The Joy of Celebrating Thomas Merton

A view of the house where Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915. Prades France.

Photo by Jim Forest.

This post, celebrating Thomas Merton's birthday, has been offered by a reader, Cristóvão de S. Meneses Júnior, president of “Associação Thomas Merton”. Thank you, Cristó!

"The joy of celebrating Thomas Merton is, for a legion of admirers, an enthusiastic opportunity to give thanks to the Lord for the clues found in his books for a different spiritual path: prayer is no longer a rigid technique or static devotional practice; instead it becomes a loving way to remain in the presence of God and to be one substance with His Will."

___

THE JOY OF CELEBRATING THOMAS MERTON

The sign of Aquarius and the “last day of January” reminds us that we have already taken 106 turns around the sun since 1915, the year of a great and pointless war. It was in this space-time, “under the shadows of certain French mountains”, in little Prades, in a house on the corner of Rue du 4 Septembre and Rue du Palais-de-Justice, that the cry of artists Ruth and Owen’s first son echoed. So was born Thomas James Merton.

Sign; War; Mountain; Corner: keywords that would outline the profile of the boy born this day. Who will this boy be? What would or could stop this young man? How did he become a New Man?

We have read and reread Merton's books for decades, familiarizing ourselves with the power of his intellect and literary gift, with an enchantment by his intense and ardent inner life, and humanized by his contradictions. It is the absurd and the Grace personified: his childhood – youth - adult life is a catalytic vortex of all who look within and truly seek God.

This silent cloister prophet drew the attention of the world, writing on the most diverse subjects, anticipating essential issues in the social and ecclesial realms. His New Seeds of Contemplation, for example, planted in the Church the universal call to holiness, an intention ratified and updated by Pope Francis in the Gaudete et Exsultate (2018). His pioneering movement in the dialogue with other religious traditions and the criticisms of capitalist society's consumption reverberate in Evangelii Gaudium (2013). The Supreme Pontiff's formal recognition of the “extraordinary American” would come from the historic speech he made at the United States Congress in September 2015, when he notes that Thomas Merton “remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people.”

The joy of celebrating Thomas Merton is, for a legion of admirers, an enthusiastic opportunity to give thanks to the Lord for the clues found in his books for a different spiritual path: prayer is no longer a rigid technique or static devotional practice; instead it becomes a loving way to remain in the presence of God and to be one substance with His Will.

It is now noticeable in Brazil, a new generation of charmed readers, and, therefore, interested in the message of the Trappist monk. Here is the secret, Merton had a gift in which he excelled: that of causing the reader a feeling of closeness and identification, providing us with the keys to his spiritual progress - which is also ours: Love as our true destiny, which must be revealed by the One we love!

The experience currently developed by the Thomas Merton Association in Brazil, and also in Portugal, of fostering reading groups through videoconference has given breath to the spiritual life of some dozens of people isolated by the pandemic. The testimonies and shares at each meeting show the depth and gratitude to the spiritual mentor: “Thomas Merton illuminates the steps towards my purpose in life”; "He has a modern view of Christianity"; "Merton represents a lighthouse for a boat long lost in a dark storm ..."; “I was touched by his restlessness”; "Merton represents a spirituality that translates the Mystery into the language of the soul"; “He is the icon of the human being rooted in God”; "It is the openness of heart and mind that fascinates me in Thomas Merton"; “Merton represents to me a contemporary spiritual master who knows the profound realities of the human being and is sensitive to the transcendent mystery”; "Merton represents to me a clearing in the dense bustle of contemporary life"; "It represents the Spirit of God breathing more time for spirituality and less of church-ism... more silence locked in my room and less hallelujah-ism, more listening to God and less of deviant worldliness from the only thing that matters."

In such bitter times, marked by successions of annoyances, Thomas Merton's legacy, as J. C. Ismael rightly points out, "deserves to be remembered by the generation that loved him and known by the one that ignores him."

May the phenomenon that emanates from the life-work-example of the Trappist monk, which unites us around Christ, be the invitation to the ball of the great cosmic dance, it will then culminate when the vastness of the entire Universe hears the eternal refrain: “Love has won, Love is victorious.”

Cristóvão de S. Meneses Júnior is president of “Associação Thomas Merton”.

Our Times are Apocalyptic

(Twitter/ICAN Australia)

“There is no need to insist that in a world where another Hitler is very possible the mere existence of nuclear weapons constitutes the most tragic and serious problem that the human race has ever had to contend with. Indeed, the atmosphere of hatred, suspicion and tension in which we all live is precisely what is needed to produce Hitlers.

