Brothers and Sisters ...
How do we best come together for the common good? Do we find personal fulfillment as we see the burdens carried by our brothers and sisters become lighter? Do we find the strength required in order to risk standing beside the lonely by first becoming at peace within our private selves.
I once joined a group of fellow seekers on a pilgrimage to visit an Episcopal church in Houston. We shared passage on the same jet aircraft. We agreed by common vow to remain a community after the pilgrimage. We committed to support each other after we returned from the pilgrimage. We made a formal covenant to neither selfishly walk out nor deliberately erect a road block across the track we traveled together.
But, like the story of a group of blind men interpreting the anatomy of an elephant much larger than any one of them, only time would real how each pilgrim experienced the journey.
Looking back with 30 years of hindsight wisdom, I would not dare claim to know the heart or even the current residence of my fellow pilgrims from that trek. However ... the process of writing an annual spiritual autobiography while I studied with another group of seekers during our shared years as E.F.M. lay seminary students helped me discover the impact that distant pilgrimage had upon me ... still influencing my point of view today.
The parish we visited during that pilgrimage had, and perhaps still has, a reputation for merging charismatic practices with the traditional Book of Common Prayer. However, I was personally most impressed (and remain so) with the fact that individuals and families had intentionally left the security of an affluent suburban life style to relocate within a deteriorating urban precinct.
I would witness a similar significant risking of oneself and all that matters when I became involved in a few small ways with THE SIMPLE WAY and THE ALTERNATIVE SEMINARY in central Philadelphia.
My wife's career required us to move to Louisville last July. In contrast to my admiration for former seminarian Chris Hedges, she is a big time Thomas Merton.
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
—Thomas Merton
Now our two perspectives on the elephant of
direct action and
contemplative spirituality, if you excuse my reference to the beginning of this diary, will come together on October 24th and 25th. When the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University presents
PURSUING THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF PROTEST - 1964-2014.
Would you like to join us in Louisville ... for a meetup? MY OLD KENTUCKY KOS, ANGLICAN KOSSAKS, STREET PROPHETS, and DRINKING LIBERALLY LOUISVILLE could join together for a long weekend of progressive conversation and networking. We might even brainstorm creative ways to DITCH MITCH.