--- Redacted poem, from the text of Thomas Merton's CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER, p. 154-155
22.04.2025 19:05
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--- Redacted poem, from the text of Thomas Merton's CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER, p. 154-155
At the center of our being is
a
spark which belongs entirely to God,
inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will,
blazing
in everybody, and if we could see these
billions of points of light coming together
if I suddenly saw the beauty of
the depths of
the person that each
one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves
as they really ARE. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed....
My solitude is not
my own, it belongs to them—I
have a responsibility for their regard
because I am one with them I owe it to them to be alone, and when i am alone they are not "they" but my own self. There are no strangers!
the sense of my solitude
is to realize
with clarity
the cares
of a tightly collective existence.
As the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition overwhelm me I realize
there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy I almost laughed out loud.
Thank
God.
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race,
absurdities and all God
gloried in becoming a member of the human race.
the
cosmic
became incarnate.
holiness
is the
vocation
of everyday existence
in the same world as everybody else,
of revolution, and rest.
we belong to God.
so does everybody else. We just happen to be
conscious of it.
A photocopy of text from a book, which has been colored with a rainbow area of crayons, leaving some text uncolored, to form a poem with the leftover words.
Every week in our Sun-Walking Fellowship staff meetings, we engage in a practice of art-making together. Today, we took the text of Thomas Merton's experience at Fourth and Walnut, which inspired our name, and performed Redaction Poetry. I loved mine. The poem I created is in the replies.
Joining all of those so glad that you decided to cover #WheelofTime! I think it's going to be a great season, and I can't wait to watch Adam's sly "a-HA! that scene" face contrast with Jay's joyfully shocked "what is happening in this strange, strange world?!"
...Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much." [4/4]
poets.org/poem/prayer-...
"O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length...
[3/4]
It articulates, with such eloquence, what I wish for each day. Just enough to run today's race; enough to shine outward and bring joy and delight to someone who is struggling; enough to make glad each person I encounter. Amen. [2/4]
I've been on a James Weldon Johnson journey recently. The second stanza of his delight-filled poem "Prayer at Sunrise" warmed my soul this morning. [1/4]
"when the theatricality, the entertainment value, the marketing of life is complete, we will find ourselves living not in a nation but in a consortium of industries, and wholly unintelligible to ourselves except for what we see as through a screen darkly..." [7/7]
"When our fears have all been serialized, our creativity censured, our ideas “marketplaced,” our rights sold, our intelligence sloganized, our strength downsized, our privacy auctioned..." [6/7]
"And in effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product (a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car) or kill generations for control of products (oil, drugs, fruit, gold)...." [5/7]
"It changes parenting into panicking — so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons...." [4/7]
"It changes citizens into taxpayers — so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good. It changes neighbors into consumers — so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our generosity but what we own...." [3/7]
"It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship; all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones — so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears...." [2/7]
From Toni Morrison's "Racism and Fascism"
inthesetimes.com/article/toni...
"Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing — marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas...." [1/7]
One of the most difficult, but necessary to read poems from Clint Smith III.
With Dr. King's voice ringing in my ears, I pray: O God, as we face an uncertain future and a chaotic present, may we raise our voices to sing a creative psalm of peace. Not a peace that is the absence of conflict, but a peace that is the present of justice, of wholeness, of love for all. Amen.
"...If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." [9/10]
"....And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.... [8/10]
"This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind [sic].... [7/10]
"A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies....[6/10]
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.... [5/10]
