novice master - audio/videos

Gabrielle at Contemplative Haven has links to 4 You-tube audio/videos of Merton's talks to the novices. I used to have a lot of Merton's talks on cassettes and I would listen to them in the car. It's really nice to hear him again. Gabrielle introduces these talks with some good remarks from Monica Furlong, author of "Merton, a Biography". Thank you, Gabrielle.

a monk among monks (and other comments from matthew kelty)

I appreciate the writings from those who knew Merton that enlighten my way of knowing Merton.

I especially like the Lax passage about how Merton walked: “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.” [see “a certainty of tread”]

Matthew Kelty was a novice under Merton, and also has some things to say about how Merton walked:

“You could tell Father Louis by his walk. He had a rather rapid walk, but not altogether measured and orderly. For one thing, his feet were spread out fan-fashion, and there was something off in his gait. But it was a vigorous walk, except when he was reading, as he often was …” (from an essay, “The Man” by Matthew Kelty, included in the book Thomas Merton – Monk, p. 19)

Fr. Kelty has some other things to say about Merton that I like:

“If you stopped to talk to him for a moment, and he was glad enough when you did, he was always wide-awake and intent, looking closely at you with bright and eager eyes, for he had a plain and even common face, his eyes were rich in life, never far from merriment. His voice was quiet and his laugh gentle, but deep and like a chuckle. He had a way of sensing when something was done and would end the matter there. This was a real characteristic. He loathed dragging things out beyond their measure …”(p. 20)

“His place in the community was a monk among monks. No one made anything of him. He neither expected special handling nor got it. This does not mean that he adopted some sort of humble manner by which he managed to hide his own importance. On the contrary, he was very much himself, very alive and very real. When you met him, spoke with him, had dealings with him, you never felt you were dealing with something artificial: quite the opposite. He was nothing if not real. And part of that reality was his simplicity, his being himself. He said what he thought and he did what he thought should be done, and that was all there was to it … He never made a big thing of his writings, and once they came out he never read them again …he saw his whole life as a calling from God and one he was bound to answer faithfully. (p. 27)

“It was perhaps at his death, and the funeral and burial following, that the true dimensions of Gethsemani’s relations with Father Louis became manifest. It is rare for a monastic funeral to have such an impact as his had. It is not that in the death of other monks we were less concerned with love, for there is genuine love here, but the intensity of this particular experience escaped no one. And it was as the man himself, a combination of contradictions. For it was very sad and grief-ridden, but at the same time something brim-filled with joy and a kind of rapture. I have never in my life assisted at such a joyous funeral; it was more of a wedding celebration! And yet the anguish of knowing that he was no longer with us was a great weight on the heart. All in all, it was a community experience of great love, a testimony to the great mystery of love among us in the power of Christ, a love hidden in some way, yet there, as the great inner reality, the core of our life together. The comings and goings, the brightness and the dullness, the stupid and the silly as well as the brilliant and the accomplished – the whole fabric of the life of day to day was laid bare, and there for all to see was this glorious presence of love behind it all, beneath it all. It was evident that the man loved us. And it was evident that we loved him. And this love is the evidence of the presence of Christ.

“… he was a kind of dividing spirit, a sign spoken against, a sort of question demanding an answer. Thus, he raised issues, and there was no way out but to reply one way or other. In this he was unsettling, disturbing, not comfortable to live with. Put in other words, there was a kind of truth about him that got under your skin, into your heart. He belonged to nobody, free as a bird. He could not be categorized, labeled, pigeonholed. And he had vision … (p. 34)

solitude - dancing in the water of life

This week's reflection, from The Merton Institute. I find these words of Merton to be very affirming and life-giving, and want to add them to this collection.

I come into solitude to die and love. I come here to be created by the Spirit in Christ.

I am called here to grow. "Death" is a critical point of growth, or transition to a new mode of being; to a maturity and fruitfulness that I do not know (they are in Christ and in His Kingdom). The child in the womb does not know what will come after birth. He must be born in order to live. I am here to face death as my birth.

This solitude-a refuge under His wings, a place to hide myself in His Name, therefore, a sanctuary where the grace of Baptism remains a conscious, living, active reality valid not only for me but for the whole Church. Here, planted as a seed in the cosmos, I will be a Christ seed, and bring fruit for other men. Death and rising in Christ.

Thomas Merton. Dancing in the Water of Life. Journals, Volume 5. Robert E. Daggy, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 333-334.

Thought to Remember:

I need to be "confirmed" in my vocation by the Spirit... This ordains me to be the person I am and to have the particular place and function I have, to be myself in the sense of choosing to tend toward what God wants me to be, and to orient my whole life to being the person He loves.

Dancing in the Water of Life: 334