Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~ Mary Oliver from "The Ponds" in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, VOL. ONE
"Compassion not only helps us co-operate with the movement of Christ's love, it also fulfils us by increasing our capacity to relate to others without which there is no maturity ... The spark in the soul draws a person deeper into the love of the Creator and of the world in a process of mutual enabling. It is impossible to love others in this way while nourishing prejudice, fear and grievances." Compassion invites us to times of silence and to radical trust ... "God, I trust in your sustaining love and believe that just as You give me the grace and desire to offer this, so You will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it."
Insight and fresh vision inevitably depend on our ability to free ourselves from the prejudices and stereotypes that we have inherited, along with everyone else. Merton believed that silence and solitude could play a crucial role in this respect. For example, once, in the middle of the shopping district, he had what for want of better words we must call a mystical experience. There "at the corner of Fourth and Walnut" he was "suddenly overwhelmed with realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness." In that ordinary, everyday, unremarkable setting he suddenly saw and felt God's love for each person, and the deep solidarity that exists between each member of the human race despite their illusions of separateness.
