“Shining Like The Sun”

There was a moment last week that gave me great pause. 

Standing in the middle of an outdoor shopping area watching people walk by, I was struck with a profound feeling of wonder. Blame it on the Covid-19 shut-in orders, blame it on not being out and about regularly in almost a year, blame it on sitting every day with my 4th-grade son teaching him. Still, there I was, engaging in an ordinary, mundane activity of heading to the store before a snow storm yet being swept away with feelings of wonder and awe.

Namely, to be in the presence of others.  

What a gift.

Standing still and watching people frantically move about to get milk and bread before the big storm, I thought of one of my favorite spiritual heroes, Thomas Merton.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist Monk who wrote many books and essays on the spiritual life. He lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, KY. Although Merton spent most of his time at the Abbey with his brothers, he lived for a brief period in isolation, living as a hermit in a small cottage in the woods. (Although he chose to live a life in isolation, we certainly can relate due to our own current feelings of being isolated during Covid). 

Throughout his life, the central theme of his writings was contemplation. That is, finding the place within you that you are here and now being created by God. More so, once you find it, access it, and live through this place. This contemplative idea laid the groundwork for his now-famous spiritual observation, which occurred on 4th and Walnut in Louisville, KY. An observation that would come to mind last Sunday as I stood in the middle of the shopping area.

Here is what Merton said about the moment that occurred on March 18th, 1958:

“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.”

-Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

There are a lot of things that have come to the surface as we experience this global pandemic. Hopefully, despite the suffering, pain, and isolation, one aspect that we can now see is the gift to see one another anew.  

I mean, really, see one another.  

To contemplate together.  

To be human together.