My "Merton's Quest" blog is the place where I'm exploring the religious impulse from a systematic and intellectual point of view. Systematic because my intention is to look at Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Wicca through their major writings and teachings. Intellectual because my touchstone will be my own reason -- however contaminated by western, liberal, 60s student values. It's not a surprise that I am in a profession demanding thought and analysis, it is my natural modus operandi and I'm not going to check it in with the evangelical hat-girl as I enter the world of religion.
I am not a natural activist. I prefer the study. But I've been involved in politics for most of my life -- apart from the last ten years when I've wanted to concentrate on my son. I've sat on icy roads blockading USAF missile bases, joined civil service strikes, even stood for Parliament as a Green Party candidate. But none of this has really achieved anything beyond the Quakers' "light a candle" effect, which in truth I've got some problems with. I can't claim to have achieved anything whatsoever in public life. But I acknowledge the need to be involved. We are a social species, and that "social" implies work for the good of something other than oneself and one's biological kin.
I was brought up in the Anglican church -- even though I was baptised Welsh Methodist and went to the only Methodist public school in England and Wales. Boarding school meant church on Sundays, and later chapel every day, twice on Wednesdays and three times on Sundays. Boarding school also meant the structured life of the total institution (I read Erving Goffman the year I left school!). I've been a hill-walker and rock climber since I was fifteen -- the mountains are my natural habitat. All this makes it natural for me to find joy and comfort in rhythm, ritual and recurrence. It's no surprise that a key chapter of the novel I'm currently writing has this as a key theme -- the only surprise is that it took my study of Wicca to make me aware of the value and the need for this.
So: thought, action and ritual. The fourth -- missing -- element is prayer, contemplation, meditation. What attracted me in my earlier explorations of religion in 1969-1970 was mysticism. It seemed to me at the time the one thing that all religions had in common. I am not a contemplative and if prayer involves a personal, transcendental, God "up there" then I'll never manage it. But prayer is obviously something I can't ignore in these searchings, and this blog is the place for me to explore it.
"Merton's Quest" is my study and "Dear Bishop Robinson" should be where I look at action, ritual and prayer.