It is interesting to compare Thomas Merton’s and Etty Hillesum’s diaries, both of which I am reading. Both mystics, but very different types. Merton yearns for solitude. He wants to be detached from all that is to do with the ordinary human interactions of everyday life. No shopping, socialising, listening to jazz in clubs, no involvement in work and projects with other people – he wants none of this. Like Thoreau, he wants to be alone in his beloved woods. His diaries are about his thoughts on being alone and about his writing. They, at least the earlier ones, are full of ‘spontaneous’ prayers and tend to give the impression that they were written with an eye to eventual publication. Interestingly they say little about his feelings, about his deepest longings and about the tides of his prayer. Etty, on the other hand, wants to immerse herself in people. Her major vocation is to love others, not just individually but collectively. She sees her relationship with S as important because, through it, she is learning to translate her intense feelings for him as an individual into love for all. As well as her emotional, often confused and always passionate relationships with others, there is developing a private and increasingly profound relationship with God.
What is interesting for me just now are the different approaches to detachment by these two people, each a mystic, each with an awareness of the presence of God, each seeking fulfilment in God. One adopts the traditional ascetic approach that goes all the way back to the Desert Fathers, whose way of life he sees as the ideal. The other knows nothing of the traditions of spirituality, or asceticism and has only her feelings and insight to guide her. She is involved in intimate relationships with several men, and may have had an abortion. Her sensuality and eroticism are as much part of the ordinary way of things for her as her love for others and her growing awareness of God. What does her life tell us about the role of asceticism in spiritual development? Asceticism is obviously just a means to an end. Ultimately, however it is arrived at, this involves detachment from self and, although Etty is not an ascetic, she is prepared to make that ultimate sacrifice. This is shown when, out of love for them, she volunteered to share the fate of her compatriots in the concentration camp.
Merton lives by the traditional spiritual code of Cistercian monasticism but chafes against the rough edges that do not suit his temperament. He is torn between the support of monastic order and the beauty of the sung office; the desire for solitude in the hushed serenity of his beloved woods, and the seemingly haphazard pull of inchoate feelings and desires. Etty is guided by her feelings and these, as the days go by, run more and more strongly, drawn by the attractive force of love – love for God, love for others, love for both inextricably intermingled. With Merton God is, as often as not, absent and sought with longing. With Etty God is increasingly present as an undercurrent drawing her towards a more explicit awareness. What is becoming clear in all of this is that the action of God must be taken into account. I tended to think of Him as Love, universally bestowed on all, as light from the sun. And there is good NT evidence for this view. If any are not aware of this love it is not because it is withheld from them but because they are not sufficiently receptive to it – too self preoccupied perhaps, or their lifestyle prohibits it. It is obvious, however, just from looking at Merton and Etty, that this is much too simplistic. Although his benevolence is bestowed on all, God also intervenes on an individual basis. And this makes sense if our relationship with Him is to be personal rather than impersonal.