This will be the last reflection I write for this blog, at least for the foreseeable future.
These days, I find myself longing for silence more than speech, for learning more than teaching, for the ordinary spaciousness of the daily more than the excitement of the special. I don’t have much to say these days, which makes writing regular reflections a challenge.
And, at the same time, there is a deeper sea change about in my life.
I’ll let you in on a secret I’ve held since I entered the monastery three and a half years ago, though you may well have picked up on it by now. I have long wanted to be the Thomas Merton of my generation. This fantasy is more than passing. It’s come to symbolize and, in mostly subtle ways, to shape my inner and outer journey these last few years. I’ve planned out the books I’d write and the awards I’d receive. I’ve practiced my responses for Krista Tippett. I’ve even come up with the title The New Yorker would use for their profile of me. It would be called “The Millennial Merton.”
I hope you’re laughing by now. Because, as important as this fantasy has been for me, as I’ve revealed it to a few people I trust over the last weeks, it has come to seem utterly ridiculous. It’s funny in that poignant way that so many of our inner conversations are funny. And like the boggart in Harry Potter, laughing at it steals its power.
As I’ve shared this part of myself with others, I’ve felt, by turns, embarrassment and liberation. The embarrassment has passed; the freedom has remained. So it often is with self-disclosure.
This fantasy really isn’t any different from any other fantasy of success and recognition. It’s just the same old “I’m going to famous one day” story dressed in a monastic habit. And in that sense it is so deeply human, and also, ultimately, a stumbling block on the road home to God and Self.
A dear friend reminded me this week that the world needed Thomas Merton in his time. Today, the world no longer needs Merton, at least not as it did when he was alive. Now the world needs Aidan Owen, and millions of others, to be fully themselves.
I’m reminded, too, of a Hasidic anecdote about Rabbi Zusha, who told his disciples that when he dies God won’t be asking him why he wasn’t Moses. Instead, he’s afraid God will look him in the eye and ask, “Why weren’t you Zusha?”
As I say, this fantasy and this stumbling block are perennial features in the human story. There are also some of us who, from background and training, fall prey to it more often and easily. I am one of those. My whole life I have been “successful” in whatever context I’ve found myself. And, for a host of reasons, some beyond my control and some not, I have fed on that “success” and seen in it the way to wholeness and healing. But like any idol, or any drug, it ultimately leaves me hungrier and emptier than I was before.
None of this is to say that I have no depth, wisdom, or experience or that I lack authenticity. Much of my inner work over the last 12 years has been to shed the masks as I’ve realized that they were masks, to continue to ask myself “what is my deepest desire?” and “who am I?” Beginning this blog, writing it weekly and then mostly weekly, and now stopping to write it, have all been important parts of that process.
My deepest desire has always been to love and be loved. Just that. That simple, that plain, that ordinary.
Twelve steppers know this desire as the desire to be a person among persons. You might also call it the desire to be utterly real.
I was talking to my therapist, who has spent a great deal of time at Buddhist monasteries, about my fear of dropping the fantasies of success. “I’m terrified, in a primal way,” I said to her, “that underneath all the words, and the piety, and the wisdom, and the accomplishments, when I get down to who I really am, I’ll find nothing at all.” Her face lit up, and she exclaimed, with joy, “Absolutely! Wonderful! When you find that nothing, you’ll just be and be in relationship with whatever else is happening or being.”
Her words made intuitive sense to me. To be nothing is also to be everything, and, at the same time, is just plainly, ordinarily, to be. One of the reasons I love walking in the woods or sitting by the river is that the woods and the river have no expectations of me. I can simply be with them. They don’t even expect me, as I so often do, to be myself or to know myself. That’s freedom.
The punchline to a great cosmic joke came last week when someone said of a friend of mine, who is indeed quite wise, that he is the closest thing we have today to a Thomas Merton. I laughed out loud at a joke that only I got. “Okay, God” I said. “I’ll let him be Thomas Merton. I’ll just be Aidan.”
In this just being Aidan there’s that mixture of grief and freedom that so powerfully attends, at least for me, experiences of surrender to God. In that just being there is the acceptance of my poverty and of my inability, ultimately, not to need God and other people to carry me through this life. The grief lies in seeing all the useless effort I’ve put into self-sufficiency; the freedom comes in allowing myself to be carried and loved, as just plain Aidan.
You may be familiar with the famous Merton quotation about that point of nothingness underneath all of our striving and posing. But in case you aren’t, I give it to you here:
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely … I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)
“I am” and “nothing” are a breath away from one another.
I am grateful to all of you for reading these reflections over the last few years, for your comments, challenges, insights, questions, and stories. You have helped me to grow. And I pray that God will bless you with more and deeper life.
With love and gratitude,
Aidan
A Little Fire 
It may not be that youāre done writing. It might be just that the next time you write it will be more because something is bursting to come out of you and less because you think you have something āimportantā to say.
