But the most intriguing thing in the pictures of Merton in those last few years of his life is his mouth. While he was alive, some of his poetry appeared in the New Yorker and Partisan Review, and his collected poetic oeuvre (from New Directions Press) now contains more than 1,000 pages. His superior, Dunne, recognized the young mans talent for writing and encouraged him. It's so essential to living the life. Thomas Merton: that bohemian and poet and extreme sensualist, lover of jazz, prolific man, traveler of the new idea. His name was Thomas Merton. He went back to his room -- and that is where they found him several hours later, on a terrazzo floor, with a standing fan diagonally across his body and a huge brown streak halfway up his side. I mean, if there wasn't a God, this place wouldn't make any sense at all -- but what would make sense for me?". Yes, need for more of a life of prayer, greater fidelity, greater sincerity and simplicity in doing what God wants of me. Then they'd spend all day in country bars, with Merton buying everybody beers and talking nonstop. And Joan Baez. In a book called "The Seven Storey Mountain," published in 1948, considered one of the great spiritual autobiographies of the century, it took the author 372 pages to get to the part in his life story where he could write: "So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom." To help celebrate the cluster of anniversaries that 1998 represents, the monastery has co-produced a beautifully illustrated history, "The Abbey of Gethsemani." He'd taken that name, along with his Trappist vows and robes, to proclaim a new life, that he was dead to the secular world. "I see that I am floundering around in the dark, and need to pray and meditate a great deal. In a recently discovered letter written to Dom Fox on Passion Sunday, 1954, Merton expressed his inner tensions with monastic life: I am beginning to face some facts about myself. (1) This article will examine the last years of Mertons life and accounts of how he met his end. His official biographer, Michael Mott, concluded that Mertons death was by electrocution on December 10th, 1968, caused by one of three factors: suicide, murder or an accident. . And yet this free gift implies on our part a painful letting go, a putting to death of the old, false self, to make way for the true self each person is At least once a year, he visits Gethsemani, along with Mom, no longer a wandering novice but a regular retreatant. Eventually, the most revered and influential monk in the history of American Catholicism was to live and pray and struggle with his demons behind these walls. A second son, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918. The term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. The head of the Benedictine Order, Rembert Weakland, who was presiding at the conference, gave him absolution. I wonderand we shall never know in this life the answerwhat home Merton was headed for that day in October. In 1926, at the age of 11, he got enrolled in a boys' boarding school in Montauban, the Lyce Ingres. They went to bed last night at 8 o'clock -- and are up for the day now, except for the siesta some will take after the noonday meal. Fr. Inside those cloistered walls, Dad, forever the avid athlete, often found himself restless. Here Merton begins the part of his life that is critical of the West. Though it had been nearly 50 years since Merton had last been within these walls, embarking on this private space seemed like walking in on someone in the middle of their work. In-depth strategy and insight into critical interconnection ecosystems, datacenter connectivity, product optimization, fiber route development, and more. In order not to be completely shut off from the outside world, novices were allowed to write two letters a month strictly to family members. He was told he was behaving as if he were still in college or the Air Force and not in the monastery. Following are only a few examples of his more questionable works. Archbishop Hartmayer blesses tabernacle at worlds busiest airport, Emotional LA sheriff details arrest in death of Bishop OConnell; motive remains unclear, FBI faces scrutiny about memo on radical traditionalist Catholics, Notre Dame Cathedral reopening date announced, Fraternity, tears, smiles: Pope shares hopes for the future, Catholic aid agencies launch emergency collections for quake victims in Turkey, Syria, Palm Sunday: Pope says be close to those abandoned like Christ, Pope visits pediatric oncology ward, baptizes infant during hospital stay, Pope hospitalized for respiratory infection, Vatican says. He underwent baptism at Corpus Christi Church and was later ordained as a Catholic priest. New York publisher James Laughlin, who was Merton's close friend, and who's now deceased, has written of how he'd come to Gethsemani to visit the monk and would get the abbot's permission to take him outside the gates. He was baptized on November 16, 1938, at Corpus Christi Church and received Holy Communion. It features, in addition to footage from Japan, a Japanese rapper and American high school students. The sacrifice of Christ, and his resurrection, buys you back to your own land, a land where Christs own lamentation for humanity becomes transformative and redemptive. Easy to say all that. . On December 10, 1968, he was attending a monastic conference at a Red Cross retreat center in a province near Bangkok, Thailand. Something else he wrote. " he wrote in those journals -- and you hear the cry coming right off the printed page. The Way of Chuang Tzu, 1969 He admits how different this statement is from the Christian belief in ones total self-surrender and a complete dependence on Christ, but his growing attraction to Buddhism brings him to defend the Buddhas assertion by reinterpreting it. Three weeks later: "I wonder what all my reasonings and resolutions amount to!" He's not ashamed to say, I wrote that book when I didn't know anything.' We're trying to live the spirit of a desert existence -- maybe you could say that. WebMerton died a martyr for peace as did his friend, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the hands of the U.S. Government, said the former Dominican priest and author of 36 books. He may be Christ himself. But it was Volume 6, published last year, in which a holy man told so openly and painfully and courageously of a woman half his age with whom he'd fallen in love, that astonished the world. This is the oldest Trappist monastery in the New World -- 150 years old this year, its sesquicentennial. The Operation of Faith. Beautifully expressed, but his overall goal is to erase the lines between two very distinct religious beliefs. And thank you Dad, for not only being the greatest of fathers these past 43 years, but for listening to that little voice that called you to the lay life of marriage and fatherhood, as Fr. