I have to be the person that nobody knows

This article, Thomas Merton - Modern Monk, is in this week's New Yorker magazine.

Being a lifelong Merton reader and fan, I'm picky with many of the "about Merton" articles that appear. They seem to be just a little off, projecting an agenda or persona onto Merton that doesn't sit right with me. Not the Merton that I know.

That is the case with this article. The author (Alan Jacobs) is punchy and quick to draw conclusions right from the start --

"If he had continued to live in the world, he might have died not by electrocution but by overstimulation."

I googled Mr. Jacobs. He is a fine, and well regarded teacher and writer at a school in Texas, but talk about overstimulation. Take a look at his website, and venture, if you dare, into something called "bullet journalism"! Yikes. I can imagine Merton's rant. No wonder Jacobs' writing feels "punchy".

The New Yorker article gets worse before it gets better. I sort of like the way Jacobs presents Merton's struggle with "the world", politics, peacemaking, and world religions. But he doesn't quite get to the contemplative root of it all.

Anyway, toward the end of the article is an insight that I find quite remarkable. An insight that comes by way of Rowan Williams.

In 1978, marking the tenth anniversary of Merton’s death, a young Anglican theologian named Rowan Williams wrote, “Merton’s genius was largely that he was a massively unoriginal man.” And by “unoriginal” Williams means that Merton was not the kind of genius who was always himself, always some distinctive “original” force, but rather was “dramatically absorbed by every environment” that he found himself in. To which one might add: “absorbed by,” yes, but also “in conflict with.” Merton rebelled against Gethsemani’s discipline, but then he rebelled against the character of Clare College, too. Every environment shaped him profoundly, but he always found the shaping painful. He was always, in some sense, and down to the core of his being, at the mercy of his surroundings. 

This is why Williams focusses his inquiry on something Merton wrote in “The Sign of Jonas,” one of the first books he worked on after entering Gethsemani: “I have to be a person that nobody knows. They can have Thomas Merton. He’s dead.” Williams says, “Truth can only be spoken by a man nobody knows, because only in the unknown person is there no obstruction to reality: the ego of self-oriented desire . . . seeking to dominate and organize the world, is absent.” Williams believes that it is this distinctive absence that helps us to understand how Merton “could give almost equal veneration to Catholic and Buddhist traditions.”

And then Jacobs, still punchy, says this:

"He repeatedly affirmed a creed that can be stated in words, but was drawn to a discipline whose masters insist that Zen cannot be articulated. He was his contradictions: the person in motion who seeks stillness; the monk who wants to belong to the world; the famous person who wants to be unknown. ...

"He sought the peace of pure and silent contemplation, but came to believe that the value of that experience is to send us back into the world that killed us."

I think I would call it paradox, rather than contradiction. 

Jacobs is trying to put Merton into a box (or a bulleted list), and that's not going to work. I hope he reads some of Merton's poetry before writing about him again.

Here is the link to the New Yorker article. You need a subscription to the New Yorker, but the 1st 3 articles are free to read.

Merton's last words

Mary Luke Tobin, SL, and Thomas Merton, OCSO, probably early 1960s at Loretto Motherhouse.

Sister Mary Luke Tobin "got" Merton.

As Mother Superior of the Sisters of Loretto, whose motherhouse was just a few miles from Gethsemani, "Luke" and Merton first met in October of 1960.   Merton had brought his friend, Dan Walsh, over to Loretto to arrange a series of classes by Dan for the sisters.  Merton and Sr. Luke connected with each other immediately.  Merton considered Sr. Luke his intellectual equal, a woman who was spiritually in sympathy with his vocation, and a fellow worker for peace and social justice.

Merton and Luke met with each other several times, both privately and during conferences, over the next few years.  After his death, Sr. Luke fostered Merton's legacy at her Merton Center in Denver.

If there is a feast day for Father Louie, December 10th is it. This is the day, in 1941, that he arrived at the Abby of Our Lady of Gethsemane to begin his life as a Trappist monk. Twenty seven years later, on this day, he died in Bangkok Thailand while participating in a monastic conference.

This year I would like to share Sr. Luke's telling of Merton's last words.  The passage is transcribed from a talk that she gave.  I believe that it gives a great deal of insight into the person of Merton from someone who knew and understood him.

