Posts tagged mourning

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Mourning sickness.

“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody.

He trusts his own visions.  He obeys the attractions of an interior voice, but will not listen to other men.  

He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow.  The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.  

And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he is really a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation.  

The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these.


However, very often these people are nothing more than harmless bores.

They wandered into a spiritual blind-alley and there they rest in a snug little nest of private emotions.

No one else can really bring himself either to envy or admire them, because even those who know nothing of the spiritual life can somehow sense that these are men who have cheated themselves out of reality and have come to be content with a fake.


They seem happy, but there is nothing inspiring or contagious about their happiness.  They seem to be at peace, but their peace is hollow and restless.  

They have much to say, and everything they say is a message with a capital “M”, and yet is convinces nobody.  

Because they have preferred pleasure and emotion to the austere sacrifices imposed by genuine faith, their souls have become stagnant.  The flame of true contemplation has gone out.


When you are led by God into the darkness where contemplation is found, you are not able to rest in the false sweetness of your own will.  

The fake interior satisfaction of self-complacency and absolute confidence in your own judgment will never be able to deceive you entirely: it will make you slightly sick and you will be forced by a vague sense of interior nausea to gash yourself open and let the poison out.”  Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

…nausea of the heart.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to mourning sickness.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Joy in the mourning.

“There are reasons to worry.

It would be lovely if some chinook wind could pass over frozen emotions and bring the instant joy of spring.  Unfortunately, whatever “negative” feelings have been long repressed, tabooed, or denied must be brought into awareness before the repertoire of more “positive” feelings becomes available.  

In order to be free, the prison doors must be flung open and the imprisoned feelings invited into the commonwealth of the self.


Since boys are taught not to cry, men must learn to weep.

After a man passes through arid numbness, he comes to a tangled jungle of grief and unnamed sorrow.  The path to a manly heart passes through the valley of tears.


I was thirty-three years old when I shed my first manly tears.  

On the day my father died, the dam burst and I lost control of myself.  From the first awful phone call, until after the funeral, I was awash in grief.  It was the first time my wife had seen me cry.  I soon regained the semblance of control, and, when I was in danger of weeping, left the house and went on long walks.  


Four years later, I was telling a therapy group about longing for my father to return from the long trips when I was a boy when, without warning, I erupted in an orgasm of grief.  Wave upon wave of sobs followed, gathering up all of the pain of my life into a crescendo.  I cried for the boy who missed his father’s arms, the young professor who already felt old and burdened, and for the man who one day would die and never know why.  

When I finally stopped crying, I felt empty and embarrassed.  

What would “they” think of me?  Certainly they would not respect me any longer since I lost my cool.  


With some trepidation, I raised my head and began to look at the room full of people.  To my surprise I found that many had tears in their eyes and they looked at me with unbelievable, but undeniable, tenderness and compassion.

More surprising yet, I felt as if I had been purged of some poison.  My hard armor of tense muscles softened, I breathed easy and warm springs seemed to be bubbling up from my loins.


Men have much to mourn before they can be reborn.


To begin with, there is the simple sadness that accompanies the awareness of the frailty and fleeting beauty of all passing life.  We all carry eternity in our hearts and yet our tenure in time is brief and, finally, tragic.  Death interrupts the happiest of lives before all of its promises fulfilled.  

The Greeks knew what we have conspired to smother with easy smiles and false optimism - paradoxically, a tragic sense of life yields more joy than warm fuzzies.”  Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly

If I am to ask, “What is my heart’s capacity for joy?”, then I must answer, “What was my heart’s capacity for sorrow?”  If I am to ask, “Will I ever feel great joy?”, then I must answer, “Have I ever felt great sorrow?”  


Can we ever experience the depths of joy…without ever having experienced the depths of sorrow…and the depths of someone else’s sorrow?







Mourning?




…much.  




…must.  






More joy than warm fuzzies.


I have a GIVENNESS NOW to joy in the mourning.