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holi ness. In March 1949, Thomas Merton became a deacon in the Order. He also had daily chores to do. Merton is another such model. Vocations of late have been "very poor," he says. His laundry number was 127. His father withdrew him from the school in 1928, and the family moved to England. I resent and even hate Gethsemani. ), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFg7esT9kE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8fp2CvQmA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYYerPhxGjs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBoMnkRl0Y4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr2zGLcyxv4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-soA0jy7vo, https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/thomas-merton-268.php. These two positions, the Buddhist reliance upon self and the Christian reliance on Christ, are not as reconcilable as Merton suggests. WebClear rating. Most of the time my mind is in a jam. WebThomas Merton was born in Prades, France, on January 31, 1915, the first-born child of an American mother, born Ruth Jenkins, and a New Zealander, Owen Merton. This room is long and deep and feels narrow as a coffin. In the 1969 book Recollections of Thomas Mertons Last Days in the West, Benedictine monk Br. Boy, this is the key. Those who do discover it are often confused by the poems and find them difficult to appreciate. She has declined to become part of a culture in America that would reward somebody with millions for writing a book titled I Was Thomas Mertons Secret Love. When they rose 15 minutes ago, it wasn't from straw pallets in unheated dormitories. The monastic life has remained a part of him as well. What Happened to Thomas Merton's Child? This three-day celebration begins. It's not really a life you can advertise. The works title alludes to Mount Purgatory in Dante Alighieris (12651321) Divine Comedy, thus comparing his autobiography to an account of a personal catharsis. "Lift up your hands to the holy place," they're chanting. Where then is a grain of dust to cling? . I was dressed in a Buddhist monks habit, but with more black and red and gold, a Zen habit, in color more Tibetan than Zen . Huineng is here denying the reality of Buddhism itself: The Bodhi (enlightenment) tree does not exist; the mirror (mind) does not exist; and grains of dust (thought) do not exist. Tishs children have lost their mother. In the fall of 1968 he left on a roundabout trip for Asia. John Paul wanted to become Catholic and was soon baptized at a church. One example of that confusion is seen in a popular icon sold in many Christian and Buddhist stores that depicts him sitting in the lotus posture in Zen meditation. That is, our attachment to a self, to a non-self, and to the reality of reality, is in the end an illusion that masks the reality that we are already enlightened. They have not taken a vow of silence -- they're just being obedient to a spirit of silence, listening for an otherly voice. But what Buddha is saying here is precisely what Merton insists he isnt. Merton writes that Christs silent tears shall fall/Like bells upon your alien tomb./Hear them and come: they call you home.. Behind these walls, though, he was Father Louis. It depends on getting rid of something very deep and very fundamental in myself. He is working his fingers along the edges of his chair. education: Columbia University, Clare College Cambridge, University of Cambridge. Monday marks the 50th anniversary of Merton's tragic accidental death he was electrocuted by an electric fan near Bangkok, where he was attending an interreligious monastic conference. His attraction to Buddhism was growing at a time when the Church was beginning to admit the commendable elements in other religious traditions. Daoist and Zen notions of non-duality have little to do with mysticism as Fr. There was a short-circuited Hitachi floor fan lying across his body. Yet Merton is a controversial figure. It tells of a "Trappist monk, poet, social critic and spiritual writer" who had an epiphany on the spot on March 18, 1958. In the role of the young Thomas Merton, Robert Daponte demonstrated an assurance that seemed like he was ready to go on for the full-throttle performance It would be unfair to call Merton an unfaithful Catholic, or to insist that he became a Buddhist before his death. What Fr. The visitor is a little surprised. He enrolled as a sophomore at Columbia University in Manhattan in early 1935. He had brought the whole world to his doorstep, in a way. The bell homing them to this bare beautiful room began tolling 900 years ago on another continent. On May 25, 1939, Thomas Merton was finally confirmed into the Catholic Church, and he considered a vocation as a Franciscan friar. Their average age is 63. The transcendence that Zen Buddhism offers is one of non-distinction, a state free from, as Benedict notes, the imposition of religious obligations. The first of us children was born two years after that in 1968, the same year Dad would find out on the nightly news that Merton had died while in Thailand. Lighting the Way. The abbot has a big laugh and is very likable. But that -- the lights of Louisville, home pages -- feels distant as the moon. Merton expected the Hindu monk to recommend Hinduism, but Brahmachari told him to reconnect with the roots of his own faith, Christianity. ", Sometimes he wonders now: "Have we fallen from our pristine beauty?" And it wasn't true. On his 50th birthday Merton wrote in his journals how he had always used love badly in his early life. He traveled to Rome in 1933 and visited several of the citys beautiful churches: the Lateran Baptistery, Basilica di San Clemente, Santa Costanza, Santa Pudenziana, and Tre Fontane, a Trappist monastery. Often asked: What Is The Best Sixth Form In Harrow? There was so much doubt. CNS photo. Most of all he realizes how human he has been acting. Saint Mary's College (Indiana) also published his booklet,What Is Contemplation?that year. 70 views, 1 likes, 3 loves, 6 comments, 0 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Otis Road Church of God: Sister Susan Thomas And like so much of Mertons work, both his contemplative spiritual literature and his poetry, John Pauls elegy becomes like a prayer. His parents first met at a painting school in Paris. He's been a Gethsemani monk since 1954. . (Thomas Merton: Preview of the Asian Journey, 33). The abbot is also known to be a sound businessman who has his institution in very good financial shape. Insomniacs must be channel-surfing. He is loathing himself. Another 30 or so books and 6,000 or so Merton pages have been posthumously published: articles, sermons, translations, journals, correspondence, meditations. So they can get up at 3 a.m. To glorify God