Today’s Wordsmith:

Thomas Merton

He’s a writer many people can claim they have heard of but only a small percentage of those have actually read something he wrote. This is not because Merton was an obscure writer, but rather because, as a Trappist monk who studied comparative religion, wrote about pacifism and social justice issues, and cooperated in interfaith dialogue with the Dalai Lama (among other influential spiritual leaders), many Christians shy away from Merton’s books, settling instead for the cute little aphorisms and poetic sayings cut out of them. However, Merton possessed an astonishingly insightful mind, especially when it came to embracing a faith that is genuine, raw and unique to the individual even in the midst of church community. I believe Merton could write with such understanding on this because of his own journey, which included a lot of anxiety and agonizing doubt preceding his decision to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky as a young man, not to mention years of confusion regarding exactly what kind of faith, if any, he should practice. Nowhere in Merton’s writings is this struggle described more compellingly than in his own autobiography, The Seven-Storey Mountain. Above all others, I have found this book to be a remarkable account of one man’s search for spiritual meaning in a time when religious ambiguity and the rejection of absolute truth was becoming part of modern society.

Merton’s interest in the deep, mystical traditions of the Christian faith, which he believed were withering as more and more Christians turned to an interpretation and practice of the faith that forced conceptualization, rationalization and formulaic answers, drove him to the study of Eastern religions. He saw systems such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism not as something to combine with Christian doctrine, but rather as a way to better understand the mystic experience, which he believed was at the core of the lives of the early Church fathers and Desert Mystics. This led him to recurring dialogue with the leaders of many Eastern religions, and allowed him to model a Christian faith that is more interested in forging a deeper understanding of the human experience and need for salvation than it is with erecting doctrinal boundary lines.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Thomas Merton, the writer, is his own journals, which he kept faithfully throughout his life, before he entered the Trappist community, during his years at Gethsemani, and even in his travels across the United States, Asia and Europe, as he engaged in interfaith dialogues and talks on social justice issues (including the struggle for Civil Rights in America). For any first-time reader of Merton, in addition to The Seven-Storey Mountain, Seeds of Contemplation and No Man is an Island,  I would certainly suggest looking into his journals – one of the best is The Intimate Merton. Here’s a sample:

What (besides making lists of the vices of our age) are some of the greatest vices of our age? To begin with, people began to get self-conscious about the fact that their misconducted lives were going to pieces, so instead of ceasing to do the things that made them ashamed and unhappy, they made it a new rule that they must never be ashamed of the things they did. There was to be only one capital sin: to be ashamed. That was how they thought they could solve the problem of sin, by abolishing the term.