Thursday 15 May 2008

Today will continue with yesterday's piece and what comes after it. Again, Thomas Merton.



Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if God's creatures were God's rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.

This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of God's become an obstacle to our union with God. The obstacle is in our "self," that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistic will. It is when we refer all things to this outward and false "self" that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self.



My first reflection was on the disaster in Myanmar. It is violently tragic. Nature can and does explode at time. That is part of creation. It is not evil. It is not God acting against certain people who are not behaving in the way we think God would expect (like Jerry Falwell's accusation that Katrina hit New Orleans because of Gays). In Myanmar, what becomes "evil" is the unwillingness for people in power to open doors so that other people can help. Rulers and leaders and...all of us...do this to a degree. We are self-serving even if serving ourselves or our goals or our agenda will cause trauma and pain and suffer for others. "We turn our relationships to them (things) into a corrupt and sinful relationship." That is that 'turned-in-on-self' reality that is sin. We use things...people...whatever..."to increase our attachment to our illusory self." I think that is well said by Merton. If we can keep this in mind, we begin to enter a place of honesty that doesn't live on blame but rather on taking responsibility for how the world comes tumbling down around us. At that point, there are things we can do to re-center our living and find ongoing ways of being truthful and honor the things within creation.



Connection: How can we today...fight off that illusory self that is always trying to gain control? This may be a part of the battle.



Lord, you forgive us so that we can move beyond be self-consuming. We are always looking for ways to be the ruler of our world and yet you continue to dethrone us and send us off along your way of new life. We give you thanks. Amen.