Dust Become Splendor

Thomas Merton, Ash Wednesday, and being beloved

Hi friends,

February was a good month here. I got my marriage convalidated (which I guess doesn’t mean much if you’re not Catholic, but it meant a lot to me), we found out that we’re getting a puppy in April (our little sweetie was born a few days ago and she is the dog of my dreams – I’m obsessed already and I can’t wait to share many photos and videos on my insta stories), and for a variety of reasons (mostly bad weather) my kids have had more time off school than expected this month, a thing which is always a lesson in schedule rearranging but is also always a gift. 

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“God is all our joy and in him our dust can become splendor.” – Thomas Merton

I spent some time this month dipping into Thomas Merton’s work again. I had the pleasure of listening to James Finley’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere, a series of lectures on some of Merton’s teachings. One of the things he talked about was a famous mystical experience that Merton had, an experience which Merton writes about in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these 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, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . .This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

This is a famous experience of Merton’s, and arguably one the most famous revelations in the history of spirituality. The story is so well-known that the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville is actually marked with a historical marker. What strikes me as so special about this mystical experience, though, is that it didn’t happen during a moment of intentional prayer. It happened during the course of a perfectly ordinary day for Merton. There is such a sense of possibility in that. Of course Merton was a very holy man, but if it is possible for Merton to see people in that way while simply going about his business, it is possible for us too. It is possible for us to see the secret beauty of people’s hearts at the corner of a busy intersection, at the coffee shop, in the grocery store, at the pick-up line at our kids’ schools. 

Hearing James Finley talk about this mystical experience of Merton’s reminded me of a particular sermon I love. Someone I follow on Twitter (I wish I remember who) shared it several years ago and I revisit it occasionally. It’s called “Leafless” and it was preached in 2018 by Father Sean Mullen at St. Mark’s, an Episcopal church in Philadelphia. I won’t quote it extensively, but you can listen to it or read the transcript here (I do think it’s worth listening to if you can, because it’s masterfully preached). The sermon centers on the line from the beginning of Genesis when God is looking for Adam and Eve after they eat the fruit they were not supposed to eat, and God asks them, “Who told you that you were naked?” I love the sermon because it shifts the line from something accusatory to something loving, from a Father looking to interrogate His children to a Father whose heart breaks because His children have been told, wrongly, that they are less than perfect and beautiful and good and whole, that they are less than shining like the sun. “Who told you that you were naked?” We do shine like the sun, and it’s because we are all utterly beloved, each and every one of us. 

When I think about what centers my own theological beliefs, I think about things like Merton’s mystical experience and this sermon by Father Mullen. I think about how God knows the number of hairs on my head. I think about how every person I meet is a bright and blooming miracle, walking around shining like the sun. I think about how God weeps when we are told that we are anything less than fearfully and wonderfully made. And one of the things I love about good Catholic theology, by which I mean Catholic theology that doesn’t twist itself to fit a political agenda, is that it really does try to see people in that miraculous way. The catechism states that “Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.” Good Catholic theology shows us God as a God of love. I think that kind of theology is what experiences like Thomas Merton’s come from, and I want to cling to that theology, even when it gets complicated. Every life is utterly sacred, and it is the best kind of complicated to see every person as a bonafide miracle, a bright spark of divine love. 

Merton says that it’s not possible to tell people that they are walking around shining like the sun. Maybe that’s true, but I think there are ways to show it. I think there are ways to live it out. In the tarot, the Lovers is the sixth card of the major arcana. It is, for me, less about romance and more about the ethics of love, more about what Merton’s mystical experience would look like in practice. In the Waite-Smith, two people – Adam and Eve – stand in the foreground. Above them is an angel, blessing their union. The Lovers shows us that the way we treat other people should point us to God. If it doesn’t, we’re doing something wrong. As Julian of Norwich wrote, “The love of God creates in us such a unity that when it is truly seen no man can separate himself from another.” The sixes of the minor arcana are connected to the Lovers, and they show us what the Lovers looks like in practice: the Six of Pentacles as a giving of material resources, the Six of Swords as an effort to walk (or row) with people in grief, the Six of Cups as an innocent and childlike openness, and the Six of Wands as a communal celebration of our anointedness by the Holy Spirit. 

I wrote this whole letter and then realized that I’m sending it out on the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, Catholics go to mass and receive ashes on their foreheads while being told, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” It’s a ceremony that seems starkly at odds with the idea of existence as miraculous. How does Ash Wednesday square with the idea of the human person as having deep worth? How does being told we are dust sit with Merton’s mystical experience of seeing people walking around shining like the sun? I went back to Merton to see what he had to say, and he didn’t disappoint (does he ever?). Merton believed that Ash Wednesday was filled with love, not gloom. He believed this because he believed that Lent was less about God’s judgement and more about God’s mercy. Of Ash Wednesday, Merton says: “The purpose of Lent is not so much expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, as a preparation to rejoice in His love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of His mercy—a gift which we receive in so far as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.” Ash Wednesday should be an occasion of joy because it is an occasion of mercy. As Merton says, “God is all our joy and in him our dust can become splendor.”