Nothing Will Ever Again Be the Same – Except That It Will
In his famous autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton ends with a chapter wholly devoted to the typical monk’s year. He goes through not just the daily round but the grand liturgical cycle of the Church’s calendar. He seemed to say now I am here in the Trappist monastery and things will always be according to this horarium and cycle.
Except it wasn’t.
He never fully adapted to the Rule and life and finally died a continent away while visiting Buddhist monks – an odd death for a man supposedly bound to a contemplative life.
Many odd things have happened in these last two years and forecasters – and ordinary people – are asking if things will ever be the same again. Work, medicine, roles of the state, economies – all have been upended. Will we ever just go back to the mythical ”before” time normality?
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The Promise of Hope
It is easy to talk about patience. It is much harder to be patient. The people of Israel had to wait hundreds of years for their promised Messiah. It seems ironic, and it must have been very difficult, that even when the promised Messiah came with the birth of our Lord in Bethlehem, the people needed to wait even more decades to be made aware of his presence.
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Looking South For Inspiration
We have just gone through one of the strangest elections in our national history. Called because of a naked grab for more power and with unchecked hubris by Justin Trudeau, the federal election was a costly exercise in stasis. A few shifts here and there of parliamentary seats and the increasing fragmentation of the federal political scene only saw our current government drop even further in the actual supporting vote count – again having less votes than the second place Conservatives- and yet claiming a mandate for sweeping change.
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