Tuesday 8 July 2008

Today we move to a chapter called "Integrity" in "News Seeds of Contemplation" by Thomas Merton.

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious people are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. they never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the person or the artist who is called for by all circumstances of their individual lives.
They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own.
They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems or possess somebody else's spirituality.

First, I must comment on the use of saint here. It appears that for Merton we have an understanding of a saint as being one who becomes a saint through what is done during his/her life. I always use the word saint to mean who we are through baptism - therefore, we are all saints as declared just that by God through Christ. Even with the difference in the definition of saint, Merton's point still stands. As saints of God we are called into the life that is ours. Not someone else's life...just our own. We are called to be the truly human one who is blessed and called by God to come fully to life. The followers of Jesus may all be baptized, but each of us is called to unfold as the person who is me and you. To attempt to be anyone else would be to defy and resist our very nature. We are each beloved and we are each invited to boldly live within that definition. So, if we are each saints, we are not marching in step with one another. We are moving into this day side-by-side as persons who are blessed to be just the persons we are. When we sing "Rise Up O Saints of God," we are addressing each and every one of us who are told to let our lives unfold both as unique individuals and as a body of many together - saints. This is a journey of integrity.

Connection: Some days it is vital to remember whose we are and what that means for the life of the world in which we participate. Each of us is called to do that with a sense of joy in our own being.

Lord of New Life, help us to be the children you bless with a fullness of life that is our own. As we enter that blessedness inspire us to live with a sense of joy and hope. Amen.