I want to conclude by telling you about Merton's last words.  Merton gave a talk in Bangkok, a final contribution, and he talked quite a bit about alienation, the separation of ourselves, tearing ourselves into parts: that which somebody else tells us we are, and that which we know ourselves to be as a center where God is present.  Now if we choose from that center, as Merton continually instructed his novices, then we are choosing according to a unified sense of self.  If we choose from what other people tell us we are or tell us we should do, or tell us anything else that we should do, or have or whatever, we have broken ourselves into two.  That's alienation.  And that's what Merton talked bout so much in his last days, that alienated self, brought all the way over to what others say we should be rather than choosing from one's center.  That is what I think was the great message of prayer and everything else that Merton taught.  At the end of it he asked for the blessing of God for himself and for all these others that are there.

 In the very last of his life, he gave this final talk in Bangkok.  I went to the place in Bangkok, and I visited the room where he gave the final talk, and I visited the little bungalow where he died.  I remember then what I heard about his last words.  Merton, as you know, gave his talk, and then sat down and said. "We are going to have the questions tonight.  Now I will disappear."  Many people repeat that as a prophecy.  I think Merton meant he'd leave.  And we'll have the questions tonight.

 So then he went from there to the lunchroom and had the lunch they had prepared, and then he walked over to his room accompanied by a French monk who talked to him as they walked along to Merton's room and said to him, "Well, thank you for the talk you gave this morning.  Everybody didn't exactly appreciate it, though.  We had some question."  And I thought to myself, "Yes, this is the way it always is.  Yes, I know they said some good things BUT."  There's always that little part, and Merton was experiencing that there.  Actually, it was a nun that said that, but usually I don't say that because we have a bad enough press as it is, so I don't usually set up the nun as the one who said that.  Anyone could have.  She happened to say it, and what she said was repeated to Merton: "I thought he would talk more about converting people to Christianity.  I thought that's what he was going to be talking about."  She enlarged on that.  This is a pagan area where we are working, and we're missionaries, and it's a pagan area, and here he's talking about something else and alienation, whatever.  But I thought he'd talk about bringing people to Christ.

 Merton, when he heard that, instead of getting upset the way many of us would get upset, said simply, "Well, I don't think that is what we are asked to do today.  All the preaching we get on television telling us who God is -- honestly, you wonder what the word 'God' is to mean in all of that."  Merton has it better.  "today I don't think it is what we are asked to do.  I think today it's more important for us to so let God live in us that others may feel God and come to believe in God because they feel how God lives in us."  These were Merton's last words that we know anything about and were said right before Francois de Grunne took him to his room where he tragically died, tragically for us, in any case.  Certainly he had completed what was his journey.  In other words, so let God live in us, so allow God to be the center where we make our decisions, where we live our lives, so let God live in us that others may find God by seeing how God lives in us, by somehow grasping how God lives in us.  Better than any long television explanation of who God is.  A beautiful last message, and I'd like to leave that with you as we conclude the talk on prayer because prayer, that presence of God, that reality of God, which each of us possesses, is our good fortune, "All love's luck."  We have achieved it.  Thank you very much.  -- Sr. Mary Luke Tobin SL

Thomas Merton, Dan Walsh, Luke, and Rose Alma Schuler, SL, probably spring 1968.

Below are some posts where Merton's death is discussed in this blog. It is an eclectic collection, as is this entire blog.

December 10th (December 10, 2009)

The Funeral of Thomas Merton - a white celebration (December 17, 2008)

the monk / poet's journey toward silence (December 10, 2008)

a monk among monks (January 19, 2008)

the Daniel Berrigan connection, part 4 (July 15, 2007)

photo of a dream, finding your way (March 4, 2007)

When Prophecy Had A Voice (December 10, 2006)

the death of Thomas Merton (December 10, 2006)

kanchenjunga (December 9, 2006)

on photographing kanchenjunga (December 9, 2006) 

Prayer is distraction

After Merton spoke to the novices at Loretto on May 15, 1963, he encouraged them to ask questions or offer comments:

What about distractions in prayer?

"I used to try to pray by shutting out everything, and that was nice, but, of course, I was a novice.  There used to be a man that lived down the back road, and I remember that the best part of my novitiate thanksgiving was this man going to work at the distillery.  Every morning as he went down the back road, he whistled the same sort of tune, one of his own tunes, and you'd hear him coming.  He always came at the same time, and for some reason or another, that was a wonderful thing in that thanksgiving.  Here was the world.  Here was this lonely man on the back road, and it meant a great deal.