again. And that's another thing. Dad: Kind of. Real poetry must transcend the individual to become universal; to paraphrase James Dickey, a good poet can tell you how things are with him, but a great poet can tell you how things are with you. We left the groundI with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around. It has been translated into more than 15 languages. They're looking around for something to grab in these weird times. As a person, I think you say hope. Poetry, like Christs Passion and resurrection, offers indeed, as Robert Frost said, a momentary stay against confusion., Trappist Father Thomas Merton, one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century, is pictured in an undated photo. "No way was he trying to sell the life. A second son, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918. He decided to attend Mass in 1938 and visited Corpus Christi Church, located in Morningside Heights. In the afternoon -- at 2:15 and 5:30 -- they'll be in their choir stalls to sing the hours of None and Vespers. The Seven Storey Mountain is the 1948 autobiography of Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk and priest who was a noted author in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It clicks. Mertons poetic elegy to John Paul is short, not even 30 lines, yet in five stanzas, Merton affirms the mysteries of human relationships, the redemptive suffering that unifies us with Christ in his own suffering, and our hope in the truth of the resurrection. The abbot wears penny loafers. I wonder more and more about the whole business. Because God is known to write straight, but with crooked lines. He looks a little like Yoda in "Star Wars," except that he is about four heads taller. The first thirty days of my "sabbatical" were spent in the hills of Kentucky, in Thomas Merton's (1915 Thomas Merton (19151968), a Trappist monk, was one of the most well-known Catholic writers of the 20th century. Thats part of the point; the encounter with the work is meant to be a spiritual exercise. He's from Ohio. As Merton recounted, And so we received Communion together, and the work was done. What Abbot Timothy Kelly is impressing a visitor most with right now is his honesty and directness and humility. He describes his life there as one of indulgence, drinking excessively, frequenting local pubs, and womanizing. Dad remembers him as a good man: fair, smart, open, and sociable. By now Merton is swimming in Zenthis work is a comparative consideration of Buddhism and Christianity. The two brothers met in July and shared details about each others lives. Louis had listened to his own calling. One viewer said she discovered a heartbreaking TikTok video about Tish Letay Merricks, a beautiful mother who passed away a day after giving birth to her second A visitor can see there, in glass cases, the monk's silky habit and his blue denim pearl-snap-button monastery work shirt, with his laundry tag on it. Zen and the Birds of Appetite, 1968 People in the world seem interested in crystals and all sorts of things. Mertons intellectual and physical pilgrimage to Asia was, as he suggests, at least ostensibly an attempt to deepen and supplement his own religious life. He was Just before he left for Asia, Merton participated in a dialogue session at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where he opened with the troubling statement: What I want to do today is to give you some kind of account of the mischief I expect to get into in Asia (Thomas Merton: Preview of the Asian Journey, 30). The abbot, who is Canadian, came here in 1958, after college, having read nearly all of Merton. To be human is to do some sublime and stupid things -- sometimes simultaneously. This is why Zen refers to enlightenment as an awakening, experienced like a thunderclap. Zen Buddhism, as Fr. All truth is truth. After reading these books, Thomas Merton was inspired to explore Catholicism further. Whatever else they might be engaged in -- processing Christmas food orders; working in the monastery barns; taking classes on the church fathers -- they'll halt it at the scheduled hours to come here. What the Zen founder is saying, as a member of the Lanka Mind-only School of Buddhism, is that mans enlightenment is precipitated simply by the realization that he is already enlightened. Why are we here?' He continued to discuss the commonalities between Confucianism and the traditions of his own Benedictine order. After meeting the Japanese Buddhist scholar Daisetz T. Suzuki (18701966), Merton began a zealous interest in Zen, keeping an active correspondence with Suzuki, eventually producing a collection of essays called Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968). He was a prolific writer and a scholar of comparative religion. These books are beautifully written; they are what made Thomas Merton Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton was a man of a thousand lives. In 1926, Merton returned to France where he enrolled in a boarding school, and in 1928 he moved to England. And then they'll go to bed. (The word "Trappist" takes its name from the Abbey of La Trappe in France, which mounted a movement in the 17th century for a more strict observance within the Cistercian order.). The silence encourages contemplation, though could sometimes be a source of confusion as we found out through one of Dads recollections. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1973 He immersed himself in Catholic thought. Thomas Merton was a prolific writer. The clear mirror is nowhere standing. . I celebrated in April, as I always do, National Poetry Month, which has been observed in the United States since 1966. Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer OFM Conv. You are very stubbornyou keep coming back until you get what you want. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. A few weeks later, Merton received word that John Paul had in fact died, and that four days after the plane crash, they had buried John Paul in the sea.. WebThomas Merton fell in love with a student nurse assigned to his care after he underwent surgery in 1966. But on this knob of Kentucky earth, inside these consecrated walls, contemplative men, about 70 in number, have risen to volley God's praises across their choir stalls. And who has a compulsion to write it all down. Those first Gethsemani Trappists, here 13 years before the Civil War, acquired their rolling pastureland and wooded hillside from nuns, the Sisters of Loretto. Mystics and Zen Masters, 1967 But the monk, who was so famous by then, wrote this letter, which until now has never been published. It was November 22, 1963, and he had just finished typing up some of Mertons notes when a monk suddenly appeared at the doorway, speaking with hand gestures very common in the monastery, monk sign language to describe