Transcendence as Awareness

I have only recently “met” Sophronia Scott through a reference from a friend of mine.  Then I watched her on a program through the internet.  She has published a new book on Thomas Merton, The Seeker and the Monk.  Scott is far too young to have personally met Merton, but she has met him nevertheless.  She has met him through his books and, it seems, directly through the Spirit.  Even as I type that, I am intrigued whether I really know anything about meeting people through the Spirit.  But then I conclude, I really do know something about it.

I again have run into Sophronia Scott.  She has an essay in a publication I regularly read.  Her article is called, “I am a bird, waiting: How to find God’s presence in nature.”  She is a great writer and has insight, so I jumped right into the reading.  She tells about her trip to Gethsemani to see where Merton lived and wrote and to walk the grounds that he once walked.  I have been to the monastery in Kentucky many times, so it was easy to relate to what she was saying.  But she certainly adds her own twist to whatever it is I think I know. 

I like what she shares about the world of nature which surrounds the monastery.  She is sure that knowing nature is the best way to know Merton.  She comments, “To know Merton's work is to know this landscape, because he photographed it and wrote about it so often: from basic observations about the weather to contemplative ruminations connecting the natural world to the divine presence at work.”  If you read Merton, you do become aware of how much he describes the natural world around those monastic walls.  

I like the things Scott finds in Merton’s writings.  She picks out a line from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.  Merton says, "The waking of crows is most like the waking of men: querulous, noisy, raw."  I would like to think she smiles when she quotes him.  I know I smiled.  Merton tells us in the late 1940s he was given permission to roam the natural world beyond the gates.  Scott quotes another friend of mine, Monica Weiss who notes that “Once beyond the monastery walls, Merton's heart soared.”  I like the idea of a soaring heart.  I wondered if my heart has ever soared?  I think Weiss is correct; I am confident Merton’s heart soared.  And we are much better off because it did.  He told us about it!

Scott hooks on to this idea, too.  She is confident Merton’s heart soared.  Astutely, she observes, “Merton's heart didn't soar, profoundly touched, because he took a walk.”  She thinks, “He felt something out there — something I daresay so many of us seek when we are hungering for an experience of God.”  She is correct, I believe, when she concludes, “Merton found somehow beneath the branches, on the sides of the hills, in all of nature a sense of transcendence.”  Out there in nature Merton discovers a sense of transcendence.  This is easy to type, but not easy to experience.  I want to explore this.

I don’t think our culture offers experiences of transcendence.  Rather, our culture encourages egotistic focus and behavior.  We are encouraged to get stuff for ourselves.  Young folks are encouraged to brand themselves.  The markers of success are self-referencing.  I, me and mine are sacred words for nearly everyone.  This is not wrong, so much as self-limiting.  If my world is simply that, my world, then I miss out on so much.  I suspect this is what Merton was seeking and Scott is seeking.  And I relate to that as a seeker.

I like Scott’s interpretation.  “To me, this is transcendence — which, as Thomas has helped me understand, is about an awareness, perhaps even a fine tuning.”  I love that she names it transcendence.  Transcendence is becoming aware of something much more than myself.  In a sense it means getting out of myself---going beyond myself.  It is a kind of awareness.  Like nature, it is all around us.  There are always opportunities for transcendence, but we are not sold that by our culture.  In fact, transcendence cannot be sold.  It can only be discovered and that is usually by becoming aware.  Scott takes a stab at it when she observes, “It looks like a complete oneness with all of creation.”

We become aware of all of creation and then discover our oneness with it all.  That is profound and it goes way beyond anything self-limiting.  Scott details some of the process she thinks Merton used to gain and cultivate this awareness.  Rather than go there, I want to quote the Merton words with which she closes her article.  Merton says, “How absolutely central is the truth that we are first of all part of nature, though we are a very special part, that which is conscious of God. In solitude, one is entirely surrounded by beings which perfectly obey God.”

His words are instructive.  You have to become aware you are part of nature.  It is not over against our how human nature.  We are all one part of nature.  Consciousness is key and from that emerges awareness.  It is really quite simple.  But it takes doing things a little differently than most of us do most of the time.  That’s the trick---the trick of discovering transcendence through our awareness.