“It is no exaggeration to say that our times are Apocalyptic, in the sense that we seem to have come to a point at which all the hidden, mysterious dynamism of the “history of salvation” revealed in the Bible has flowered into final and decisive crisis. The term “end of the world” may or may not be one that we are capable of understanding. But at any rate we seem to be assisting in the unwrapping of the mysteriously vivid symbols of the last book of the New Testament. In their nakedness, they reveal to us our own selves as the men whose lot it is to live in the time of a possible ultimate decision.”

Thomas Merton, Nuclear War and Christian Responsibility, an article that appeared in Commonweal Magazine

Note: On January 22, 2021, the U.N. treaty declared that the manufacture, possession, use or threat to use nuclear weapons is illegal under international law, 75 years after their development and first use. The Beginning of the End for Nuclear Weapons

Voices of Nonviolence - a blog where I explore what Nonviolence means for the person and The People.

those for whom there is no room

"Christ’s place is with those others for whom there is no room. 

His place is with those who do not belong, 

who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, 

those who are discredited, 

who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. 

With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. 

He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst…

It is in these that he hides himself, [the people] for whom there is no room.”

-- Thomas Merton

Raids on the Unspeakable (p 72-73)

with hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand

Path to Payne Hollow, watercolor by Harlan Hubbard

Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied
sermon.
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience.
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,

Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier. 

from The Quickening of John the Baptist, On the Contemplative Vocation. Poem by Thomas Merton

Read the full poem HERE

The Essence of all Spirituality is Presence

The essence of all spirituality is presence,
a state of consciousness that transcends thinking.
There is a space behind and in between your thoughts and emotions.
When you become aware of that space,
you are present,
and you realize that your personal history,
which consists of thought,
is not your true identity and is not the essence of who you are.
What is that space, that inner spaciousness?
It is pure consciousness,
the transcendent "I AM" that becomes aware of itself.
The Buddha calls it sunyata,
emptiness.
It is the "kingdom of heaven" that Jesus pointed to,
which is within you
here and now.

-- Eckhart Tolle

Everything Matters

[I seldom (never?) quote Richard Rohr's daily posting in its entirety, but this one hit home for me. The reflection is from Cynthia Bourgeault. It belongs here.]

 Thursday,  October 29, 2020

 

Only the Divine matters,
And because the Divine matters,
Everything matters.

                                                             —Thomas Keating, “What Matters”

The simplicity of the final poem in The Secret Embrace speaks eloquently of what I (Richard) know more deeply to be true with every passing year. It’s the incarnational message at the heart of the Gospel: everything belongs! It is a Christ-soaked universe. As we near the end of this series, Cynthia Bourgeault shares her understanding of Thomas Keating’s final legacy to us. 

In October 2018, two weeks before he died, Thomas Keating emerged briefly from four days in what appeared to be a coma to deliver an extraordinary final message beamed straight to the heart of the world. [1] Acknowledging that “an extraordinary moment of civilization seems to be overtaking us,” he urged the human family to scrap old approaches based on religious or political dogma and “begin a new world with one that actually exists,” a world whose truth is guided by “silence and science” and whose heart is revealed in a universal resurgence of human compassion and creativity. “We need to find ways to make these really happen,” he said. “I leave this hope in your hands and hearts coming as a real inspiration from the heart of God.”

Two momentous years later, his words seem more prophetic than ever.

Of the many insights Thomas Keating has given us in these poems, two gifts stand out in particular. The first is that he has completely reframed the traditional Christian notion of God, offering us a powerful new roadmap with which to make spiritual sense of our contemporary world. In this short poem of eleven laser-like words, Thomas smashes through centuries of theological barricades separating God from the world and contemplation from action, offering instead a flowing vision of oneness within a profoundly interwoven and responsive relational field.

To have this universal wisdom affirmed so forcefully by one of Christianity’s most revered elders creates a powerful new incentive for a compassionate re-engagement with our times. Practically speaking, the map affirms that our actions, our choices, our connections bear more weight than we dare to believe. We are neither isolated nor helpless but immersed in a great web of belonging in which divine intelligence and compassion are always at our disposal if our courage does not fail us.

The second gift awaiting us in these poems is their powerful reaffirmation that the access route to all new beginning comes by leaning into the diminishment, stripping, and emptiness. Not by trying to distract ourselves, anesthetize ourselves, or use our spiritual tool kit to re-establish the status quo. New beginning is intrinsically disorienting and anguishing; it builds on the wreckage of what has been outgrown but not yet relinquished. As the veils are lifted and our familiar reference points dissolve, it is only on the timeless path of surrender (a.k.a. “letting go,” “consenting to the presence and action of God”) that we find our way through the darkness and into the new beginning. Godspeed and know that we travel the path together!

a monstrous irrationality

"We are victims of a monstrous irrationality

- which we call 'means of communication' -

but which in actual fact obstructs real communication.

A vast machine which processes 'events' and reduces them to gibberish

in which reality is a total loss."

- Thomas Merton