Midday Hope

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Mikael Owunna, Cosmologies – Alawuala

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INVOCATION

Adapted from Thomas Merton 

Let our hope be in Your love. O God Who Sees, attend to us. 

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CLOUD OF WITNESS

A Book of Hours by Thomas Merton 

Let us suppose the message of a so-called contemplative to a so-called sojourner of the world to be something like this: 

My Dear Fellow Human,

Can I tell you that I have found answers to the questions that torment our time? I do not know if I have found answers. 

When I first became a monk, yes, I was more sure of “answers.” But as I grow old in the monastic life and advance further into solitude, I become aware that I have only begun to seek the questions. 

And what are the questions? 

Can humankind make sense out of our existence? 

Can a mere human honestly give their life meaning merely by adopting a certain set of explanations which pretend to tell them why the world began and where it will end, why there is evil and what is necessary for a good life?

My friend, perhaps in my solitude, I have become as it were an explorer for you, a searcher in realms which you are not able to visit—except perhaps in the company of your psychiatrist. 

I have been summoned to explore a desert area of the soul’s heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts. 

An arid, rocky, dark land of the soul, sometimes illuminated by strange fires which most fear and peopled by specters which most studiously avoid except in their night-mares.

And in this area I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless one has found out how like despair hope is.

The language of Christianity has said this for centuries in other less naked terms. 

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BENEDICTION

Adapted from Thomas Merton

Let us hope that what we will see in the next few years will surprise us by being less bad than we fear, and that God may show the face of the One Who Is and the truth of The I AM in our history, in spite of the pride of every civilization. And that we may reach a period of peaceful development, if it be possible.

May it be possible.