Complaints about Complaining
I feel expertly able to discuss & recuss this particular issue.
I realize that complaining about complaining might be hypocritical, but... During the past year I bought two books by reknowned spiritual writers Thomas Merton & Henry Nouwen. They are both journals of their last year on earth, and I found them a bit depressing (I ended up returning the Nouwen book).
Why? Because here they are at the end of life's journey and they still don't seem to have much peace. After all those years Thomas Merton was stuck in the "what do I want to be when I grow up" phase - still struggling with where God wanted him to be and what his vocation really was. I'm not criticizing Merton, Lord knows I have much sympathy for him. I just wish he'd found peace, for him and the hope it'd bring to others. I can't help wondering if he was over-thinking things a bit. (I feel similarly towards Pope Paul VI, a very saintly man for whom peace was also elusive. Of course if you're the Pope, the pressure must be enormous).
Worse, Merton was very hard on his fellow monks, too. But of course these are journals, which by definition have a lot of vetching and complaining in them (like mine). I imagine St. Paul's journal, if he kept one, might've said something like, "those damn Corinthinians! I'm wasting my time with them...". Still, some saints it's almost impossible to imagine an unkind word from. I can't picture Thomas Aquinas' journal as anything but clear-headed and calm and full of peace.
Henry Nouwen was not harsh on others, just harsh on himself. Lots of self-flaggelation. Perhaps there was peace at the end, I didn't finish the book.
In the Book of Psalms, David often moves from whining and complaining to finish with good ol' fashioned praise by the end, putting the "alms" back in the Psalms. He gives his worries, fears, anxieties, and angers to God and then moves past them. In that sense, it's unfair to look at journals as anything other than the first part of some of the Psalms.
No comments:
Post a Comment