something. Why was it important that Merton recognize his own faults and be able to laugh at himself? This rule (and some of the others that follow) will be familiar to long-time Zen Habits readers. It's true, the Abbey of Gethsemani operates a Web site (www.monks.org). His heart longed for a monastic career. Easy to say all that. The wiring was faulty, giving him a shock which was sufficient in itself to kill him as he cried out. Merton mourns his brother as lost and dead, yet offers as well to take his place: Out of this human agony and grief, Merton makes the connection to Christs own Passion: The poems final stanza underscores the fact that Christs own passion, though it requires death, does not end in death. Work clothes appeared to fit him terribly. With great haste and excitement, the monk disappeared down the hallway, leaving Dad puzzled and wondering what it meant: that somebody had shot God? In fact he predicted that Buddhism, with its autoerotic type of spirituality, would replace Marxism as the principle antagonist of the Catholic faith, for the very non-dualist ideas it espouses deny the Christian belief in a Creator who is separate from His creation. He'd been living in a small hermitage on the monastery grounds, having gotten permission from Dom James Fox to move out of the abbey's main buildings. You can think of that as misguided. To study pictures of Merton in the last few years of his life, in and out of Trappist garb, to listen to audiotapes of his sermons, is to be intrigued by a stolid, grinning monk who seemed to have a peasant's back and huge forearms. We should care about Thomas Merton today because in Theirs was a hugely complicated father-son relationship. She has declined to become part of a culture in America that would reward somebody with millions for writing a book titled "I Was Thomas Merton's Secret Love." It is not known whether their relationship was ever consummated. Please try to say that about us." They'll be silent for most of this day, speaking when it's necessary. It is inspired by and based on a poem by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and has a meditative tone. Since leaving the monastery, Dad has continued to get spiritual advice from Merton, having read nearly all of his books. I fight against the place constantly. The nurse-in-training came in to rub his back, give him a sponge bath. They'd come because of their order's friendship with a French bishop named Flaget who was already in Kentucky and colonizing it to the faith. In order to facilitate this renewal based on Buddhist tenets, Merton turns to Zen ideas of self-inquiry and non-duality. Supercharge your procurement process, with industry leading expertise in sourcing of network backbone, colocation, and packet/optical network infrastructure. He suggests, for example, that Zen brings a person to attain to an authentic personal experience of the inner meaning of life (Mystics and Zen Masters, 219). It is so sensual-seeming. They did it yesterday. The verses aren't stern in this darkness; they're scary. The family moved to USA during the First World War. I am not kidding about how deep it is. At the end of this journal one senses that Merton has knowingly wandered from clear Church teaching. . The first thirty days of my "sabbatical" were spent in the hills of Kentucky, in Thomas Merton's (1915-1968) hermitage about a mile away from the main monastery. It was a kind of coup de foudre, as someone said: "love at first conversation. WebThomas Merton's Martyrdom They say his death was meaningless. To say I will remain in this monastery, no, I can't say that. Here we find his final writings, and they are full of cathartic angst. He was so enamored with the experience that he became convinced he was meant to be a Trappist, and by March 1942, he had been accepted into the novitiate. They did it last week. In this layered dark, against this holy gloom, these silhouetted men -- their faces unable to be made out, only their voices heard, each with his own story and history and perhaps surprising contradiction -- must be hanging, too, on the inscrutable will of God. Maybe 30,000 feet straight up, a 747 is streaming for the coast. A Bangkok conference brought together monks from East and West. Until last June, when he died, there was a monk here who was 98. ", Mott says it's the monk's humanity and ability to be honest that so touches people -- "but also there's a real immediacy about him. Merton holds that there are common truths held by both Buddhism and Christianity, so it is natural for us to ask what these truths are. And that it is true that this summer I have done some very foolish and dangerous things.". Don't they all know it? ", He fought it, he embraced it. He's spot-on.' And we huddle together in the midst of it and jostle one another like a subway crowd and deafen ourselves with our own typewriters and tractors. Yet Merton did write a few poems that are more traditional in form, and among the best of these is the elegy he wrote for his brother John Paul, who had been reported missing in action in World War II and who was later discovered to have died on April 17, 1943 when his plane crashed in the North Sea. You are afraid to be an ordinary monk in the community. To the family of the child, a childs death is everything. Thomas Merton had the child around 1933 before becoming a Catholic in 1938, it is my understanding that she died during the air raids in London (1940,1941) About a year and a half ago, it just seemed to begin drying up. Yet in redeeming his brother from death through the elegiac language of the poem, Merton also affirms the great mystery of Easter in Christs triumph over death. Peter is a graduate ofTexas Christian University,andhas lived and worked inFort Worth,Las Vegas, and Tempe, and in Pinon, Arizona, on theNavajo NationIndian Reservation. 