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
