"If you want to identify me ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the things I want to live for. Between those two answers you can determine the identity of any person."
-Thomas Merton The Man in the Sycamore
Thomas was just your run of the mill, Catholic Trappist Monk who lived in a monastery in Kentucky. (you can't swing a dead cat in Kentucky without hitting one of 'em) Did I mention he died of electrocution when he was getting out of the bath. It's the same old story we've all seen and heard a thousand times....
Anyhow, he wrote a bunch of books and he's not a bad read if you're headed to the library.
"I am aware of the need for constant self-revision and growth ... My ideas are always changing, always moving around one center, and I am always seeing the center from somewhere else. Hence, I will always be accused of inconsistency. But I will no longer be there to hear the accusation." -TM
ReplyDeleteNow I can relate with that. Having said that I have a volume of his poems that I find almost entirely insufferable for some reason. Merton seemed to throw it all out there. He's the original blogger. He was like finding a box of old unmarked fireworks and deciding to light them, some are duds, some are spectacular like you never imagined and some blow up in your face.
Not only did he die of electrocution but he died of electrocution in Bangkok. That's like a punch line to a shaggy dog joke or something.
I have a friend who is a friend with an old monk who was Merton's buddy at Gethsemane and one day the old Monk took my friend out to Merton's tomb at Gethsemane for some reason. The monk quoted a couple verses of prose my friend was unfamiliar with and then pulled a swig off of his flask, took a couple vicious cracks at the headstone with his cane and said "See ya later you old son of a bitch." and they left. He was a little surprised by the experience.
do you think when he says "the man in the Sycamore" he is somehow communicating that he is an AVIATOR??? i think he is and i like that about him!
ReplyDeleteI always liked that quote and had just looked up the source for it yesterday! I knew it as a Thomas Merton quote, but apparently it is spoken by the main character in a semi-autobiographical novel entitled My Argument with the Gestapo which he wrote before becoming a monk.
ReplyDeleteI think I’m going to read it. The only Thomas Merton writings I have read were selected entries from his journals - which were interesting as I recall.
Any recommendations of Thomas Merton works to read?
The papists that I went to high school with LOVE Thomas Merton.
ReplyDeletewow, i guess catholics and overweight people are still the only groups of people it's still ok to use derogatory terms against. (by the way this is in response to mike's comment). i'm sure you're joking witht the term "papist", but many catholics take offense to it because it is and ignorant term and does not represent who they actually follow (fyi, true catholics follow Jesus, so they are Christians, not papists). oh well, sorry if this was misdirected.
ReplyDeletesorry about my typos in my last comment.
ReplyDeleteI probably shouldn't have used the term in a context with people that I don't know, because it can be misunderstood and taken incorrectly. It was/is common for me and my Catholic friends to poke fun at each other by calling each other "papists" or "schizmatics". All in good natured fun - mostly making fun of folks who take themselves too seriously.
ReplyDeleteHowever, "papist", while it can have a negative connotation, is not completely inappropriate, as Roman Catholics do hold to the authority of the Pope. In fact, the modern Westminster Confession of Faith includes the term "papists" in Chapter XXIV, "On Marriage and Divorce."
In short, the word doesn't have a universally negative connotation, and I certainly wasn't implying anything negative in using it.
And I wouldn't say that it's an "ignorant" term. Like I said, if you strip the word of any inferred emotion, the word is accurate.
ReplyDeleteI use the term lightly myself having been raised catholic and knowing that it is just offensive enough to get the right chuckle in appropriate circumstances around my catholic friends and family. But it wasn't that long ago that klansmen burned crosses in the yards of "papists". My grandmother for one got that distinct honor and the word "papist" back then was usually accompanied by a fair amount furious spitting and cursing... on both sides I'm sure. So for some the word still carries a violently racist connotation.
ReplyDeleteand that is, of course, why it is funny to be used in the right circumstances. I think I even used it sarcastically once on this very blog.
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of precision, the word carries no "racist" connotation, as there is no race associated with Roman Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, I don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with using the word. It's in the eye of the beholder (or the ear, rather). Apparently, the beholders here don't like the word, so I won't use it here anymore.
Oh lordy! I'm almost entirely unoffendable. I was just joining the debate. I personally drop the "papist" bomb pretty regularly and have even had it lobbed at me in fun. I was just clarifying that regardless of the dictionary definition and/or renaissance usuage of the word, in America it historically has a distinctively racist association, particularly for the Irish and Italians. But seeing as how the Irish and Italians are almost entirely assimilated or mongrolized (speaking of mildly offensive monikers that are by definition correct) I don't find it offensive at all. But I understand that it makes the hair on my mom's neck stand up when she hears it because to her it was almost exclusively accompanied by unspeakable curses or adjectives such as drunken, ignorant, lecherous, dirty, fighting and Irish. Which would be alright if she went to the University of Notre Dame.
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad someone else is keeping the word from falling into obscurity other than me and a handful of old hillbillys who mean it in it's most nativist, racist manner. Oh crap now I've offended the appalachians.
How about those Buckeyes? Yeah. I know buckeye is a 19th century slur for shoeless, backwards, log cabin makin' immigrants who populated the Ohio country. Oh well.