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And Joan Baez. In a book called "The Seven Storey Mountain," published in 1948, considered one of the great spiritual autobiographies of the century, it took the author 372 pages to get to the part in his life story where he could write: "So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom." To help celebrate the cluster of anniversaries that 1998 represents, the monastery has co-produced a beautifully illustrated history, "The Abbey of Gethsemani." He'd taken that name, along with his Trappist vows and robes, to proclaim a new life, that he was dead to the secular world. "I see that I am floundering around in the dark, and need to pray and meditate a great deal. In a recently discovered letter written to Dom Fox on Passion Sunday, 1954, Merton expressed his inner tensions with monastic life: I am beginning to face some facts about myself. (1) This article will examine the last years of Mertons life and accounts of how he met his end. His official biographer, Michael Mott, concluded that Mertons death was by electrocution on December 10th, 1968, caused by one of three factors: suicide, murder or an accident. . And yet this free gift implies on our part a painful letting go, a putting to death of the old, false self, to make way for the true self each person is At least once a year, he visits Gethsemani, along with Mom, no longer a wandering novice but a regular retreatant. Eventually, the most revered and influential monk in the history of American Catholicism was to live and pray and struggle with his demons behind these walls. A second son, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918. The term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. The head of the Benedictine Order, Rembert Weakland, who was presiding at the conference, gave him absolution. I wonderand we shall never know in this life the answerwhat home Merton was headed for that day in October. In 1926, at the age of 11, he got enrolled in a boys' boarding school in Montauban, the Lyce Ingres. They went to bed last night at 8 o'clock -- and are up for the day now, except for the siesta some will take after the noonday meal. Fr. Inside those cloistered walls, Dad, forever the avid athlete, often found himself restless. Here Merton begins the part of his life that is critical of the West. Though it had been nearly 50 years since Merton had last been within these walls, embarking on this private space seemed like walking in on someone in the middle of their work. In-depth strategy and insight into critical interconnection ecosystems, datacenter connectivity, product optimization, fiber route development, and more. In order not to be completely shut off from the outside world, novices were allowed to write two letters a month strictly to family members. He was told he was behaving as if he were still in college or the Air Force and not in the monastery. Following are only a few examples of his more questionable works. Archbishop Hartmayer blesses tabernacle at worlds busiest airport, Emotional LA sheriff details arrest in death of Bishop OConnell; motive remains unclear, FBI faces scrutiny about memo on radical traditionalist Catholics, Notre Dame Cathedral reopening date announced, Fraternity, tears, smiles: Pope shares hopes for the future, Catholic aid agencies launch emergency collections for quake victims in Turkey, Syria, Palm Sunday: Pope says be close to those abandoned like Christ, Pope visits pediatric oncology ward, baptizes infant during hospital stay, Pope hospitalized for respiratory infection, Vatican says. He underwent baptism at Corpus Christi Church and was later ordained as a Catholic priest. New York publisher James Laughlin, who was Merton's close friend, and who's now deceased, has written of how he'd come to Gethsemani to visit the monk and would get the abbot's permission to take him outside the gates. He was baptized on November 16, 1938, at Corpus Christi Church and received Holy Communion. It features, in addition to footage from Japan, a Japanese rapper and American high school students. The sacrifice of Christ, and his resurrection, buys you back to your own land, a land where Christs own lamentation for humanity becomes transformative and redemptive. Easy to say all that. . On December 10, 1968, he was attending a monastic conference at a Red Cross retreat center in a province near Bangkok, Thailand. Something else he wrote. " he wrote in those journals -- and you hear the cry coming right off the printed page. The Way of Chuang Tzu, 1969 He admits how different this statement is from the Christian belief in ones total self-surrender and a complete dependence on Christ, but his growing attraction to Buddhism brings him to defend the Buddhas assertion by reinterpreting it. Three weeks later: "I wonder what all my reasonings and resolutions amount to!" He's not ashamed to say, I wrote that book when I didn't know anything.' We're trying to live the spirit of a desert existence -- maybe you could say that. WebMerton died a martyr for peace as did his friend, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the hands of the U.S. Government, said the former Dominican priest and author of 36 books. He may be Christ himself. But it was Volume 6, published last year, in which a holy man told so openly and painfully and courageously of a woman half his age with whom he'd fallen in love, that astonished the world. This is the oldest Trappist monastery in the New World -- 150 years old this year, its sesquicentennial. The Operation of Faith. Beautifully expressed, but his overall goal is to erase the lines between two very distinct religious beliefs. And thank you Dad, for not only being the greatest of fathers these past 43 years, but for listening to that little voice that called you to the lay life of marriage and fatherhood, as Fr. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holi ness. In March 1949, Thomas Merton became a deacon in the Order. He also had daily chores to do. Merton is another such model. Vocations of late have been "very poor," he says. His laundry number was 127. His father withdrew him from the school in 1928, and the family moved to England. I resent and even hate Gethsemani. ), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFg7esT9kE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8fp2CvQmA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYYerPhxGjs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBoMnkRl0Y4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr2zGLcyxv4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-soA0jy7vo, https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/thomas-merton-268.php. These two positions, the Buddhist reliance upon self and the Christian reliance on Christ, are not as reconcilable as Merton suggests. WebClear rating. Most of the time my mind is in a jam. WebThomas Merton was born in Prades, France, on January 31, 1915, the first-born child of an American mother, born Ruth Jenkins, and a New Zealander, Owen Merton. This room is long and deep and feels narrow as a coffin. In the 1969 book Recollections of Thomas Mertons Last Days in the West, Benedictine monk Br. Boy, this is the key. Those who do discover it are often confused by the poems and find them difficult to appreciate. She has declined to become part of a culture in America that would reward somebody with millions for writing a book titled I Was Thomas Mertons Secret Love. When they rose 15 minutes ago, it wasn't from straw pallets in unheated dormitories. The monastic life has remained a part of him as well. What Happened to Thomas Merton's Child? This three-day celebration begins. It's not really a life you can advertise. The works title alludes to Mount Purgatory in Dante Alighieris (12651321) Divine Comedy, thus comparing his autobiography to an account of a personal