something and nothing

like gareth at moot, i'm also reading merton, though its 'the intimate merton - his life from his journals'. its something i've been reading for a couple of years - y'know, dip in and out. he's a fascinating man.

the entry that caught me recently was from april 15, 1961. he records a time sitting alone in the hermitage watching a powerful thunderstorm. the last words of that entry are: 'not to be known, not to be seen.' part of his context is to try to stop being famous, and the storm helps him to feel something of real anonymity. the storm raging outside is all powerful, and doesn't notice the man in the small building watching it and being taught by it.

there is something very salutary about the awesome power of nature and how inconspicuous humanity is in the face of it. i think we're terrified of nature. but i think we should be more terrified about how helpless we've become as we rely more and more on technology.

along with our advances in technology has come a strange ambiguity in our sense of who we are. technology allows us the comfort and ease not to have to survive on a day-to-day basis amongst the forces of nature. this comfort allows us the time and space to develop a sense of the value and importance of self that can at one and the same time be healthy and completely unrealistic. healthy in the sense that each person really does matter and is of inherent worth, but completely unrealistic in the sense of an immature egocentricity that thinks it unjust if a storm wreaks havoc on our own comfort and ease.

urban dwellers are at most risk of this ambiguity i think, as rural dwellers and people who work in and with nature possess an understanding and humility more conducive to a wholesome engagement with life (says me as an ex-dairy farmer, surfer, and sailor).

so, given that, it makes me wonder about the re-creation of all things at jesus' return, as the biblical picture is of all things coming together in a great city. the biblical drama moves from the opening scene in a garden to a new opening scene in a city. what transformation will need to take place in the psyche of contemporary western humanity for all people to live harmoniously in such a place? will being in the (unshielded?) presence of god be enough to work such transformation, as even the greatest storm must seem insignificant in comparison to him who creates the means for such storms to occur?

oh, i don't know, and there are plenty of others who have written far more eloquently than i ever could about such things. see for example c.s. lewis' "the great divorce".

perhaps it might be good for more of us to sit amongst a few more storms and be content to 'not be seen'?

Tags: merton, urban, storms, humility, contemplative