As of late, I’ve written a fair bit about factions and sectarianism on the left. On that topic, I recently revisited a quote from Thomas Merton.
For anyone who doesn’t know Merton, he was a Trappist monk. He wrote on Catholicism, social justice, and other topics. Among many other books, he wrote the autobiographical The Seven Storey Mountain.
Here’s what Merton had to say:
…the first and most elementary test of one’s call to the religious life – whether as a Jesuit, Franciscan, Cistercian, or Carthusian – is the willingness to accept life in a community in which everybody is more or less imperfect. The imperfections are much smaller and more trivial than the defects and vices of people outside in the world: and yet somehow you tend to notice them more and feel them more, because they get to be so greatly magnified by the responsibilities and ideals of the religious state, through which you cannot help looking at them.
So, readers can probably see some leftist orgs in all this. When members get closer – and membership shrinks smaller – tiny differences become huge. It’s a thing we have to overcome.
As an organizer, I try to focus on this. I try to fight it. Maybe I’ve done it well, and maybe not. But it’s always my goal.
