PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
On a church men’s group road trip to an enormous Christian bookstore in Detroit when I was 17 or 18 years old, I discovered Thomas Merton. I don’t remember when I first heard his name but I know I had been reading books and listening to music that quoted him and even used his book titles for song and album titles. At that bookstore I acquired a number of his works, not diving into them at first but very proud to add this theological diversity to the shelves of my small but expanding library.
Since that time the writings of Thomas Merton have had a significant human influence on my spiritual life. While C.S.Lewis captures my intellect, Madeleine L’Engle my imagination, and Francis Schaeffer my love of culture, only Merton captures, invades, and enriches all three. I have spent much time, ink, lead, and highlighter on his books.
The first Merton book I read was Thoughts In Solitude when I was 19-years-old. My conservative Anabaptist background had biased me against Catholicism but I was curious. I struck me that I was reading a book by a Catholic that didn’t mention worshiping Mary on every page! I have always been theologically curious – probably because I grew up surrounded by my father’s books. I now have a couple thousand of my own.
In my opinion, Monks such as Merton do us a service by exploring and then mapping the landscape of solitude and the interior life. It can be said of Monasticism that it is essentially non-evangelistic, and there is some merit to the criticism, however this cannot be applied to Merton as the influence of his life and writing has had a profoundly evangelistic effect on the world at large.
The center of every Thomas Merton book that I have read is self-real-ization, in other words, discovering who you really are – in Christ. He meant to communicate a means of discovering your true identity, and not just by acknowledging it, but by learning to live it in completely. Self-realization, true self-real-ization can only happen through Christ. Since He made us and loves us, only through Him can we know who He and His Father and we truly are.
Merton’s common theme of finding and nurturing, then denying and surrendering “true self” has been a cornerstone for me. It revealed to me both my worth to God and my relative nothingness in comparison to Him. When we come to understand that nothing we do will suit us unless it is in unity with His will, we learn to trust Him and to remove impediments to His working in our lives.
I consider Merton a spiritual mentor and he (along with Madeleine L’Engle and Bill Mallonee) is the reason I have filled many hand-written journals. I can’t count the number of times I have sat at home or in coffee shops reading The New Man or The Ascent to Truth or New Seeds of Contemplation and I would stop reading and start writing. Ideas came alive, theology became more understandable and concrete and yet more mystical and alive at the same time.
Go to: Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5|The Thomas Merton Page
Related posts:
- Thomas Merton and the Search for True Self (Part 1) Thomas Merton has been rightly called “one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century,”1 but his influence has spread far beyond the...
- Thomas Merton and the Search for True Self (Part 3) THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude was written in 1953 and 1954 during an intense time of solitude and meditation afforded to him, as...
- Thomas Merton and the Search for True Self (Part 2) LIFE AS A TRAPPIST MONK “It is customary,” Merton says in The Silent Life, “to begin discussions of Cistercian spirituality with a historical flourish”1 –...
- Thomas Merton and the Search for True Self (Part 4) THE RANGE OF MERTON’S INFLUENCE Despite the fact that some viewed him as a “celebrity monk”, Merton remained focused on his disciplined life as a...
- Blog Title Change I changed the title from “A Mind Awake” (after a book about C.S. Lewis) to “The Ascent to Truth” (after a book by Thomas Merton). ...
I came here from Sarah Rachel’s page. Nice work here.
As you share Merton’s interest in imaginative writing as a path to God, let me suggest “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Paul Elie which is an introduction to and comparison of the writings of Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Dorothy Day and Merton, himself.
Day, foundress of the Catholic Worker, was a journalist/activist. Percy and O’Connor are Southern Catholic writers of the first rank in the Canon of American Literature. Upon examination, I think you’ll find them worthy of inclusion on your “honor roll”. They’ve got it going simultaneously in the realms of intellect, imagination and culture.
I have deep respect for your roots in the Anabaptist heritage of work for peace and justice but question your openness to the critique of monasticism as “non-evangelistic”. I know you let Merton off the hook because of the “evangelical” value of the splash he made in literary circles in the fifties and sixties. In Merton’s own view, however, his fame as a litterateur got in the way of his life as a monk and was the greatest obstacle to discovery of his “true self”.
I know there are Protestant orders of monks and nuns but the Reform’s focus on the relationship between the individual and his God can sometimes impede understanding of the value of the monastic vocation as a purely contemplative participation in the mystical body of Christ and an essential part of the communal whole.
There is scriptural warrant for this view in the story of the good thief (Lk. 23:39-43), the only character personally promised salvation in the entire bible. Like Christ, he was crucified on the social structures of his time and unable to “do” anything but contemplate and call attention in his prayer to the operation of injustice in this world. For this (alone) he was assured of “paradise”.
Thanks Michael,
Reading this was realy great!
Very nice site. I need to spend some time reading your thoughts on Merton. When I think of him, I’m reminded of the quote from Bonhoeffer, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”
I’m a bit of an introvert, i’m drawn to solitude. It’s how I’m wired, but I think to be healthy in my Spiritual life, I need to be pulled in the direction of engagement with others.
thanks for the comment on my blog. I’ll be back here again.
Michael,
Many thanks for this; I enjoyed reading it very much.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to read “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, I highly recommend it. It is a collection of letters, and thus a bit of a different voice than the “published” Merton. In reading it I was stunned to find a letter Thomas Merton wrote to one of my college professors, the late Harry James Cargas, in 1966. It almost felt like a personal connection to Merton.
Thank you again for these posts. I look forward to checking in and reading your blog from time to time.
Hi Michael
Thanks for dropping by ProdigalKiwi(s). You’re quite right, I did enjoy reading your posts on Merton. I’d also add my recommendation to that of David (above)… Here’s a couple of links from ProdigalKiwi(s) to a couple of Mp3′s about Merton:
http://prodigal.typepad.com/prodigal_kiwi/2007/02/thomas_merton_c.html
And this: an interview with Paul Elie:
http://prodigal.typepad.com/prodigal_kiwi/2007/01/faith_fired_by_.html