"Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied sermon.
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience.
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier."
- Thomas Merton, The Quickening of Saint John the Baptist, 1949
Poetry is packed with immense and intense imagery and vision. Read and reread this portion of Merton's poem and then set off and JOURNAL on it. Remember, over the next few weeks, the passages posted are meant to stimulate you into writing in your journal. The idea is to establish not only a practice, but a voice in this practice. You will be reviewing all you have written at the end of 7 and then 14 days. What you will look for is how you connected with the piece, what you gained from it, and then how you were able to express that in your own words.
How is Thomas Merton using the term "world's gain" in this poem? Is it just to express there is a lot to gain by an "unthinkable experience?" This caught my attention because it is not worldy gain we are after.
ReplyDeleteHow is Merton using the term "world's gain?" Is it to express we have a lot to gain from and "unthinkable experience?" Which is quite different from "worldly gain" which is how I first interpreted the term.
ReplyDeleteIt always felt to me like he was proclaiming the monastic "substitution" for the life of the world. The "seeking this world's gain" was the praying for the world that it may find salvation. The task of the monk. The "unthinkable experience" is the monastic life itself. The monk seeks the salvation of the world through their prayers for the world and their very "being a part from the world". Just a thought. TJM
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