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July 29, 2007
> 11:38 AM
zeal without wisdom A few days ago I got an e-mail from my friend Mike Bishop (hope you don't mind, dude, but you're busted out), asking me about a Merton quote he had seen in a Eugene Peterson book. He wanted to get my take on it. He already had most of what thought there, and I added my 4.5 cents worth in a reply, which I'm turning into a blog post here. How's that for recycling. Maybe we should call that "green blogging." ha! I've edited this e-mail deal a bit so it will fit better in a blog arena. OK, here it begins... I've been reading a wonderful little book by EuPete called "The Jesus Way" and he has a quote from Senor Merton from "Seasons of Celebration"... Here it is (from page 18):My response: I think you're very right, actually. It sounds like the kind of "zealotry" he's probably talking about is the kind that you find INside the monastery, with which he would have been extremely familiar, even from within himself. He talks about things like this often in other places, not necessarily in those words, but definitely the same concept. He oversaw the spiritual formation of quite a number of younger monks while he was there, not to mention unofficially being a spiritual director to so many people outside the walls of the place. The kind of thing you're describing is very much what he warns against many times in other writings. It's that thing we see so often in charismatic circles (we're both familiar with that for sure) - the "God told me's" - Young monks in Cistercian monasteries get that same ailment. They "hear" things all the time. They get excited about having heard something and they immaturely run with something they do not properly understand, that they haven't grown enough to get hold of yet. This happens constantly with very sincere young Christians. Unfortunately, it happens with "older" Christians too, those who should "by this time be teachers." We have, in certain circles, forgotten how to spiritually parent people, how to help form them into new Creatures. I'm sure old Dallas could chime in on that for a while. I just started re-reading a Merton book this week, his last, published recently post-mortem, called The Inner Experience. It's thoughts about contemplation and the contemplative life. I'll give you a short quote which I think ties in well with what you're talking about... Well, first he goes on talking about how we often are not who we think we are. We have illusions about ourselves that we tell to ourselves and many times we can't even recognize these illusions. So when we say "I" this, want that or whatever, we're not even talking about our real selves but some externally constructed partial self that needs to be torn down in order for us to, essentially, in my words, get real and be real to ourselves and to God. OK, now the quote... I think that is very parallel to what you're talking about. And it's not that this proverbial guy is even aware that he's doing anything bad, he's just doing it. But it is bad. What he's learning and what he's teaching himself in this exercise there is illusory, not real, and certainly not God. So, he is stunted and yet, believes that he is growing. Very dangerous stuff.  My response to my response: Very dangerous indeed. It may well be one of the most dangerous things we encounter in the process of our spiritual development, and what screams out for good spiritual direction. I mean, when one of us somehow gets the idea that we are more mature than we actually are. This happens a LOT I think, especially when Christians are basically left alone to guide their own spiritual development. Do I have to pull out the obvious analogy of kids raising themselves? Please. You can't live on whipped cream forever, or popsicles - you get the point. When we think we have attained to a certain level and we are perhaps actually 15 "levels" down yet, we can cause ourselves, and those around us, a lot of trouble. Sorry, these things come fast and furious to mind, but you could hurt yourself pretty badly if you try to climb El Capitan and you're not ready for that.We have woefully left behind the concept that someone who is young in the faith needs an older, more mature, wiser guide to help them along to maturity. This is left for monks and priests and ministers. They're the ones who are really serious about the whole religious thing anyway. God, help us remember. technorati tags > thomas merton, zealotry, spiritual formation, spiritual maturity Labels: merton, spiritual formation 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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"We must be on guard against a kind of blind and immature zeal - the zeal of the enthusiast or the zealot - which represents precisely a frantic compensation for the deeply personal qualities which are lacking to us. The zealot is man who "loses himself" in his cause in such a way that he can no longer "find himself" at all. Yet paradoxically this "loss" of himself is not the salutary self-forgetfulness commanded by Christ. It is rather an immersion in his own willfulness conceived of as the will of an abstract, non-personal force: the force of a project or program."