Merton goes on to draw another example from nature:

"Our place at Gethsemani is full of birds.  You simply listen to every one of the birds individually, which is heresy according to the spiritual books, for it's a deliberate distraction.  Actually, it's a wonderful thanksgiving, because who made those birds, and who put them there, and who is making them sing, and who is the source of their life?  It is the one who is in my heart and is the source of my life, and I'm one with all those things.

 - from "Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto",  pp. 31-32

Prayer is the freedom to say 'yes' or 'no'

Loretto Motherhouse - photo by Patricia Drury

On October 4, 1961, Merton addressed the novices at Loretto.  On this particular day he was talking to the novices about prayer and how to prepare yourself for it.  After he got home he began to think about it and he had more to say.  The following is from a letter that he wrote to Sr. Helen Jean, the novice master:

"I didn't say all I would like to have said about prayer.  I think prayer supposed some kind of training, some kind of training that would not be just theologically in a vacuum.  There must be some kind of basic training such as this way."

"In training for mental prayer, the real training, the ... discipline, and learning is how to exercise oneself in different ways.

"The purpose of the ascetical life, the disciplined life, is freedom.  Because as we begin to move through an ascetical life, it is so we can say 'yes' and 'no' when we want to." 

From Sr. Luke's commentary:

"The purpose of the ascetical life is freedom so that when we choose to say "no," we can say "no"; when we choose to say "yes", we can say "yes."  The addictive society in which we live today could learn a lot from that.  The ability to choose, the chance to choose and to say "yes" or "no" to opportunities offered -- it takes some kind of training and discipline to be able to do that.  That's what he is talking about.  He sort of laid it down as a first principle here.  So he wants them to have this ability."

from "Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto",  p. 68

Prayer is responding to reality

Loretto Motherhouse, Nerinx KY - photo by Patricia Drury

There is no prayer or inner life without reality.  Prayer is rooted in reality.

"Well, you see, prayer is basically response," he said.  "In prayer we are continually responding to the questions of who we are and who God is.  We're working with reality here -- the reality of our own identity and freedom and its relationship to God." ...

Prayer helps you find your identity, your true self united with God.  In this identity, you find your freedom; and in this freedom, you are able to respond to reality.  

"The interior life is what happens to you when you come alive in contact with reality," he says.  "You do not come in contact with God except through reality.  The interior life is the capacity to respond.  Prayer is not praying five or six times a day.  It is an expression of who we are."

- from "Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto" pp. 56-57, an essay by Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, Merton on Prayer: Start Where You Are

Prayer is who you are

Loretto Motherhouse, Nerinx KY - photo by Patricia Drury

Prayer begins with reality, with who you are.

This was the simple message that Merton brought to the Sisters of Loretto.  On several occasions Merton spoke to the novices at the nearby Loretto motherhouse as a gesture of friendly sharing.  The topic was prayer and his advice was simple and useful.  The following is transcribed from a talk he gave on a spring morning in 1963:

"Don't let your prayer be a fight against reality.  And the first reality you've got is yourself, and that's where prayer begins.  It begins with you and you don't have to go from you to God, because God is in you.  All you've got to do is to stay where you are.  You don't have to get out of this "base, earthly being" which you are and climb Jacob's ladder and get way up in heaven where God is, because if you do that, you'll never pray.  You couldn't pray.

"You have to start where you are and stay with it, because God is in you as you are, and doesn't expect you to be any other than you are, except that there is a change that God is going to make in your life.  But you have to learn how to get together with God in your life so that this change can be made."

- from "Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto",  p. 25 from the Talk of Father Louis to Novices and Postulants, May 15, 1963

The Mary Luke Tobin connection

Loretto Sr. Mary Luke Tobin (1908-2006) - affectionately known as "Luke" - was Merton's friend and neighbor.

They first met in October of 1960 when Merton brought Dan Walsh to the Loretto Motherhouse (12 miles from Gethsemane) to arrange a series of classes by Dan for the sisters.  Luke and Merton took to each other right away.   Merton described Sr. Luke as "energetic, bright, capable, warm, a wonderful person".  Luke's response to Merton was equally positive: "delightfully simple, very human and very affable".

Merton and Luke were similar in their simple and direct approach to people and their intent pursuit of their vocation.  Luke was almost 7 years older than Merton.  They were intellectually equal and spiritually in sympathy with each other.   Both were profoundly interested and involved in peace, justice and racism and stimulated each other in their efforts.

From 1960 until Merton's death in 1968, Merton and Luke met several times, with Merton visiting Loretto to give talks and conferences for the sisters and Sr. Luke taking part in conferences at Gethsemane.  They also met for many private discussions.

