“Whole continents and whole races do not take well to imaginary roles, roles assigned to them by minds they find it difficult to understand, and which look quite strange to them. Thus they finally insist, if necessary with violence, on asserting what is least imaginary—and least acceptable to our collective imagination. ‘Here,’ they say, setting fire to a building, ‘see what you can make of this!’
We do not make much of it. Or else, perhaps, we decide it is a Terrorist plot . . . Thus we dispense ourselves from the need to think, and convince ourselves that there is only one way: to go into action with weapons.
Thus we drive them all into the arms of the Terrorists, since we have left them nowhere else to go!”
These words were penned over 40 years ago by the Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton. I have taken the liberty of changing only the word “Communist” to “Terrorist” in the two instances in which it appears.
What is a Trappist monk?
Is that a trick question?
They make fruitcakes. Those kind of monks.
It’s a Catholic order—not like those famous Baptist monks . . . . Anyway, I heard about Merton through some Buddhist connections first, then a book of his was recommended to me by a trusted source. Merton wasn’t Buddhist, but he was interested in Buddhism and other religions in a spirit of ecumenicalism that could have only existed then (in the ‘50s and ‘60s). The politcs are too divisive these days, I’m afraid, the money too tight.
The monastic tradition in Buddhism also attracted him, I gather, and just a natural curiousity about religious mysticism, ethics, philosophy, theology in general. He fit, therefore, into the Mother Church’s traditional view of the monk as the carrier of and inquisitor into knowledge quite well. We have a monk to thank for Beowulf, after all.
I thought they might have been French elopers into the fur trade, tonsuring beavers along the Lawrence River in the 1700’s.
Beaver?
Where?