Pretty Amazing Grace

Lyrics of Neil Diamond's, Pretty Amazing Grace, emerge from the quiet silent solitude shining within these days. Five days in the plush pastoral woodlands of Kentucky's Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani got me going:

"Pretty amazing grace is what you showed me
Pretty amazing grace is who you are
I was an empty vessel
You filled me up inside
And with amazing grace restored my pride

Prettty amazing grace is how you saved me
And with amazing grace reclaimed my heart
Love in the midst of chaos
Calm in the heat of war
Showed with amazing grace what love was for

Stumbled inside the doorway of your chapel
Humbled and awed by everything I found
Beauty and love surround me
Freed me from what I feared
Asked for amazing grace and you appeared."

Judge Joe Oster and I arrived just before evening prayers, called vespers, after driving from Detroit to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky.

Monks live here. They produce cheese and fudge and fruitcake for a living while they chant psalms seven times daily. Furthermore, silence is spoken in the enclosure, for the most part.

Of Gods and Men, the movie I watched in horror four times was the last time I spent time with Trappist monks. That thriller grabbed my heart like no other as extremests led a line of monks in Algeria to their deaths in the 90s.

Although that tale was true and painful to watch this visit to the home where Thomas Merton is buried was far from violent.

Indeed, my days were in solitude communing with the Maker much of my moments where "the monks dedicate themselves to the worship of God in a hidden life within the monastery," according to the rule of Saint Benedict that steers this community now for more than 160 years when it was the first abbey founded in the United States in December, 1848.

Jesus and his call are always the beginning of discipleship.

From the earliest days of the Christian era men and women ascetics have heard that call and followed the Savior in gospel simplicity and authenticity.

In fact, toward the end of the third century, Saint Anthony the Great led a movement of such persons from the bustling world to the solitude of the desert. Life devoted to prayer and service in community was also widespread, and as the fifth century dawned, Saint Benedict of Nursia founded such an abbey at Montecassino in southern Italy. His Rule remains the most influential and enduring document of western monasticism. The Abbey of Melleray in western France established Gethsemani where 2,000 acres of plush, pastoral wooodlands pulled me from the harmful frentic life I lead so often.

Silence and calm pervaded the days, and me, for sure. My real and true self is better for it.

Sitting there in the edifice enabled me to hear my heart beat. And, in union with the Creator, the experience took my breathe away, so to speak. I was conscious of slowing down and feeling my way into my heart where God lives 24/7.

At the heart of Merton's spirituality is the distinction he makes between the real and false selves. My false self is the identity I enable to function in society with pride and self-possession. On the other hand, my real and true self is a deep religious mystery, understood entirely and only by God.

The false self is created by what we inhabit, namely, the culture where I reside. The false self and society ignores the real one, and therein lies the paradox of human existence, that is, the more we make of ourselves, the less we actually exist. How true that is for me and my experience of six decades. Sin, missing the mark, emerges in the false and egocentric self within. The fall of Adam and Eve, our representatives at the dawn of time, proved this in their drive and attachment to be the center of creation. They crossed boundaries. Sin entered the world.

Everything else I am or do is ordered about this false self, according to the ancient mystics, one head over heel in love with God. All that I am about, then, uses up life in the desire for pleasures, power, honor, knowledge, and more to clothe and vest this false self and its nothingness into something that is objectively real. I begin to believe it! Like bandages I cover myself with pleasures to make myself perceptible to others, Merton, among others hold. The false self endures then.

The mask or fasle self fabricates into thinking it is the real self even at the loss of one's truth. It is all illusion, however, and, like playing Haloween 365 days a year.

Getting in touch with the true and real self is part of the contemplative life far from the frentic life I live so often.

This project of being God's image and likeness, however, is a process, a lifetime perhaps. Glimpses of my communion and union with God assure me sufficiently for the time being.

Quiet uncluttered time drops away the fasle self and all that I create to prop it up on the stage of life that is all an illusion. Enter the true and real self.
Pretty amazing grace, wouldn't you agree? Perhaps Neil Diamond does.