{"id":4607,"date":"2010-11-24T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyrover\/?p=4607"},"modified":"2010-11-24T01:00:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:00:20","slug":"walking-around-shining-like-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyrover\/2010\/11\/24\/walking-around-shining-like-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking Around Shining Like the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Thomas
Marker in downtown Louisville (Lori Erickson photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

So from the perspective of these nearly two weeks of reflections on Merton, what is the meaning of that mystical experience we began with, the one that happened at a busy intersection in Louisville?\u00a0 Merton described it this way in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander<\/a>\"\":<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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 those 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, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness\u2026 This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud\u2026 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 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Merton\u2019s biographer William H. Shannon says that by the time of this experience in 1958, Merton had become a very different kind of monk than when he entered the monastery in 1941.\u00a0 \u201cOne of the things going on in him was the maturing realization, born of this contemplation, that it is not possible to leave the world in any real sense,\u201d he writes.\u00a0 \u201cThere is simply no place else to go\u2026The experience challenged the concept of a separate \u2018holy\u2019 existence lived in a monastery. He experienced the glorious destiny that comes simply from being a human person and from being united with, not separated from, the rest of the human race.\u201d<\/p>\n

That experience in Louisville happened in the middle of an ordinary day, when Merton was running errands for the monastery.\u00a0 And when you visit that spot today, it still seems like an ordinary sort of place, until you know the story of what happened there.<\/p>\n

But consider this:\u00a0 when I visited that spot, I wasn\u2019t alone in remembering Merton.\u00a0 An older man and a young woman were there as well, and as I approached\u00a0them I\u00a0overheard him telling her the story of what had happened there, his voice barely audible above the sound of cars.\u00a0\u00a0It made me happy to see that I was not the only pilgrim that day at the busy intersection in Louisville.\u00a0 Merton\u2019s words still echo there, even after all these intervening years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen 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\u2019s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.\u00a0 If only we could see each other that way all the time.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So from the perspective of these nearly two weeks of reflections on Merton, what is the meaning of that mystical experience we began with, the one that happened at a busy intersection in Louisville?\u00a0 Merton described it this way in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: \u201cIn Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[515,558,843],"class_list":["post-4607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-writers","tag-louisville","tag-mystical-vision","tag-thomas-merton"],"yoast_head":"\nWalking Around Shining Like the Sun<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So from the perspective of these nearly two weeks of reflections on Merton, what is the meaning of that mystical experience we began with, the one that\" \/>\n<meta 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