Ways of Sincerity, More Than One

   UPSTREAM COLOR --2013

Author and theologian Thomas Merton wrote about a facet of human nature which he calls fears of the truth. And there are several. In particular, he addresses the meaning of sincerity in every day life.
While much in our lives is motivated by our fears, Merton notes that "sincerity is a simplicity of spirit which is preserved by the will to be true. It implies an obligation to manifest the truth and to defend it... Sincerity in the fullest sense is a divine gift."
He notes that it takes more "courage than we imagine to be perfectly simple with other men... False sincerity has much to say because it is afraid. Yet true candor cannot be silent. It does not need to face an impending attack. Anything... may be defended with perfect simplicity."

In the end, by Merton's reckoning, sincerity is really an issue of love. The sincere one is one who seeks the truth and embodies it. Truth then is not just an abstraction. It is real, living flesh, like yours and mine.
Many in today's world fear that they are not really lovable, not lovable to the extent they think they deserve. And others fear that a lack of real, meaningful love in our lives indicates that "since we are not lovable as we are, we must be lovable under false pretenses, making ourself appear to be different that we are."

In the conclusion to his essay, No Man Is An Island, Merton writes that so few believe in God because they do not believe that even a god can love them. The man who will admit that what he sees may be wrong with him, and recognizes that he may be, still, the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings can make a start to become sincere. His love is based then upon confidence rather than the falseness of illusion.

The film Upstream Color examines the lives of two deeply imperfect, and in some ways, flawed individuals. While much is remarked upon the film's abstraction, the central characters meet, develop and share an intense love for one another that becomes based in sincerity.
She suffers from a serious mental illness and he, from a professional shortcoming that results in the loss of the licensing required to carry out his profession. Initially she offers up certain details of her illness, while he initially withholds facts about his own situation.

The resulting social stigma he bears from past indiscretions and the stigma of her illness, combine to create a powerful portrait of two people picking their way through the world, salvaging and in a measure, redeeming themselves, and each other through sincere love.
The simplicity of the film is provided by the many scenes of nature and the interactions with that nature. The film maker leaves us with a certain ambiguity in those scenes, to believe or not. The effect is both spiritually powerful and insightful.

Love and the Body

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you..." 1 Corinthians:1-19
"We are like little mirrors in which God contemplates Himself."
St. John Vianney

When the Body Speaks

Depeche Mode

Listen Here

To the soul's desires

The body listens

What the flesh requires

Keeps the heart imprisoned

What the spirit seeks

The mind will follow

When the body speaks

All else is hollow...

In matters of the body, there are some who see no body-soul connection, instead they see the body only. The physical, tangible body is their reality. There is nothing intrinsically evil or immoral in things, natural in creation. The Creator has seen to that, writes Thomas Merton. In his effort to express what he sees as the good, the beautiful, the holy, Merton addresses certain issues of the human body.

While all things, natural, created by the One cannot be in any way an impediment to realizing our own true divinity, the obstacles when and where they do exist take the form of "self." It is the tenacious need to maintain a separate egotistic, willfulness that alienates one from the Creator by means of an outwardly 'false self.'
By necessity and by function, this falseness demands an equally false environment in which to operate; the false self subsumes the real; in service to the imaginary, false self we use things for the betterment of this self to the detriment of the One, true, created self, the 'original face' as some call it. Engaged in corruption, evil easily enters as we use many illusions to increase our dependence and attachment to the false self.
The maintenance of such falseness tends to turn one into a fanatic, ever on the look-out for what is not whole or unified. Those who divide themselves, distract themselves in this pursuit to maintain a exterior identity and a second, hidden identity. We all know others whom we may have referred to as 'two-faced' and this is what Merton wishes to address.

The true joy of the world is escape from this little island of false self; instead of entering into union with the One who creates, we encounter much sadness; the grief we sometimes discover is due to the demands of our desire that there be more than there is: he who does not expect, then, has all things.
In any event, the false self is not to be 
"identified with the body. The body is neither evil nor unreal. It has a reality given it by God and this reality is therefore holy... The body is the temple of god, meaning that his reality, his truths are enshrined there... let no one then dare to hate or despise the body that has been entrusted to him by god, and let no one dare to mis-use this body... Soul and body exist together," writes Merton

There are many [persons] in the world, decent and moral, and also who recognize no other reality in life besides their body and its relationship to the environment, or a physical containment within its surroundings. While they may admittedly reduce themselves to their five, discrete senses--taste, touch, sound, smell and sight, their lives are based on their senses and nothing else.
Consequently, they easily fall into illusion-- but do not find fault in the body itself; rather it is the person them self who consents, finding a sort of security in the simplest senses. They will not answer to the secret, still voice of the One, the Creator, who calls them to take a risk, to come out of themselves, making visible all glory of the Created One. This risking, says Merton, is a task for a spiritually engaged person.

Over the Sill, Close the Door

"Love sails around me; I walk two steps on the ground and four steps in the air." --Thomas Merton

Many without any other influence might come to think the world of a contemplative serious or even dry, but this and other thoughts by the late Thomas Merton shows another side to living a simple life-a life that is simply full. Read more of his thoughts:

"It's love; it's consolation. I don't care if it's consolation. I'm not attached to consolation. I love God. Love carries me around. I don't want to do anything but love. That love, secret, hidden, obscure love, down inside of me and outside me where I don't care to talk about it... I have only time for eternity, which is to say for love, love, love... Love is the only thing that makes it possible for me to tick... I am all dried up with desire and I can only think of one thing--staying in the fire that burns me...Sooner or later the world must burn...sooner or later it will be consumed by fire and nobody will be left--for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with... But love laughs at the end of the world because love is the door to eternity, and before anything can happen, love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door, and he won't bother about the world burning because he will know nothing but love." 
--Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk, priest and mystic
A Thomas Merton Reader