The first book on my summer reading/blogging list is "No Man Is an Island" by Thomas Merton (1915-1968), the incredible Trappist Monk. He was really ahead of his time, considering this book was written in 1955, and his discussions on spirituality and religion are rich and full of wisdom for us today and will be for ages to come. The title of this book is taken from the John Donne poem of the same title in which he says, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." (We're just going to have to get past the sexist language...)
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So, in the prologue, Merton sort of lays out his premise for the entire book. There's a whole lot to think about in these few short pages, which means I can only imagine what the rest of the book has in store for us. Anyway, a lot of what he has to say stems from the idea that we are all connected through God... through Christ... and through the Holy Spirit. We could pull out 1 Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4 here, and he calls those passages out later on, but first, these words may be the most important for us to understand where he's coming from: "We learn to live by living together with others, and by living like them-- a process which has disadvantages as well as blessings" (xii). We must discover who we are, who we are in relation to God and who we are in relation to others. If you know me well, you know that I love everything about community. It is an important part of the Christian faith and an important part of who we are as humans. This idea is summed up in three verses, Merton says: "If any man would save his life, he must lose it," and, "Love one another as I have loved you," and, "We are all members one of another." And, in order to do/realize all of these commandments, we must realize "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:19).
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In order to find ourselves, to discover who we are, we must forget ourselves in order to understand ourselves because who we truly are is Christ embodied. The love we give, the actions we carry out, the things we say are not our own but of God. "Love your neighbor as yourself" implies that you actually love yourself. We can't get carried away with loving ourself, though because then we become selfish. We must "love ourselves in order to be able to love others... we must find ourselves by giving ourselves to them.... This is not merely a helpful suggestion, it is the fundamental law of human existence" (xix). It is damn shame they didn't put this in the constitution, that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, oh Christian forefathers... Had that been a law, perhaps our world would be in better shape.
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Sure we all have our weak spots and our bright spots, but because the body of Christ is made up of so many people, we compensate for each others "spots." So then, how do we love ourselves properly, knowing all of this about ourselves and about each other? "First of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others" (xx). This life is not about how far we can get in our own lives or how we can serve ourselves best... it is about embodying the love of Christ and the extravagant welcome of the Holy Spirit every moment of every day. Whatever we accomplish, whatever we gain, whatever we do is not for ourselves or for others, but for God and God alone.
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"I cannot discover God in myself and myself in [God] unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are with all their limitations" (xvi).
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What are your limitations?
What limitations of others are keeping you from being like Christ to them?
How much love are you willing to give?
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Other quotes from him that are striking:
"...Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions... One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask" (xiii).
"But neither do I intend to accept points of that tradition blindly, and without understanding, and without making them really my own" (xiv). --> We too are called to do this w/in our own traditions.
"Every Christian is part of my own body, because we are members of Christ" (xxii).
