freedom | merton

i'm looking through the book
and the table below,
past my feet to the gritty sticky floor of the bistro.
earbuds muffle the cafe, silencing the crowd
playing the soundtrack to the previews of films already told;
i'm one who watches movies more than once.

When we look inward and examine our psychological conscience our vision ends in ourselves. We become aware of our feelings, our inward activity, our thoughts, our judgments, and our desires. It is not healthy to be too constantly aware of all these things. Perpetual self-examination gives an overanxious attention to movements that should remain instinctive and unobserved. When we attend too much to ourselves, our activity becomes cramped and stumbling. We get so much in our own way that we soon paralyze ourselves completely and become unable to act like normal human beings.

like any good preview, i don't really know what the movie was all about.
why waste more time?
sharpen the eyes and press on, for life continues
ready or not.

The reality of a person is a deep and hidden thing, buried not only in the invisible recesses of man's own metaphysical secrecy but in the secrecy of God Himself.

"I have an instinct that tells me that I am less free when I am living for myself alone."
the latte has gone stale;
first cold then spoiled in an attempt to reheat--
believing i could salvage a taste against natural diffusion.
as if a neglected gourmet drink could be saved with a zap,
making up for lost time.

We too easily assume that we are our real selves, and that our choices are really the ones we want to make when, in fact, our acts of free choice are (though morally imputable, no doubt) largely dictated by psychological compulsions, flowing from our inordinate ideas of our own importance. Our choices are too often dictated by our false selves.

it's clearly not the coffee that's got me gittery.
maybe it's the plane ticket i just bought for taize,
and the knowledge that it will be something entirely different this time.
and that it is not a solution to any of the questions in my life at the moment.
and that somehow i realize i have already made this trip about me, fixing me.
and i can feel this poem (is that what this is?) slipping away from me with one more line beginning with
and.

We are ashamed to be so much aware of ourselves in our prayer. We wish it were not in the way. We wish our love for God were no longer spoiled and clouded by any return upon ourselves.

no.
i realize what it is,
after two clear glasses of water and a present-tense-poem written hours later.
a day at the walters: singing, music, phase 10, video games, chicken-fried steak, prayer for audrey, her smile, their gifts: never leaving empty-handed, and the seemingly last bit of life in my heart right now--
moving to topeka.
not gone, but away;
just out of reach of possession.
which is what started nostalgia in the first place,
that second-rate emotion that is the best available.
of course it is.
dazed still, the preview credits fall--
isn't this when the movie is supposed to start?

Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.