2/25/23
About
two years ago, I picked up a Thomas Merton book and read a few pages and put it
down and later gave it away.
Merton
wrote about the virtues and benefits of solitude.
He
knew what he wrote about, having lived and contemplated for years as a monk and many people I know appreciated his ideas, among them Kris. The book was
his, found in one of the boxes of papers I sorted through alongside
photographs and fifteen-year-old notes from friends and piles of ancient
receipts and ephemera. I kept a handful of his books and gave others away.
I’d
always thought I might read Merton, having encountered him at essay length and
wanting more. But at that moment reading a paean to solitude jabbed me, reopening
fresh wounds.
In early
2021 we neared the end of the first plague year. I’d been cut off from nearly
all friends and family for months, and Kris had succumbed to cancer the
previous August. Solitude, like any good form of discipline, can become too
extreme. Circumstance had isolated me so extensively that I was probably
clinically depressed but that didn’t seem unusual or special at the time since
so many people experienced that, then. I missed Kris terribly. I saw a few
friends once a week, people who were already Covid survivors as I was, and that
kept me going. Barely. Solitude in excess nearly cut off my air.
Sometimes
a good book arrives at the wrong moment. I may take it up again or another
Merton title someday. We’ll see—because today I ran across the following prayer
from the same book, words I don’t recall having read before, but they became at
once my prayer too.
Merton
wrote, “My
Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I
cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact
please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope
that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do
this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the
shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never
leave me to face my perils alone” (from Thoughts on Solitude, 1956).
