Merton on my Mind

Election Day, Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY

Church Light, Abbey of Gethsemani

Church Entrance, Abbey of Gethsemani

Cemetery, Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY

Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, LaRue County, KY

Election Day 2018, Bardstown, KY

It rained hard last night, in Bardstown, Kentucky.  Sheets of rain beat against my hotel window.  Eighteen wheelers roaring through the wind and rain on the highway just beyond.  This morning, the skies are blue, with huge clouds, dark and dangerous, drifting over autumn and election day.  The air is clean, the countryside open to possibility.  I'm dumbfounded by the way this fall's unfolded, but eager to see what today might bring.

I'm thinking, even now, about my good friend David Wellman, who teaches in Chicago but has spent huge chunks of 2018 canvassing for Democrat Randy Bryce in Racine, Wisconsin.  We talked by phone yesterday: me doing 75 down a Kentucky highway, David walking the streets of Racine with colleagues, building support, casting vision.  Whatever happens this evening, David's a hero, and a democrat...and I have so much to learn from his capacity for hope and action and creative, disciplined service in a country ripped to the heart by violence and demagogery.  (Bryce is running to 'flip' Paul Ryan's congressional seat, by the way.  If he does, we'll have David and so many other heroes to thank!)

I'm thinking too of my three daughters--and how desperately I hope tonight marks a new beginning for them, and for the Democratic Party, and for decency in American politics.  I want them to believe in this process, and to correct what's wrong with it, and to invest their energies (as David's invested his this summer/fall).  Whatever else nonviolence means (spiritually, ethically, morally, theologically)--doesn't it have to mean a commitment to this kind of electoral work, this kind of organizing and canvassing and showing up to vote?  

Rolling out of Bardstown this morning, I drive fifteen miles south to the Trappists' Abbey of Gethsamani.  What peace to pray there, in silence, amidst the slanting rays of fall and so much history!  I turn a corner this week, from a clearly defined path in my 57th year to something much less certain.  The silence here--at this particular abbey, this particular place--seems to wrap itself around me, sitting all alone in the large church at the abbey's center.  I want to trust this silence.  I think I can.  The sun's light through the windows is generous and reassuring.  

As I stumble into an unexpected transition--heading for California this week--I find flimsy hope, but unmistakable grace in Gethsamani's own Thomas Merton and his 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 do 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 I never do anything apart from that desire.

And I believe that if I do that, you lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will 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 will not leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.