a certainty of tread - happy birthday father louie!

[Yeah, I know I posted this last year on my other blog, but I like it so much, I'm putting it here again this year.]

This is a very fine commentary on Thomas Merton by someone who knew him well. From Bob Lax’s journal dated July 24/69 (less than a year after Merton’s death). Jan 31 is Merton's birthday.

it must be one thing to imagine what a guru is like, another to see one. seeing merton was little enough like seeing an imaginary guru.

yet he had one quality, particularly in the last years, but even (to a large degree) from always, from even before he (formally) became a catholic: a certainty of tread.

that might sound as though he plonk plonk plonked like a german soldier as he walked down the street. actually, he didn’t: he danced (danced almost like fred astaire: bang bang bang; or bojangles robinson, tappety bam bam bam) but he knew where he was dancing.

he did walk with joy. he walked explosively: bang bang bang. as though fireworks, small & they too, joyful, went off every time his heel hit the ground.

this was true when he was still in college. it was true when he was just out of college, and it was true the last time I saw him bang bang banging down a long hallway at the monastery. he walked wth joy; knew where he was going.

first time I noted how he walked was on fifth avenue, near the park, in spring (late afternoon, I guess) as he came from somewhere uptown to meet me. bang bang bang. & that time I thought about fred astaire.

did merton & I make any resolutions as young men? one (& it wasn’t tacit) was to talk simply. merton certainly succeeded in that, & got a lot said in simple (not simplistic) language.

after merton became a catholic, was living & teaching at st. bonaventure’s, and was being fed good soups by the nice german nuns there, he was more determined to write simply, and about simple things: things they could understand & that would help them in their lives.

birthday reflection (from the Merton Institute)

This birthday reflection comes from the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living:

Thomas Merton made the following entry in his journals on January 31, 1965, his 50th birthday (he had been living full-time in his hermitage since August 15, 1965)

Special Reflection for January 31, 2007

“When I enter my house, I shall find rest with her, for nothing is bitter in her company; when life is shared with her there is no pain, nothing but pleasure and joy (Wisdom 8:16).”I can imagine no greater cause for gratitude on my fiftieth birthday than that on it I wake up in a hermitage!..Last night, before going to bed, realized what solitude really means: when the ropes are cast off and the skiff is no longer tied to land but heads out to sea without ties, without restraints! Not the sea of passion but, on the contrary, the sea of purity and love that is without care. (..Through the cold and the darkness I hear the Angelus ringing at the monastery.) The beautiful jeweled shining of honey in the lamplight. Festival!

Rue du 4 Septembre, Prades

Number 1, Rue du 4 Septembre, Prades, France, where Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915, still looks much the same.

He was born just after nine in the evening during a snowstorm, and weighed only 2 kilos. His mother, Ruth, was determined that he would be called "Tom".

Merton was always very proud of being French, and proud of being the child of artists.

communal mystery: boundlessness

Here is another poetic image (there are many) from Jim Finley’s book, “The Contemplative Heart”, that turns me on. It occurs within a discussion of boundlessness – the recognition that we are a part of everything that is, and everything that is, is a part of us. Whether we know it or not, communal mystery beats in our blood.

“When the eaglet, in the first moment of hesitant inevitability, leaps from the nest for the first time into the abyss below, the wind of its free fall meets its outstretched wings with a mighty YES that sends the eagle soaring up into the empty air of its ever present destiny in boundlessness …” (p. 138, “The Contemplative Heart”, James Finley)

even with motionless movement

"Untitled" brush drawing by Thomas Merton

(image size: 7 1/2" h x 4 1/2" w)

May 11, 1964 “So we must all move, even with motionless movement, even if we do not see clearly. A few little flames, yes. You can’t grasp them, but anyway look at them obliquely. To look too directly at anything is to see something else because we force it to submit to the impertinence of our preconceptions. After a while though everything will speak to us if we let it and do not demand that it say what we dictate.” (Thomas Merton, "Courage for Truth", p. 198)

Notes from Roger Lipsey:
“ … promise begins to be realized … Merton’s brush is now alive, pliant, and quick. We are beginning to see brush-drawn signs of genuine eloquence, sure in motion, sure in structure, at ease with the kinds of things that brush and ink do, thick and thin, wet and dry, contact and release, density and airiness. Merton has moved closer to his models in Zen calligraphy, priest-artists for whom the brush was infinitely varied in expression. And we encounter in this image a key trait of Merton’s visual art: dynamism. This was a man of boundless energy, an his art as it became more freely his own, through technical progress and greater familiarity with the brush, reflected his buoyancy. In his notes, he once described his art as “contracts with movement, with life”. … [His works] convey not thought but sensations of movement, buoyancy, and joy. …”
(“Angelic Mistakes, The Art of Thomas Merton”, by Roger Lipsey, pp. 43-44)

time is rapidly running out

I don't like to harp on Merton's strong writing on social justice and responsibilities for resistance because (1) I feel like I'm "preaching", and (2) I strongly feel that Merton's writing on these issues must be contexted within his ground of contemplativeness. However they are integral to understanding Merton. Merton's urgent voice, even these 40 years after his death, is still strong, relevant, and desperately needed.

“It is no longer reasonable or right to leave all decisions to a largely anonymous power elite that is driving us all, in our passivity, towards ruin. We have to make ourselves heard. Christians have a grave responsibility to protest clearly and forcibly against trends that lead inevitably to crimes which the Church deplores and condemns. Ambiguity, hesitation and compromise are no longer permissible. War must be abolished. A world government must be established. We have still time to do something about it, but the time is rapidly running out.” (“Passion for Peace”, p. 47)

do not depend on the hope of results

Someone has asked for this Merton quote. It comes from a letter written to Jim Forrest in February 1966, and can be found in the book, "Hidden Ground of Love":

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing ... an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to that you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end ... it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything
..."