"Roots............................."

Thomas Merton wasn’t my first revelation concerning my old-time holiness bunch having it wrong about all Catholics going to hell. A little old lady who once answered my evangelistic knock on her front door with a smile, one that then responded to my query of her being a Christian by illuminating her whole face, was my initial clue. The Trappist monk’s literature, though, fills a large portion of my book shelf, some volumes more treasured than others. He and I part company concerning several tenets his church holds; but, then, that’s also true of my relationship with everything that has evolved along the way after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenberg assembly’s door, Pentecostals included. Forty-two years in this faith has taught me that nobody has God locked up inside a doctrinal box; it’s okay to disagree as long as you don’t “make waves”; and usually, if one cares to explore the other guy’s thinking, there is much where what separates us is no more than perspective, language as big an issue as anything else. In other words, when you boil it all down, the real problem here is me “in” Christ. Merton made me smile this morning. After blowing my mind with his announcement in an earlier chapter of God having made man “in order that man might become God”, he now points to the possibility of one’s humanity spoiling everything achieved by contemplation. This merger that we might know with the Spirit works only “as long as our eyes are not on ourselves”. Now there’s a mouthful! In our Wednesday evening class we talked about idols, how we can make them out of most anything: money, hobbies, possessions, people, ministries, even chapter and verse mental images set in concrete, the only life therein our own. How easy it is to fall into any of these traps, including the last one, while sitting in a pew, serving on the deacon board. How many along the way have seemed to be no more than “puffed up” in a call to preach, a gift claimed? How often have I, myself, looked in the mirror and recognized such condition still there in some corner of me? This is what I tried to teach my daughters, what I want my grandchildren to learn, not authority, arrogance, and adamant self-righteousness, but assurance of His grace ever there to meet with us at the inner oasis if we are but willing to surrender unto Him all that we are…….