Merton/paper airplanes

[Guest guest]

- Jerry Katz

nds

Sunday, January 06, 2002 8:33 AM

[NDS] Merton/paper airplanes

After fifteen years at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Father Louis Merton

began to realize the complexity of his earlier desire for sanctity.

Becoming a saint for him meant, in some ways, to realize the we are

fools for Christ's sake. He wrote about the following is from the

Merton

list:this

maturing realization in 1958 to his New York friend, Catherine de

Hueck Doherty: "After so boldly advertising to the world that I was

out to become a saint, I find I am doing a pretty bum job of it...

But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the

solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter

nonsense of everything, including all the solemn stuff given out by

professional asses about the spiritual life: and simply to burst out

laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God

is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements,

and not in 'Contemplation' with a big C, or in asceticism or in

anything like that, not even in the apostolate. Certainly not in

books. I can go on writing them, for all that, but one might as well

make paper airplanes out of the whole lot." (Catherine de Hueck

Doherty, September 18, 1958)

____________To me,

the key to this paragraph is the phrase 'wake up suddenly'. Ifthat

happens in any setting, whether it's the woods or at the desk,

hecould have written that paragraph. Jerry