Sr. Luke was one of only 15 women invited to the 2nd Vatican Council, and one of only three women - representing half the Catholic world's faithful - allowed on the planning commissions for documents on the church in the modern world and on the laity.

Luke was not a "follower" of Merton, but a contemporary and friend.  Luke and Merton shared with each other thoughts on prayer and religious life, and they exchanged ideas and advice.   After Merton died in 1969, Sr. Luke drew upon Merton's writings and her recollections of her personal contacts with him for the material for her frequent lectures and retreats.

"Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto" contains the transcription of a few of these talks.  The talks are sometimes rambling and disorganized, but contain gems of insight about prayer that I find unique.  I would like to explore some of these insights here on louie in the days ahead.

Sr. Luke links:
America Magazine - "Women in the Church since Vatican II", by Mary Luke Tobin, November 1, 1986
NCR Obituary, Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, August 25, 2006
Colorado Women's Hall of Fame
"Opening Church Door" - Obituary in America magazine, September 2006

Merton and the nuns

Daniel Horan, OFM, over at Dating God, has an excellent post about the conferences that Merton hosted for American sisters following the 2nd Vatican Council.  Many of the conferences were recorded and then transcribed by the Sisters of Loretto, a community of nuns whose motherhouse is not far from Gethsemane.

This is an excerpt from a Questions and Answer session that Dan has included on his blog:

Question. After our discussion yesterday I was thinking about how so much of our training taught us to “go ask the priest.” We were not making a decision or judgment on our own. We just didn’t think in those terms.

Response. Now’s the time. There are plenty of sisters smart enough to do that, who certainly have better judgment about their own situations than someone outside. Priests you consult may often have no concept of what your life is about, what your order means, what your needs are. All they can do is look in a book and dig up a canon, and they may not know too much about that, either.

Q. What about nuns who are fearful and inhibited that they cannot make independent judgements? They can really hold a community back.

R. I think they have to be encouraged to go ahead and make judgements. They need to be put in situations where they have to. The old system, of course, did not provide for this. It was fixed so that an individual never had to make judgements but would just sit in line and ask the superior, “May I have a toothbrush?” This is absurd. We built things this way and called it the Cross or obedience. This may have been all right if you were living in Austria in 1772 under an absolute emperor, and all you had to do was to keep the institution going, because it had been endowed. But we’re not doing that anymore.

Q. Whenever we ask permission, it seems the issue gets all bungled up.

R. Exactly, so don’t ask. I mean, unless you absolutely have to. The whole bent of the Church at this moment is for change. And therefore change has the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, the spirit of the Council is that we’re supposed to experiment, take risks, change and develop. This has the stamp of the Holy Spirit on it. Just as obviously, there are people on top who are scared, who want to stop it. They take second place right now. A prudential Christian decision now is in favor of courageously following what the Council clearly wants, and the Council clearly wants development. People who do not want development have to prove their point very hard before one can follow them in conscience. If everybody obeyed all the curial officials in everything in every moment, there would be no progress possible. There would be no point in having had a Council, no point in John XXIII having been Pope.

At the same time, there has to be caution and respect. We don’t act rebelliously or out of contempt, but just quietly go along with what the Council wants. Experiment is the order of the day, so make experiments. Just be careful not to do crazy things. Trouble comes when people want to make an issue of everything, when they want not just to change but also to win. Wanting to chalk up a score is bad. This is not a game of besting the Curia or the authorities. We have to be clear on that. We’re not trying to get points for our side. We just want to do what God wants. If we can once get this distinction clear, that’s all the authorities care about. Much of this other side business is face-saving. If people are obviously needling and insulting authorities, of course the latter will try to save face. But if you’re considerate and in good faith, you won’t be bothered much. People in authority have sense enough to see the difference. I go my way quietly, saying all kinds of things that are very unpopular and that many people don’t like at all. But they’re not going to fool with me, because I’m not fighting them. I’m sampling saying what I think I ought to say. I am not challenging anyone.

[From The Springs of Contemplation (1992), 38-41]

This all reminds me that I need to get Sr. Mary Luke's book concerning her thoughts on Merton and prayer - Hidden in the same Mystery.   Sr. Mary Luke, a Sister of Loretto, was one of the very few women invited to attend the 2nd Vatican Council.  At that time she was and the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religous (LCWR). 

She was also a good friend to Merton.  I like this quote, which is attributed to her:

"Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is."

HT: Dating God