Bye for now

It's quite a trial leaving SW. Even when you have pushed umpteen prompts to LEAVE you are still on the site. Now I am on countdown, about 37 hours before I can press the final option to de-activate my account. Maybe even then I'll get an "are you sure" option and another 100 hours.....😀

Posting this on the Atheist section for many reasons.

One, it doesnt matter much what we call ourselves. As the pious say, "The Lord knows his own" and there could well be surprises when the prizes are handed out......

Two, I AM an atheist according to the strict wording.......a (not) theist. I'm not a theist. I tend to find many of them far too stuffy, preoccupied with their own fate beyond this life. Something to do with the "flippancy of the saved" as per the Catholic Thomas Merton.....the whole context:-

[i]But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.
[/i]

Life is fluid to me. Words are fluid. So many relate to words as to cement, locking their minds into closed boxes - boxes which they strangely seem to identify with the "truth that sets us free". Strange. But there is no arguing with them.

Anyway, as Merton says (and I suppose many here will simply think "Catholic" and toss his words into the dustbin and return again to their very own chains, quoting their very own chosen verses of their very own chosen scripture, or "holy book", seeking to justify themselves, terrified of putting Mercy to the test, refusing the freedom of Grace. Gift) only Marcy should be taken seriously.

Well, I'm waffling as usual. I have found that belonging on a forum stimulates me into rambling on, then I turn my rambles into blogs. I find it therapeutic. So that is what I shall so with this.

Find it here:-

https://mydookiepops.blogspot.com/

Sincerely, all the best to everyone.

Bye.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

It's a pity you are leaving. We need such thoughtful writing here.

But, good luck with the blog, and life in general.

SW-User

@ninalanyon Thanks. I don't tend to think much before waffling on. "Thoughtful"? I don't really know.

Seriously, I'm a slightly vulnerable type and simply get wound up rather easily by the responses of others. But I'm working on it!

Good luck to yourself thanks for the well wishes.

😀

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@SW-User Thank you too. And thanks for reminding me of Thomas Merton, I think I might look up his writings (even though I am an atheist).

SW-User

@ninalanyon Hi again, just speaking for myself, I would give his "Seven Storey Mountain" a miss. In his letters (5 volumes) he often sought to distance himself from it.

His letters are my favorite of his writings, as well as the Journals - they tended to pass under the radar of the Catholic censors!

But whatever, happy reading. He was an "anti-monk', whatever that means.

😀

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@SW-User Thanks! I don't expect I'll dig all that deep. The older I get the less inclined I am to read serious books!

SW-User

@ninalanyon I know the feeling! There is one you might like, that links Merton to Bob Dylan, "The Monks Record Player" which relates the events of 1966.

I wrote a review of this book for Amazon, under the name of "Tariki", yet another pen name I use.

Here it is if you are interested:-

[i]For those who only know of Thomas Merton from random quotes on the so called "spiritual life", this book could come as something of a revelation. Hey, the "spiritual life" can be fun! Ethereal quotes can create in our minds a cloistered Merton, perhaps a Merton floating a few good inches off the ground as he drifts rather piously down silent monastery corridors. Here we have him in dalliance with a young nurse, a visitor of Jazz Clubs, even getting slightly pie-eyed on Jack Daniels before heading off late at night with Joan Baez to meet up with his loved one. They eventually abandoned the escapade half way there but it gives an element of Keystone Cops to Merton's monastic life.

Strange as it might sound, the whole story here is told without sensationalism, and with Bob Dylan thrown in for good measure, it makes for very entertaining reading.

Robert Hudson knows Merton well from his Journals and uses some of their entries here to set the scene and does so in a way that manages, in spite of all else, to give great depth to the story - even spiritual depth. And why not? All of us are contradictory and multi-layered, even if "all is transparent" or, as the zen master Dogen said:- "In all of the universe there is nothing that is hidden."

Dylan and Merton never actually met in person, but did meet in words and music. Merton would have loved some of his own poetic words set to music by Dylan, thinking that then they would actually have been sung with a modern prophetic spirit and not just forgotten and lost in the context of a hymn that "nobody would ever sing". Sad in very many ways.

As Bob Dylan wrote much later in "Every Grain of Sand":- "Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear". But who truly can distinguish the weeds from the flowers, or the indulgence from the true flowering of the spirit? As Thomas Merton once said, in one of his ethereal quotes, met with in pious books of "spiritual" homilies:- "Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts." Yes, it is, and often it can all happen beyond our calculations.[/i]

Strangely, two people have found my review "helpful".....😀....which just goes to show!

SW-User

Just to add, I actually wrote a blog on this book. Catch it here:-

https://mydookiepops.blogspot.com/search?q=For+those+who+only+know+of+Thomas+Merton+from+random+quotes+on+the+so+called+%22spiritual+life%22%2C+this+book+could+come+as

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@SW-User As I said before: It's a pity you are leaving. We need such thoughtful writing here.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@SW-User [quote] Merton then ponders the thought of Dylan setting some of his poems to music. Alas, this was not to be. [/quote]
But Dylan is still with us (just about), so perhaps it could still happen.

SW-User

@ninalanyon Yes, who knows with Bob?