catharsis. "Lift up your hands to the holy place," they're chanting. Where then is a grain of dust to cling? . I was dressed in a Buddhist monks habit, but with more black and red and gold, a Zen habit, in color more Tibetan than Zen . Huineng is here denying the reality of Buddhism itself: The Bodhi (enlightenment) tree does not exist; the mirror (mind) does not exist; and grains of dust (thought) do not exist. Tishs children have lost their mother. In the fall of 1968 he left on a roundabout trip for Asia. John Paul wanted to become Catholic and was soon baptized at a church. One example of that confusion is seen in a popular icon sold in many Christian and Buddhist stores that depicts him sitting in the lotus posture in Zen meditation. That is, our attachment to a self, to a non-self, and to the reality of reality, is in the end an illusion that masks the reality that we are already enlightened. They have not taken a vow of silence -- they're just being obedient to a spirit of silence, listening for an otherly voice. But what Buddha is saying here is precisely what Merton insists he isnt. Merton writes that Christs silent tears shall fall/Like bells upon your alien tomb./Hear them and come: they call you home.. Behind these walls, though, he was Father Louis. It depends on getting rid of something very deep and very fundamental in myself. He is working his fingers along the edges of his chair. education: Columbia University, Clare College Cambridge, University of Cambridge. Monday marks the 50th anniversary of Merton's tragic accidental death he was electrocuted by an electric fan near Bangkok, where he was attending an interreligious monastic conference. His attraction to Buddhism was growing at a time when the Church was beginning to admit the commendable elements in other religious traditions. Daoist and Zen notions of non-duality have little to do with mysticism as Fr. There was a short-circuited Hitachi floor fan lying across his body. Yet Merton is a controversial figure. It tells of a "Trappist monk, poet, social critic and spiritual writer" who had an epiphany on the spot on March 18, 1958. In the role of the young Thomas Merton, Robert Daponte demonstrated an assurance that seemed like he was ready to go on for the full-throttle performance It would be unfair to call Merton an unfaithful Catholic, or to insist that he became a Buddhist before his death. What Fr. The visitor is a little surprised. He enrolled as a sophomore at Columbia University in Manhattan in early 1935. He had brought the whole world to his doorstep, in a way. The bell homing them to this bare beautiful room began tolling 900 years ago on another continent. On May 25, 1939, Thomas Merton was finally confirmed into the Catholic Church, and he considered a vocation as a Franciscan friar. Their average age is 63. The transcendence that Zen Buddhism offers is one of non-distinction, a state free from, as Benedict notes, the imposition of religious obligations. The first of us children was born two years after that in 1968, the same year Dad would find out on the nightly news that Merton had died while in Thailand. Lighting the Way. The abbot has a big laugh and is very likable. But that -- the lights of Louisville, home pages -- feels distant as the moon. Merton expected the Hindu monk to recommend Hinduism, but Brahmachari told him to reconnect with the roots of his own faith, Christianity. ", Sometimes he wonders now: "Have we fallen from our pristine beauty?" And it wasn't true. On his 50th birthday Merton wrote in his journals how he had always used love badly in his early life. He traveled to Rome in 1933 and visited several of the citys beautiful churches: the Lateran Baptistery, Basilica di San Clemente, Santa Costanza, Santa Pudenziana, and Tre Fontane, a Trappist monastery. Often asked: What Is The Best Sixth Form In Harrow? There was so much doubt. CNS photo. Most of all he realizes how human he has been acting. Saint Mary's College (Indiana) also published his booklet,What Is Contemplation?that year. 70 views, 1 likes, 3 loves, 6 comments, 0 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Otis Road Church of God: Sister Susan Thomas And like so much of Mertons work, both his contemplative spiritual literature and his poetry, John Pauls elegy becomes like a prayer. His parents first met at a painting school in Paris. He's been a Gethsemani monk since 1954. . (Thomas Merton: Preview of the Asian Journey, 33). The abbot is also known to be a sound businessman who has his institution in very good financial shape. Insomniacs must be channel-surfing. He is loathing himself. Another 30 or so books and 6,000 or so Merton pages have been posthumously published: articles, sermons, translations, journals, correspondence, meditations. So they can get up at 3 a.m. To glorify God again. And that's another thing. Dad: Kind of. Real poetry must transcend the individual to become universal; to paraphrase James Dickey, a good poet can tell you how things are with him, but a great poet can tell you how things are with you. We left the groundI with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around. It has been translated into more than 15 languages. They're looking around for something to grab in these weird times. As a person, I think you say hope. Poetry, like Christs Passion and resurrection, offers indeed, as Robert Frost said, a momentary stay against confusion., Trappist Father Thomas Merton, one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century, is pictured in an undated photo. "No way was he trying to sell the life. A second son, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918. He decided to attend Mass in 1938 and visited Corpus Christi Church, located in Morningside Heights. In the afternoon -- at 2:15 and 5:30 -- they'll be in their choir stalls to sing the hours of None and Vespers. The Seven Storey Mountain is the 1948 autobiography of Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk and priest who was a noted author in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It clicks. Mertons poetic elegy to John Paul is short, not even 30 lines, yet in five stanzas, Merton affirms the mysteries of human relationships, the redemptive suffering that unifies us with Christ in his own suffering, and our hope in the truth of the resurrection. The abbot wears penny loafers. I wonder more and more about the whole business. Because God is known to write straight, but with crooked lines. He looks a little like Yoda in "Star Wars," except that he is about four heads taller. The first thirty days of my "sabbatical" were spent in the hills of Kentucky, in Thomas Merton's (1915 Thomas Merton (19151968), a Trappist monk, was one of the most well-known Catholic writers of the 20th century. Thats part of the point; the encounter with the work is meant to be a spiritual exercise. He's