Remembering Thomas Merton

 

At the beginning of our journal-keeping study group on Wednesday I read an excerpt from a journal by Thomas Merton from the compilation called Thomas Merton: When the Trees Say Nothing, edited by Kathleen Deignan. I hadn't realized that the next day was the anniversary of his untimely death in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968. He was there to meet with the young Dalai Lama, who would later say, “This was the first time that I had been struck by such a feeling of spirituality in anyone who professed Christianity. ... It was Merton who introduced me to the real meaning of the word ‘Christian.’” As the date of his death suggests, Merton was committed to interfaith conversation long before this became common. 

I have long admired Merton, who was a monk, a mystic,an activist, and a hermit. He had a brilliant, curious mind and his autobiography of conversion to Christianity,The Seven Storey Mountain, was an improbable best-seller with the hardcover selling more than 600,000 copies and millions more in paperback. 

I read The Seven Storey Mountain as a young man and it had a powerful influence on my spiritual life. As time went on I appreciated the way he sought to balance the inward and outward aspects of living as a Christian. Then I became aware of his deep and mystical love for the natural world and of his "marriage to the forest", as one biographer has put it. 

Needless to say, I would recommend seeking out Merton's work. I have the feeling that he would have left the monastic life if he had survived, in part because he had fallen in love with a nurse when he was hospitalized. Who knows!