This is going to be good

I just picked up Thomas Merton's book The Seven Storey Mountain. In case you hadn't seen the previous post, he was a man with a pretty good life and he dropped it all to become a Trappist monk. I didn't know what a Trappist was so I looked it up. Trappists are monks of the Roman Catholic religious order, and they live a life of contemplation and prayer. They are usually silent, forsaking idle talk and speaking only when necessary. That's probably as much as you need to know, but in case you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist

I got the book from the school library and I was surprised by it. It was a small black book with no art or words anywhere on the cover. The title had been taped on the spine by the library. There was no quick little introduction in the front, so I flipped to the back and read the last page and a half. What I read amazed me. This is what it said:

"For I knew that it was only by leaving them that I could come to You: and that is why I have been so unhappy when You seemed to be condemning me to remain in them. Now my sorrow is over, and my joy is about to begin: the joy that rejoices in the deepest sorrows. For I am beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled me, and I have begun again to hope and learn.
I hear You saying to me:
"I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way.
Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you, to solitude.
Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone.
Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone.
Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations.
You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved, and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert.
You will have gifts, and they will break you with their burden. You will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them.
And when you have been praised a little and loved a little, I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth.
Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or in Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not as me, because I am not going to tell you. You will not know until you are in it.
"But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created for you this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani:
That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men."


Sitting on the floor of the library, right in the aisle, I couldn't stop myself from just saying aloud "wow." I think this book is going to be good.

One more thing. In my philosophy class today we talked about the roles of individuals and fulfilling your potentials. Notice that the word "potential" is plural, we have more than one potential. I think that education today is focused on producing good workers, not good people. It's all about specializing and focusing on a specific job in a specific field. The training provided created a person who is good at a job, and not necessarily a person who is well rounded enough to do multiple jobs. This can make it really hard to change your course of education in college. Focusing on school with one job in mind can almost ruin you if you discover that you're not happy with what you've been training for, you would have to be re-educated in a new specialty.

People aren't puzzle pieces created by society to fit into one specific role for the betterment of society. People are individuals with their own unique talents, interests and potentials. To live a satisfying life then, in my opinion, is to explore your potentials and grow in your talents. God saw fit to give you your aptitudes for a reason. Why not develop them to see what is right for you?