A Quote for This Day (And Perhaps the Next)
“If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace which it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.
“To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.
“Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was ‘peace’ and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war. The “cold war” … [was] simply the normal consequence of our corrupt idea of a peace based on a policy of ‘every man for himself’ in ethics, economics and political life. It is absurd to hope for a solid peace based on fictions and illusions!
“So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed, but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
Thomas Merton, from New Seeds of Contemplation
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Thank you, Mark. It is good to see someone quoting Merton on a Catholic blog. For reasons I have never really understood, Merton seems to be out of favor with a lot of Catholics. I have read several of his books (including the one you quote here) and have gotten a lot out of each of them. Is it his interests in non-Western cultures and religions that has made him suspect to many Catholics?
I think so, and yet Merton was emphatic that one could only engage in genuine ecumenism and interreligious dialogue if one was firmly rooted in and irrevocably wedded to one’s own tradition, as he was to Catholicism. But Merton’s abiding concern was the contemplative life, and it was precisely his deep immersion in the Catholic contemplative and mystical tradition that allowed him to appreciate contemplation and mysticism in other religions, especially Buddhism, which has no “dogma,” at least in the Western sense. But as is so often the case, Merton was abused both by those who accused him of syncretism, and those who congratulated him for it. Neither camp was correct because neither understood what he was really about.
I’m actually reading New Seeds now as part of my evening practice, and am finding it very challenging (in a very good way.)
Great quote – and apropos not just to international relations, but also in blog comboxes.
Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of Your Love.
Wonderful post–words we all ought to take to heart.
Reblogged this on The Chequer-board of Nights and Days and commented:
I try to avoid reblogging too much–I don’t want to ride on other people’s efforts–but the post about teachers earlier and this one now are too good–and important–to pass up. Merton is a personal favorite, and these are words we all ought to take to heart. Lord have mercy on us all, and teach us to desire true peace.
You cannot have “peace” when social and economic injustice prevail in a society. Social and economic injustice are as violent as murder–just a tad more slow-moving and less dramatic. And one should not ask the wretchedly poor to die supine, rather than standing up, demanding justice, because that would imply a demand that they be complicit in violence against their children.
Well said, digbydolben! “No Justice, No Peace”
Not well said, digbydolben. Did either of you read the Merton quote? Peace begins in our own hearts, and social justice is the fruit of that peace, not the other way around. Certainly, bumper sticker slogans are no substitute for the real thing, but in Merton’s way of seeing things, “No Peace, No Justice” would be more apropos. Perhaps Thich Nhat Hanh, an admirer of Merton’s, said it better: “If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.”
Mark — What you say is certainly true. On the other hand, it is not right to ask the poor to wait and suffer until the arrival of The Kingdom, and “Pie in the sky when you die” doesn’t work as a slogan to pacify free people. If it’s true that “many are called, but few are chosen” and “the poor you will have with you always,” then political solutions to the kinds of problems digby cites are the best we can do until agape is universal in scope. Again, it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
Just when Merton has me smugly agreeing, thinking, “oh yes, so many people just don’t get it…” he throws in a suckerpunch at the end.
Julia, I know you meant that as a compliment to Merton, but didn’t you find the quote itself to be smug? I could never shake that feeling when reading Merton, that he believed he was writing to the rest of us from his higher plane.
The great thing about good spiritual reading is that nothing truly new is said. Merton references things from the 20th Century instead of the 18th, 10th or 3rd but what he says is in the exact same vein as those who came before him all the way back to our Lord’s words about the beam in our eyes and the mote in our brothers’ eyes.
Isn’t all spiritual writing just a reflection on the Gospels, and especially the life, death, and resurrection of Christ? If it isn’t, then what good is it?
The following is from Wikipedia, so you can take it with a grain of salt, but I believe it to be accurate:
“An accurate interpretation of the concept of Jihad is provided by the BBC about how Muslims describe three different types of struggles:[7]
A believer’s internal struggle to live out the Muslim faith as well as possible
The struggle to build a good Muslim society
Holy war: the struggle to defend Islam, with force if necessary…”
It would seem to be that this progression from internal struggle to a good society is what Merton is writing about in the quote above. If one wins the internal struggle, one will contribute to a good [Christian] society, willy-nilly. Whether or not it is permissible for a Christian to go to the next step and to defend that good society with force, if necessary, is a debatable point.
I don’t know that we have any one word comparable to “jihad,” but maybe we could use one?
I think try to understand the depths of _Shalom_, what is when the word Peace is used in the New Testament.