Journeying through the Land of Shadows

We cannot avoid missing the point of almost everything we do. But what of it? Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect. All created beings begin to die as soon as they begin to live, and no one expects any one of them to become absolutely perfect, still less to stay that way. Each individual thing is only a sketch of the specific perfection planned for its kind. Why should we ask it to be anything more?

---Thomas Merton, "No Man Is An Island"

I choke over my imperfection-my inability to live up to others' expectations, to live up to my own expectations: to make something of myself for the sake of well, honestly, my own glory. This summer has been a time of trial and error, of seeking and finding and then feeling lost all over again. In the process of looking for a new job in a new place, I also found myself looking for my self. Who am I? What was I made to be and do? How am I supposed to uniquely live into this world? Without a job to help me define that thing, or perhaps to simply cloud it, I've longed to come to a stronger sense of my identity. I've stressed over the questions and strained to find answers. Thinking over such things, I have come to realize that i've been expecting not only too much of myself, but also something completely unrealistic for this place in time. I want to see the picture clearly, but the picture can't be clear now. I ask questions and I want answers. I don't want them years from now, I want them now. And yet, the answer I keep getting is "wait, be patient." On frequent occasions I curl myself into a huge ball of insanity as I obsess over what might come next, what could come next-striving to make the best of things and be the best. I work so hard to create an image of what I think my life should look like that in the process I lose sight of the very thing that mattered in the first place. Ironic, isn't it?

If we are too anxious to find absolute perfection in created things we cease to look for perfection where alone it can be found: in God. The secret of the imperfection of all things, of their inconstancy, their fragility, their falling into nothingness, is that they are only a shadowy expression of the one Being from Whom they receive their being. If they were absolutely perfect and changeless in themselves, they would fail in their vocation, which is to give glory to God by their contingency.

...One of the chief obstacles to this perfection of selfless charity is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us-whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need.

Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the 'one thing necessary' may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.

---Merton, cont.

And so, we make our way through the shadows, often not realizing that just beyond them lies the light.

The light which illumines the path before and clarifies the path behind.

We were never expected to have all the answers, just as the shadowcaster is not the one bringing the brilliant beams of sunshine that illumine its being.

We must, instead, trust in the power of the light to lead the way.

But fools, we are, until we realize.

Lay down the reins.

--

The quoted portions above are from No Man is An Island by Thomas Merton, pp. 128-130