I Just Paid My War Taxes--Mea Culpa!

Paying My War Taxes

Today I filed my federal war taxes. I am almost ashamed to admit it. Many friends of mine risked their freedom, their careers, their homes—really, almost everything, by refusing to pay war taxes. Many of them went to jail for this. Others had to live below the taxable poverty line, in other words, very simply, with an extremely low income threshold. I’m thinking of people like Chuck Matthei, Marion and Ernest Bromly, Juanita and Wally Nelson., the Berrigan’s, Phil and Dan, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy (The One-Man Revolution), Maurice McCrackin. Many folks in the Peacemaker Movement and the Catholic Worker Movement. Many Quakers and Mennonites. I appreciate their enormous sacrifices.

 

Chuck Matthei

I am not against all taxation. I am happy to pay my taxes and share my resources for many things having to do with the health, welfare, and cultural resources of our country. I am also happy to share my resources with those in need outside my country, the poor, needy, refugees, the hungry.

Wally and Juanita Nelson, Ernest and Marion Bromley, Maurice McCrackin

But I strongly object to the use of my taxes for war and for imperialism. Our tax dollars have done so much damage in the world. And lately, the sabers have been rattling again—at people and groups in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and many other places. And most ominously of all, in North Korea, where “all options are on the table.” Well one of those options is the use of nuclear weapons. If it comes to that, then the future of the world, the entire future of civilization, is put at great risk. The world could essentially end. All our own hopes and our hopes for our families, friends, children, and grandchildren could be dashed—incinerated.

 

Ammon Hennacy (right)

Can we trust our leaders not to use these weapons of destruction—in fact, weapons of mass destruction. We have them at the ready. They could be launched at any minute.

Dan Berrigan and Thomas Merton

Two Poems for Thomas Merton's 100th Birthday

Thomas Merton Follows the Spirit into Flesh

In the mid 1960s, you, Thomas Merton, most famous Catholic in America.

Convert, poet, celibate monk, famous author of

Seven-Storey Mountain and so many books on spirituality--nobody

Thought you an ordinary man, but you were not fooled.

So it didn’t surprise you when you fell in love with your nurse

When hospitalized in Louisville--for a bad back and an aching

Spirit. You fell like a 17-year-old boy, which in a way you were

(and that’s one reason we loved you!). And you ached to kiss her,

Wanted her hand on your chest, wanted to love her fully, knew you were “in deep.”

The Spirit moves in ways no one can predict,

And you tried to follow Her, embrace the grace,

See where it would bring you both

Together.

[Bob Coughlin / June 21, 2014]

Thomas Merton Burns M.’s Letters

You, Thomas Merton, who so carefully made carbon copies of all your correspondence,

Gathered your letters to M

And hers to you,

And out behind the Hermitage

Lit the flame--as if they were trash

(Or maybe something holy and sacramental--

that could only be disposed of by sacred fire).

These letters displayed your humanity

writ large and bold,

but contradicted the Abbott’s orders

and made clear the ambivalence in your own heart:

The need to be held, to kiss, to be touched, to touch--

for a while trumped vows made to an abstract Church

and an invisible God.

The fire consumed the precious words on paper,

but what of the words written on your heart,

on M’s heart? O Thomas Merton.

[Bob Coughlin / July 2, 2014]

Thomas Merton--Happy 100th Birthday!

Thomas Merton, with the Dalai Lama

The great author, peacemaker, mystic, Trappist monk, poet Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France 100 years ago today. Merton joined the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, on December 10, 1941. He lived exactly 27 years as a monk until his accidental death at a conference on monasticism in Bangkok, Thailand, dying on December 10, 1968.

Merton by his hermitage, on Gethsemani grounds, where he lived the last years of his life

Merton was the most amazingly prolific author. He wrote what might be the most important and famous autobiography in American history, The Seven-Storey Mountain. He wrote about monasticism, about war and peace; he wrote poetry and literary criticism. One of his great works is Raids on the Unspeakable, where he wrote essays on issues of war and peace, pacifism, non-violence, and militarism.

His life and ideas are fascinating--and remain fascinating to people throughout the world. His influence continues to grow. Today I saw a one-person play on Thomas Merton, 4th and Walnut, put on and performed by Jim Nagle. The play was performed at the Ursuline Motherhouse, adjacent to Ursuline College, in Pepper Pike, Ohio. What an incredible, beautiful performance! The title refers to a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky where Merton had a sudden insight--an overwhelming sense of compassion and love for everyday people, you might say the fruit of his vocation as monk.

Merton's epiphany at 4th and Walnut, in Louisville

Here is a joyous psalm that Thomas Merton wrote, almost in the tradition of Francis of Assisi:

Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you.

The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you.

The distant blue hills praise you,

together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light.

The bickering flycatchers praise you

with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there.

I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers,

and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence.

We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices.

You have made us together,

you have made us one and many,

you have placed me here in the midst

as witness, as awareness, and as joy.

Here I am.

In me the world is present,

and you are present.

I am a link in the chain of light and of presence.

You have made me a kind of center,

but a center that is nowhere.

And yet also I am "here."

[Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 131-132]

Here is another poem of Merton:

Thomas Merton's Prayer of Abandonment

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I have written a few poems on Merton. Two of them can be found in earlier blog entries. I may repost them here soon.