SNOWMANN

The Joy of History

Having majored in History in college I developed a great respect for its study. Researching lives, events, progressions,digressions and the like, is quite the endeavor. Trying to step into a place and time, which could be 300 years ago to 1 year ago, and look around from the inside is an astonishing thought in itself. Though I am not teaching, reading history has floored me evermore in recent years (I would suppose partially due to the leisure of it). Most recently I have been reading "Nothing Like It In The World", the story of the men who built the Transcontinental Railroad from 1863-1869. The progression of the story is phenomenal... from the details of the planning, the painstaking initial application, to the accomplishments along the way...all the while painting pictures of the passions, talents, and journeys of men who lived in essentially another world than us. The fascination that studying history can give a trip back to Iowa through, what used to be my arch nemesis, Nebraska, is gratifying. The Omaha (or Lincoln) to Julesburg route along the Platte River Valley has been traveled first by Buffalo and Natives, then Lewis and Clark, then Fur Traders, then been a section of the Oregon Trail, then used by the Mormon's with their handcarts, then Gold Seekers, then it became the route for the Transcontinental Railroad....no longer is it the dreaded boring wasteland I once knew. This movement west is in a sense how I was able to come to Denver....from Iowa....to ancestors from the Eastern US....to ancestors from places in the Netherlands I can only dream about. What a thought....and its even more amazing because its reality.

New Seeds of Contemplation

Mere living in the midst of other men does not guarantee that we live in communion with them or even in communication with them. Who has less to communicate than the mass-man? ...Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn't care, he doesn't hear, he doesn't think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes cliches....Mere living alone does not isolate a man, mere living together does not bring men into communion....to live in the midst of others, sharing nothing with them but common noise and the general distraction, isolates a man in the worst way, separates him from reality in a way that is almost painless. Here the sin is not in the conviction that one is not like other men, but in the belief that being like them is sufficient to cover every other sin. -Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Thomas Merton's writings strike me. They move me to wait for, and listen to, God. It is good to be kicked in the face by some deeper spirituality when things seem to be alright. The more I read, the further I realize my misunderstood acceptance of a "mass-man" reality.