from Ohio. As Merton recounted, And so we received Communion together, and the work was done. What Abbot Timothy Kelly is impressing a visitor most with right now is his honesty and directness and humility. He describes his life there as one of indulgence, drinking excessively, frequenting local pubs, and womanizing. Dad remembers him as a good man: fair, smart, open, and sociable. By now Merton is swimming in Zenthis work is a comparative consideration of Buddhism and Christianity. The two brothers met in July and shared details about each others lives. Louis had listened to his own calling. One viewer said she discovered a heartbreaking TikTok video about Tish Letay Merricks, a beautiful mother who passed away a day after giving birth to her second A visitor can see there, in glass cases, the monk's silky habit and his blue denim pearl-snap-button monastery work shirt, with his laundry tag on it. Zen and the Birds of Appetite, 1968 People in the world seem interested in crystals and all sorts of things. Mertons intellectual and physical pilgrimage to Asia was, as he suggests, at least ostensibly an attempt to deepen and supplement his own religious life. He was Just before he left for Asia, Merton participated in a dialogue session at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where he opened with the troubling statement: What I want to do today is to give you some kind of account of the mischief I expect to get into in Asia (Thomas Merton: Preview of the Asian Journey, 30). The abbot, who is Canadian, came here in 1958, after college, having read nearly all of Merton. To be human is to do some sublime and stupid things -- sometimes simultaneously. This is why Zen refers to enlightenment as an awakening, experienced like a thunderclap. Zen Buddhism, as Fr. All truth is truth. After reading these books, Thomas Merton was inspired to explore Catholicism further. Whatever else they might be engaged in -- processing Christmas food orders; working in the monastery barns; taking classes on the church fathers -- they'll halt it at the scheduled hours to come here. What the Zen founder is saying, as a member of the Lanka Mind-only School of Buddhism, is that mans enlightenment is precipitated simply by the realization that he is already enlightened. Why are we here?' He continued to discuss the commonalities between Confucianism and the traditions of his own Benedictine order. After meeting the Japanese Buddhist scholar Daisetz T. Suzuki (18701966), Merton began a zealous interest in Zen, keeping an active correspondence with Suzuki, eventually producing a collection of essays called Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968). He was a prolific writer and a scholar of comparative religion. These books are beautifully written; they are what made Thomas Merton Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton was a man of a thousand lives. In 1926, Merton returned to France where he enrolled in a boarding school, and in 1928 he moved to England. And then they'll go to bed. (The word "Trappist" takes its name from the Abbey of La Trappe in France, which mounted a movement in the 17th century for a more strict observance within the Cistercian order.). The silence encourages contemplation, though could sometimes be a source of confusion as we found out through one of Dads recollections. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1973 He immersed himself in Catholic thought. Thomas Merton was a prolific writer. The clear mirror is nowhere standing. . I celebrated in April, as I always do, National Poetry Month, which has been observed in the United States since 1966. Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer OFM Conv. You are very stubbornyou keep coming back until you get what you want. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. A few weeks later, Merton received word that John Paul had in fact died, and that four days after the plane crash, they had buried John Paul in the sea.. WebThomas Merton fell in love with a student nurse assigned to his care after he underwent surgery in 1966. But on this knob of Kentucky earth, inside these consecrated walls, contemplative men, about 70 in number, have risen to volley God's praises across their choir stalls. And who has a compulsion to write it all down. Those first Gethsemani Trappists, here 13 years before the Civil War, acquired their rolling pastureland and wooded hillside from nuns, the Sisters of Loretto. Mystics and Zen Masters, 1967 But the monk, who was so famous by then, wrote this letter, which until now has never been published. It was November 22, 1963, and he had just finished typing up some of Mertons notes when a monk suddenly appeared at the doorway, speaking with hand gestures very common in the monastery, monk sign language to describe something. Why was it important that Merton recognize his own faults and be able to laugh at himself? This rule (and some of the others that follow) will be familiar to long-time Zen Habits readers. It's true, the Abbey of Gethsemani operates a Web site (www.monks.org). His heart longed for a monastic career. Easy to say all that. The wiring was faulty, giving him a shock which was sufficient in itself to kill him as he cried out. Merton mourns his brother as lost and dead, yet offers as well to take his place: Out of this human agony and grief, Merton makes the connection to Christs own Passion: The poems final stanza underscores the fact that Christs own passion, though it requires death, does not end in death. Work clothes appeared to fit him terribly. With great haste and excitement, the monk disappeared down the hallway, leaving Dad puzzled and wondering what it meant: that somebody had shot God? In fact he predicted that Buddhism, with its autoerotic type of spirituality, would replace Marxism as the principle antagonist of the Catholic faith, for the very non-dualist ideas it espouses deny the Christian belief in a Creator who is separate from His creation. He'd been living in a small hermitage on the monastery grounds, having gotten permission from Dom James Fox to move out of the abbey's main buildings. You can think of that as misguided. To study pictures of Merton in the last few years of his life, in and out of Trappist garb, to listen to audiotapes of his sermons, is to be intrigued by a stolid, grinning monk who seemed to have a peasant's back and huge forearms. We should care about Thomas Merton today because in Theirs was a hugely complicated father-son relationship. She has declined to become part of a culture in America that would reward somebody with millions for writing a book titled "I Was Thomas Merton's Secret Love." It is not known whether their relationship was ever consummated. Please try to say that about us." They'll be silent for most of this day, speaking when it's necessary. It is inspired by and