Heraklitean River: Thomas Merton, Henry Sams, & Mary Ellen Chase

At St. Augustine’s House: June 29, 2009

I am sitting under a gazebo at this monastery, having taken shelter here from the intermittent rain. Not far away, two men are speaking in very un-monastic tones about vegetables in the garden. They have big hats, and are interested in everything they see. They walk on under the tall trees with the wind tossing the high branches and unsettling the big hats.
Earlier, among the musty volumes in the monastery’s library, I discovered a book, The Psalms for the Common Reader, by Mary Ellen Chase. That patrician-sounding name rang a bell for me… my father’s collaborator on a college text book? Could it be the same person? I thought Dad’s book was published in the 1950’s, and the one in my hands came out in 1962, so it is plausible she is one and the same. In it she quotes Heraclitus as saying, “God is winter and summer, war and peace, light and darkness, bread and hunger.” This, she writes, could be understood as summarizing the psalms.
Oddly, Heraclitus is also mentioned in the other book I had picked up in the monastic library, this one by Thomas Merton and titled, Raids on the Unspeakable. It is in the form of a daily journal, and the entry for June 26 reads as follows:

“The Heraklitean River
In the Republic of Plato there was already no place for poets and musicians, still less for dervishes and monks. As for the technological Platos who think they now run the world we live in, they imagine they can tempt us with banalities and abstractions. But we can elude them merely by stepping into the Heraklitean river, which is never crossed twice.
When the poet steps into that ever-moving river, poetry itself is born out of the flashing water. In that unique instant, the truth is manifest to all who are able to receive it.
No one can come near the river unless he walks on his own feet. He cannot come there carried in a vehicle.
No one can enter the river wearing the garments of public and collective ideas. He must feel the water on his skin. He must know that immediacy is for naked minds only, and for the innocent.
Come, dervishes: here is the water of life: Dance in it.”

Earlier, Father Richard had related an improbable anecdote concerning some store bought minnows that he had been given to “keep in the refrigerator.” Fearful for their survival, he carried the container of minnows through the woods to a small pond on the edge of the monastery property, and there released them. This was told as prelude to a lament regarding the number of mosquitoes he had encountered along the way.

The Heraklitean river is carried, precariously, by the bug-beset monk through a world of flux and change to its rendezvous with a wetland.
The minnows rejoice at their deliverance.
Dad- I am a minnow, born along by currents barely understood. Have I brushed against your academic colleague with the solemn-sounding name? Would she be interested in these thoughts and written words? You, she, Thomas Merton- are all gone, carried off by the current along with the displaced minnows.
I am seeing it all as one- you, she, Merton- a Heraklitean river sweeping us all along- I, perhaps, no longer a minnow but a momentary point of reference, a semi-solid object under this gazebo, like the twelve stones piled up in the Jordan at Joshua’s command, something for the river to come up against and flow around, a place of encounter, consciousness, and commentary- is this anything significant, noteworthy, intelligible? Or is it just random, flakey, the ringing in the ears of an aging man who misses his dad, his sons, his rivers?

Jonathan: go ahead and lament the lost moments and lost loves, the red sunset on Lake Chaplain with James and David in the boat, the red air and water, the red and black river you are stepping into even now, rowing through, carried forward with the surge of oar-strokes, writing, breathing, with Henry Sams and Mary Ellen Chase- did either of them ever hear of Thomas Merton?

Perhaps not- but they all knew of Heraclitus, and of the Psalms.
And now we have all heard these rumors, spread by minnows, and released by monks.