Let us be proud that we are not experts in anything.
Let us be proud of the words that are given to us for nothing; not to teach anyone, not to confute anyone, not to prove anyone absurd, but to point beyond all objects into the silence where nothing can be said.
We are not persuaders. We are the children of the Unknown. We are the ministers of silence that is needed to cure all victims of absurdity who lie dying of a contrived joy. Let us then recognize ourselves for who we are: dervishes mad with secret therapeutic love which cannot be bought or sold, and which the politician fears more than violent revolution, for violence changes nothing. But love changes everything.
We are stronger than the bomb.
Let us then say "yes" to our own nobility by embracing the insecurity and abjection that a dervish existence entails.
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 Hereklitean river which is never crossed twice.
When the poet puts his foot in that ever-moving river, poetry 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.
---Thomas Merton, Message to Poets, 1964
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