In the spring of 1958, I was a 10 year old child with a devastating illness that was both physical and psychological. I went rather regularly to a doctor in Louisville whose office was on the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets. Some of the doctor’s treatment was more devastating than the disease, but, nonetheless, through a Girl Scout troop activity, that spring my life began to take a different course. I began to heal.
So it was with great interest that I read this in one of Thomas Merton’s books about what happened to him on that same corner on March 18, 1958:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
After reading that in Merton, I wondered, “Could I have been standing on that corner on that day? Could I have been one of the total strangers that God caused Merton to love with a holy love? Or, could the power of that love have so pervaded that place that when I passed by a week or two later, the power of it touched me and touched my family?”
There is no answer to such questions this side of heaven, but remembering them is where prayer led me as I considered today’s Scripture readings.
Microbes Hurting
The first reading is an interesting story from Jeremiah. Jeremiah, perhaps more than any of the prophets, described the devastation of the Hebrew people as Israel fell to Babylon. To give Jeremiah a metaphor/parable to use in his preaching, God gave him a task. He was to buy a piece of linen, wear it as a loin cloth, NOT wash it afterwards, then put it in a crack in a rock in the Euphrates River. He was to leave it for a time, then return for it. When he returned, it was ruined.
In effect, the loincloth was Jeremiah’s underwear. As such, it collected the sweat and stains of excrements that underwear collects. It is interesting that God specifically told Jeremiah not to wash the loin cloth after he wore it. Linen is a cloth which actually gets stronger in water. Jeremiah and his listeners would have known that. Because of the difficulty weaving linen, it was a cloth of the upper classes. Listeners would have known that, too.
Unless there had been residual microbes (which Jeremiah and his listeners would not have known about) on the loin cloth, it would have been expected to be found softened and cleaned by being hidden in the cleft or crack in the rock. But not so. The microbes broke down the fibers and the cloth was good for nothing. Scripture tells specifically the meaning,
Thus says the LORD:
So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot,
the great pride of Jerusalem.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words,
who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts,
and follow strange gods to serve and adore them,
shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins,
so had I made the whole house of Israel
and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD;
to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty.
But they did not listen.
Microbes Helping
Jesus also speaks today of microbes—yeast. He talks about how yeast is a metaphor for the Kingdom of God:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”
There is always a joy in the smell and sight and TASTE of fresh, home-made bread. It is marvelous to see how the microbes work to turn starch to sugar and plain to delightful.
And Seeds
Jesus’ other parable is of the living power for growth within even a tiny seed. The mustard Jesus spoke about is actually a tree, Black Mustard, something very different from the mustard greens we grow in the garden or the yellow wildflowers that brighten Kentucky fields in the spring. Jesus notes that the seed is tiny, but eventually it becomes a shade and home for birds.
Back to Fourth and Walnut
The parallel with microbes and seeds fits rather easily into our pandemic world. I spoke with a friend on Saturday who thinks and prays deeply . We had not talked for several months. She said, “Mary, everything is upside down. Everything has changed.” She spoke of seeds of racism in privilege without awareness and seeds of worship and community in how we use technology. She lives in an area that has been hard-hit by COVID, including deaths within her retirement community.
We are less impacted here than she is, but life as we have always known it has ceased because of a microbe. In the stress and polarization that follow, hidden seeds of both good and evil have sprouted up to grow around and within us. Life is upside down here, too.
Yet, what is the power of a small thing in the hands of God? Did Thomas Merton’s mystical experience in the middle of a city affect me for good in any kind of linear way?
Maybe…but it’s a stretch to believe. Maybe not.
Yet, Merton’s experience has affected me in multiple sidebar ways: his writings, his representation of a contemplative life, his giving world-wide publicity to Gethsemane, his Trappist monastery home an hour’s drive from my home.
And reading about his having that experience on the same street corner where I had been during a very difficult time in my life–that definitely did good for me, because it helped me see the goodness of God in the small and the ordinary.
Small things—microbes and seeds—experiences, thoughts—in the hands of God bring goodness.
When everything is upside down, it seems important for me to stand on the street corner and love. God can make that a mystical experience, I cannot. But, with an act of will, I can make it a choice for goodness…and plant seeds, raise dough…maybe even help clean the linen before it rots.
Prayer
Be Thou my vision. Help me to see through Your eyes. Help me to love….ALL. Take my ordinary, small efforts to love. Put them in Your hands. Use the microbes. Use my intentions. Use me.
