Skip to main content

For Graduates

Thomas Merton writes the following in his book Love and Living (forgive all the elliptical breaks):


The purpose of education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world....The function of a university is, then, first of all to help the student to discover himself: to recognize himself, and to identify who it is that chooses.

...This inner identity is not “found” as an object, but is the very self that finds. It is lost when it forgets to find, when it does not know how to seek, or when it seeks itself as an object....Hence the paradox that it finds best when it stops seeking: and the graduate level of learning is when one learns to sit still and be what one has become, which is what one does not know and does not need to know....

Education in this sense means more than learning; and for such education, one is awarded no degree. One graduates by rising from the dead.

Thinking about this, I only know what he means because I have experienced it, in the breathing autumn leaves, the stone city buildings that first trip into Chicago, the small daisy rising from the Scottish soil. Those moments I was most myself were the moments I was acutely aware of life, beauty, existence, creation, the world. 

It is my goal then to make a practice of this. To make it a way of life. I do not know if it's possible, but Merton seems to imply that it might be.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
6 comments
Read more

birthday wishlist

Enough people have asked me what I want for my birthday, that I have decided to post a wishlist on this blog. I know that twenty-six is long past the age of getting significant presents, but I also know that there are some people who will buy me things anyway. So I might as well. DVDs and music seem to be the fallback for me. It's difficult to get me something I don't like in this arena - but a list might be helpful. I guess. So I need to replace my copy of The Village, allegedly stolen by druggies. This is a must. I keep forgetting, and then regretting that I don't have it. I don't have any film adaptations of Dickens novels - and no, I don't want Nicholas Nickleby. I like Our Mutual Friend and David Copperfield best. I would love some classic Hitchcock films. I'm not interested in any of the ones with Carey Grant. But I like all of the others. Except maybe the Birds. And I simply love How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. I don'...
5 comments
Read more

Book of the Week: The Hunger Games

If Cynthia Voigt had written science fiction, it probably would have looked something like The Hunger Games . In Suzanne Collins's newest novel, we meet a protagonist who seems remarkably familiar. Like Voigt's heroines, we understand her story because she seems so much like ourselves - no matter how strenuous or bizarre the circumstances, we feel certain our story would be the same. We, too, would have those resources, that practicality, that certain sensitivity that separates us from the masses. I don't say this critically - it is the book's strongest feature that it identifies with every one of its readers and says 'this could be your story.' It is not just its portrayal of Katniss Everdeen, the novel's heroine, that is familiar. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic North American nation, Panem. It is a country held together by fear - a fear instilled by the capitol into each of its twelve districts and maintained by a yearly event called the Hunge...
5 comments
Read more