranch Inn. I don’t attend services when I’m there, and I’ve never meditated, there or anywhere; I just take walks and read and lose myself in the stillness, recalling that it’s only by stepping briefly away from my wife and bosses and friends that I’ll have anything useful to bring to them.”

Pico Iyer is the author of “The Man Within My Head.”

Orthoducksy or Orthopraxy?

There is a story attributed to Soren Kierkegard, the 19th century
Danish religious philosopher, about a town where only ducks live.

There was a little town of Ducks. Every Sunday the ducks waddle out of their houses and waddle down Main Street to their church. 

They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their proper pews. The duck choir waddles in and takes it place, then the duck minister comes forward and opens the duck Bible (Ducks, like all other creatures on earth, seem to have their own special version of the Scriptures.) 

The duck-minister reads to them: “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!” 

All the ducks shouted “Amen!” And they all waddled home.