Having a human experience

Aug. 24, 2006

Dear Leslie,

When I lived in New Orleans, Bunny Matthews' "Vic and Nat'ly" cartoons in the Times-Picayune affectionately captured the spirit of the city and its "Y'ats," the homeboys and homegirls who say hello with "Where y'at?" One of his cartoons pictured Nat'ly taking a customer's order in their po-boy shop. The custome r orders fish. "Wot, you Cat-lick?" Nat'ly asks.

No, I'm not. But the works and lives of priests like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton and Matthew Fox are tempting.

All got on the bad side of Rome, of course. De Chardin took the Book of Genesis to be metaphorical during a time -- the first half of the 20th century -- when literal interpretations of the Bible were the vogue. Not that they still aren't. He also had a sense of humor: "Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed."

Merton sought a monastic life but wound up gaining fame throughout the world for his autobiography "The Seven-Storey Mountain." The book was censored by his order.

Fox was silenced by the Church because he advocated a feminist Christianity. I saw him speak after he'd just written a book, "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ." In it he pleads that once we begin to view ourselves and the natural world as divine, we will begin to undo the unholy "matricide" we have visited upon the Earth. There's a priest with a mission. More than being bad boys, these men's approach to spirituality had little to do with dogma and everything to do with actually experiencing the divine in their everyday lives.

De Chardin: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Through his investigations into contemplative traditions, Merton hoped to help transcend the differences between East and West through Christ.

Fox believes that mystical experiences are available to all of us.

Whenever the joy of living with an endearingly eccentric woman and three dogs occasionally overwhelms me, I wonder what would be wrong with being a monk. You've got a little room with no little knickknacks on shelves unless you want them. You've got three semisquare meals prepared for you. You've got good physical labor to keep you strong. You've got a routine. You read and pray a lot. None of us out here in the other world gets enough of those.

But then I acknowledge that the spiritual path these other men have chosen is not my own, but my path is no less spiritual. I can think of no spiritual way more difficult or surefire than marriage. Love is the way and the goal.

De Chardin: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

The calendar says it's summer, but the sun's waning can be felt and seen. At sunset, the cicada chorale jams Earth songs, and we animals begin settling in.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.