Merton Monday, the second Monday of every month on Sinden.org, features an excerpt from the writing of Thomas Merton:
You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt. You cannot believe in God unless you are capable of questioning the authority of predjudice, even though that prejudice may seem to be religious. Faith is not blind conformity to a prejudice--a "pre-judgement." It is a decision, a judgement that is fully and deliberately taken in the light of a truth that cannot be proven. It is not merely the acceptance of a decision that has been made by somebody else.Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 105. New Directions Publishing.
When reading this particular passage of Merton, we cannot but help think of an organist who is facing religious-seeming prejudice in Virginia.
To our overseas readers we should point out that Virginia, while north of North Carolina, is squarely in the South, and as such, is, shall we say, not very progressive.
We've mentioned Brett before, but we don't want to make it too easy for you to pick out exactly where he works, since he hasn't named his congregation in his blog: Out and About in the South.
Labels: Thomas Merton
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