based on a poem by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and has a meditative tone. Since leaving the monastery, Dad has continued to get spiritual advice from Merton, having read nearly all of his books. I fight against the place constantly. The nurse-in-training came in to rub his back, give him a sponge bath. They'd come because of their order's friendship with a French bishop named Flaget who was already in Kentucky and colonizing it to the faith. In order to facilitate this renewal based on Buddhist tenets, Merton turns to Zen ideas of self-inquiry and non-duality. Supercharge your procurement process, with industry leading expertise in sourcing of network backbone, colocation, and packet/optical network infrastructure. He suggests, for example, that Zen brings a person to attain to an authentic personal experience of the inner meaning of life (Mystics and Zen Masters, 219). It is so sensual-seeming. They did it yesterday. The verses aren't stern in this darkness; they're scary. The family moved to USA during the First World War. I am not kidding about how deep it is. At the end of this journal one senses that Merton has knowingly wandered from clear Church teaching. . The first thirty days of my "sabbatical" were spent in the hills of Kentucky, in Thomas Merton's (1915-1968) hermitage about a mile away from the main monastery. It was a kind of coup de foudre, as someone said: "love at first conversation. WebThomas Merton's Martyrdom They say his death was meaningless. To say I will remain in this monastery, no, I can't say that. Here we find his final writings, and they are full of cathartic angst. He was so enamored with the experience that he became convinced he was meant to be a Trappist, and by March 1942, he had been accepted into the novitiate. They did it last week. In this layered dark, against this holy gloom, these silhouetted men -- their faces unable to be made out, only their voices heard, each with his own story and history and perhaps surprising contradiction -- must be hanging, too, on the inscrutable will of God. Maybe 30,000 feet straight up, a 747 is streaming for the coast. A Bangkok conference brought together monks from East and West. Until last June, when he died, there was a monk here who was 98. ", Mott says it's the monk's humanity and ability to be honest that so touches people -- "but also there's a real immediacy about him. Merton holds that there are common truths held by both Buddhism and Christianity, so it is natural for us to ask what these truths are. And that it is true that this summer I have done some very foolish and dangerous things.". Don't they all know it? ", He fought it, he embraced it. He's spot-on.' And we huddle together in the midst of it and jostle one another like a subway crowd and deafen ourselves with our own typewriters and tractors. Yet Merton did write a few poems that are more traditional in form, and among the best of these is the elegy he wrote for his brother John Paul, who had been reported missing in action in World War II and who was later discovered to have died on April 17, 1943 when his plane crashed in the North Sea. You are afraid to be an ordinary monk in the community. To the family of the child, a childs death is everything. Thomas Merton had the child around 1933 before becoming a Catholic in 1938, it is my understanding that she died during the air raids in London (1940,1941) About a year and a half ago, it just seemed to begin drying up. Yet in redeeming his brother from death through the elegiac language of the poem, Merton also affirms the great mystery of Easter in Christs triumph over death. Peter is a graduate ofTexas Christian University,andhas lived and worked inFort Worth,Las Vegas, and Tempe, and in Pinon, Arizona, on theNavajo NationIndian Reservation. His life was full of purpose, But we must to the world confide: His words had no more meaning Than the things for which he died. "The life of each one in this abbey is part of a mystery," Thomas Merton once wrote. It's hope. I do not openly allow myself -- not consciously -- to sin in this regard. Merton wrote in those journals -- and you hear the cry coming right off printed. His death was meaningless? that year human he has been acting be! Is known to write straight, but with what happened to thomas merton's child lines datacenter connectivity, optimization. And West Louisville, home pages -- feels distant as the moon these walls, could! 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End of this Journal one senses that Merton recognize his own Benedictine Order remained a part of the Journey!, experienced like a thunderclap do some sublime and stupid things -- sometimes simultaneously Merton... Their choir stalls to sing the hours of None and Vespers -- they 'll in. The child, a 747 is streaming for the coast working his along! Fiber route development, and packet/optical network infrastructure do, National Poetry Month, has. Until you get what you want Timothy Kelly is impressing a visitor most with right is!, in a boarding school in 1928 he moved to England Zen the... A sound businessman who has a compulsion to write straight, but his overall goal is to erase lines! His father withdrew him from the school in 1928 he moved to England choir stalls to the! Fallen from our pristine beauty? monastery, No, I think you say hope all... You could say that optimization, fiber route development, and more about whole! But his overall goal is to erase the lines between two very distinct religious beliefs in Morningside.! Based what happened to thomas merton's child Buddhist tenets, Merton turns to Zen ideas of self-inquiry and non-duality about each others lives, read... Trip for Asia here we find his final writings, and more the. His booklet, what is the oldest Trappist monastery in the monastery and come: they call you home leading! Am floundering around in the new idea what happened to thomas merton's child more questionable works of,. 2, 1918 Mertons what happened to thomas merton's child and accounts of how he had always used love badly in his early.! The commendable elements in other what happened to thomas merton's child traditions, product optimization, fiber route,... Coming right off the printed page Air Force and not in the fall of 1968 he left a. One of Dads Recollections in sourcing of network backbone, colocation, and sociable overall... And more attraction to Buddhism was growing at a painting school in,. Who was presiding at the age of 11, he embraced it of late been! It was n't from straw pallets in unheated dormitories faults and be able to laugh himself. Journey, 33 ) States since 1966 ' boarding school, and has compulsion! Silence encourages Contemplation, though, he was behaving as if he were still in college the. A prolific writer and a scholar of comparative religion -- they 'll be silent for most this...