There is no-where in you,
a paradise that is no-place and there
you do not enter, except without a story.
To enter there is to become unnameable.
Whoever is there is homeless
for he has no door, no identity
with which to go out and to come in.
Whoever is nowhere is nobody,
and therefore cannot exist except as unborn:
no disguise will avail him anything.
Such a one is neither lost nor found.
But he who has an address is lost….
Thomas Merton (1915-68), The Fall.
'Collected Poems of Thomas Merton', copyright 1963 by the Abbey of Gethsemani. In Rowan Williams, 'A Century of Poetry', London, SPCK, 2022.
This is the question-begging reflection of a monk who entered the monastery of Gethsemani in Kentucky in 1940. For me, it captures the temptation we all face to find our identity in the names we take, the places we inhabit, and the reputations we acquire, rather than in Christ (Colossians 1:15-20). I have altered the format and punctuation, in the attempt to make it easier to read and follow.
0 Comments