A couple years ago a younger colleague introduced me as āan icon of LGBT mental health,ā and I laughed not only because it was such a hyperbole, but because that had been my dream and by then it just sounded so ridiculous. Congratulations on getting there decades before most people do.
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Yes, youāre absolutely right, Mary. Iām sure Iāll write again, but for now, my writing will take a more private form. I love that anecdote, too. I can totally see that!
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Aidan, these are wise words. I wish you well!
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Thanks, Joyce.
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God bless you on your journey
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Thank you, Bernard. And you as well.
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May you continue to richly bless others, as you have me! God bless you dear brother!
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Thank you, brother, and may God bless you as well!
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Aidan, I will miss your blog posts, but this long goodbye is something for me and all of us to treasure.
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Thank you, Julia.
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Honest friend, thank you for your words and for your silence. Blessings on this way of seeking.
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Thank you, dear friend.
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Aidan,This took guts. I am eager to see what God is bringing about in you.
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So am I!
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As I was reading this tears, welled up in my eyes. I only became aware of you, Br Aidan, about 6 weeks ago, through my icon writing teacher, Fr Peter Pearson. In that short time I’ve read and listened intently to your words which have stirred my spirit on so many levels. Just this morning before reading this, I was contemplating why your presence in my life for just 6 weeks has been so meaningful. I see and hear God in you; you shared your real self in ways that have prompted me to delve deeper into myself and my soul. So when I saw your words, “Millennial Merton,” I just start laughing and thought, YES, we need that right now. My initial response to your good bye was, Noooooo… but then a resounding Yessss quickly followed. I’m smiling now, sending you blessings of joy as I await to hear of how God blesses you in your next chapter. Carry on, dear man!
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Thank you for this response, Karen. Iām glad my writing has touched you. Keep up the deep delving, and may God bless you with friends and laughter on the journey!
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Bless you, Aidan, on your journey….wherever it takes you. I send you love and peace and thank you for your writings….I have enjoyed them immensely.
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Thank you, Gina!
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I have enjoyed reading your reflections and looked forward to your posts. Do what you must, but please know that they did help center myself in a world that doesn’t make a lot of sense at times.
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Dolly, I am so glad to have been able to help you center in this mixed-up world we live in.
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Brother Aiden,
Thank you for opening yourself up. It is often times at this “pointe virge” we encounter the sacrament of God, I think. Enjoy the silence.
Bless you,
Diane
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Diane, that is such a beautiful way to put it. Thank you!
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Not a long good-bye, as I think weāll hear much more from as we did from Thomas Merton. Please do not neglect the OHC community if you go into underground, or the Church, dear Aidan, as an old Priest AHC, you need us as we need you. Pray, knit, Potter, etc., as we hold you in love. Itās all about Love, every breath we take.
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Youāre right, JackāIām not gone or going, just quieting for the time being. Hereās to LOVE.
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This kind of deep self-work takes moxie. Thanks for demonstrating that so gracefully.
Peace, Aidan. Holding you deep in prayer.
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Thanks, Cody.
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Wise words, Aidan. I identify with the desire to be a famous artist …. and also the freedom that comes from putting that down. God’s plans for us are so much more than we can conceive or imagine. May His plans for you materialize every day, one day at a time.
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So beautifully put, Christine. Thank you.
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Thank you for sharing a part of your spiritual journey in your blog. I think you show great wisdom and maturity to recognise when that blog should end. Blessings and peace be with you, and next time you find a spider in your room, gently catch it and move it to another location. They have a journey and purpose too. Love all things. We are all connected. Itās been lovely traveling with you for a time.
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I carry that little spider with me, partly as a way of atoning for killing her, and partly as an offering of gratitude for the lessons sheās taught me. Thank you for your beautiful words, Gail.
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I’ll miss your voice, Brother Aidan. May it grow ever stronger in answering the call to silence, as it did for Thomas Merton. Abundant peace and blessings to you in the days ahead!
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Thank you very much, Jack.
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Bedtime
In despair he cries out,
“Why was I even born?ā
And the answer comes to me
(no time for thinking),
“To love
and to be loved.”
I wrote this remembering a time when my son was young, and suffering from severe tics of Tourette Syndrome. I’m convinced that it is really the best thing any of us can aspire to.
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What a beautiful poem. Thank you for sharing it.
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I still hope to hear you someday with Krista Tippett! You won’t need to have practiced your responses — you can come just as you are. š
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HAHAHA. Maybe one day. I love the come as you are part!
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Wishing you well. I will miss your posts.
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Thanks so much, Dave.
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Dear Brother Adrian,
I’ve been procrastinating posting my comment because I’m avoiding taking in the message you shared. While honoring your discernment to let go of your blog posting work, I am sad, since I only just discovered it and love reading your material.
Be well.
And I hope to catch a glimpse of you at the Eucharist some morning soon.
Wendy
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Very useful.Thank you.I also read your author section on Upmixed regularly.Really good stuff.
bestest regards: Micha
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Glad you appreciated it!
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