Authenticity, Passion, and Advocacy

Approaching Adolescent Spirituality from the Life and Wisdom of Thomas Merton

Thomas E. Malewitz

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532682223, 9781532682230
• eBook ISBN: 9781532682247
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Adolescence can be best summarized as a time of authenticity, passion, and advocacy. As adolescents start maturing, on a life journey that leads them away from dependence on their parents to becoming an independent adult, they often seek out honest and transparent mentors to learn from and trust for wisdom and guidance.Although Thomas Merton, the celebrated spiritual author and Cistercian monk, is better remembered for his writings on ecumenism, nonviolence, and advocacy, he also had several documented correspondences with adolescents throughout his life. By examining these artifacts, it is clear that Thomas Merton had great insight into the spiritual needs and challenges of adolescents. Throughout his life, Merton's authentic struggles often parallel the searching nature that defines adolescent spirituality.Through scholarship and practice this book will explore how the life and writings of Thomas Merton may serve as a guide and bridge for ministers of adolescents, and will offer some practical suggestions for minsters, educators, and parents on topics affecting contemporary adolescents, through the lens of Thomas Merton's life and writings.

1

Introduction

Bridging the Gap—Adolescence and Merton

I live alone in the woods and borrowed a record player. I am a real sneaky hermit and oh yes I love the hippies and am an underground hippy monk but I don’t need LSD to turn on either. The birds turn me on.1

At face value, this initial quotation may seem like a bizarre and reckless conversation between a Catholic priest and an adolescent. One could only imagine what would happen if a cleric today posted a similar response to an adolescent on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. What would the social media backlash be? What would the trolling comments or accusations look like? But this brief section of correspondence between Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, and Suzanne Buturovich, a sixteen-year-old high school student, can offer insight into the relationship of Merton and the tangible experience and mindset of one Californian adolescent from the late 1960s. These passing comments also show that a hermit in Kentucky was not only well aware of LSD,2 but also the hippie movement; like an inquiring adolescent Merton explored the world around him.

It could be a strange thought that a priest and hermit would have such a pulse on the pop culture of the time. For some people this conversation might lead to a mental image of some type of prophetic-folksy character; like a combination between John the Baptist and a Dylanesque folk-poet who engaged a world in extremes. Clearly Merton illustrated that he was savvy to contemporary trends and contemporary colloquial phrases but he also found a mystical beauty in the natural world. The American 1960s was a time of extreme social behaviors, especially in California: experimentation, free love, and rock-and-roll ruled the minds of the youth culture of that period. A self-proclaimed resistor of television, Merton nonetheless was an artisan, musicophile, and poet who gathered bits of information about the happenings of the world through correspondences, magazines, and friendships.

I have only watched TV twice in my life. I am frankly not terribly interested in TV anyway. Certainly I do not pretend that by simply refusing to keep up with the latest news I am therefore unaffected by what goes on, or free of it all.3

Although a hermit in the rural lands of Kentucky, Merton was not oblivious to the pulse of the culture, nor to the signs of the times affecting his environment.

Introduction

Thomas Merton was no ordinary individual or sheltered hermit. His wisdom bears a deep and penetrating probe into the identity of the human person as well as society. To appreciate the prophetic awareness throughout his writings, a reader cannot reduce Merton’s works to the sterile cultural standards of contemporary America; such as is common in the Call-Out or Cancel Culture Movement.4 The quotation at the beginning of this chapter, beyond the mere words on the page, offers a concrete example that Merton had an innate understanding of the honesty within an adolescent’s questions, and through an honest response that might seem off-putting, illustrated God’s presence to that young adult.

Before discussing Merton’s life and ministry further, it is important to acknowledge the great challenge that exists when exploring the life and personal communications of a deceased celebrity or scholar. Reading the words and writings from an individual’s diary or correspondence can often leave an outsider with the feeling of intrusion, a sense of invasion of privacy, especially when a section of text is taken out of original context. Snippets of conversations which bear a clear or profound meaning in the original dialogue can easily become misunderstood or misinterpreted by outsiders. For an author and researcher, questions of establishing integrity, an authentic context, while trying to advance a new perspective and exploration to understand how to apply the life and thought of a celebrated individual can feel like walking a tightrope. This text will attempt to offer such a funambulist insight into the life of Thomas Merton: not only as a monk, celebrated spiritual author, civil-rights advocate, nonviolent resistor, and ecumenical force, but forerunner for insights of a holistic approach to adolescent spirituality.

I also fully acknowledge that during his own lifetime, Thomas Merton was well aware and cautious about his own legacy and celebrated image. In one of his last interviews, Merton referred to this challenge: “The legend is stronger than I am. Nevertheless, I rebel against it and maintain my basic human right not to be turned into a Catholic myth for children in parochial schools.”5 Similarly in an essay on education he reflected: “If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naiveté, and I would take very good care never to do the same again.”6

The purpose of this manuscript is not to turn Thomas Merton into a Catholic myth, as he feared; it is to acknowledge that the writings of Merton continue to offer wisdom for a culture half-a-century after his death, and most pointedly Merton’s life and writings can offer an innate sense of the value of relationship that can shed insight into the challenges for ministry of adolescents, as well as an authentic lens to understand adolescent spirituality.

Adolescent Spirituality: A Brief Overview

Before further exploring the contemporary challenges affecting adolescent spirituality, it is important to explore the evolution of adolescent spirituality from its roots, to trace its trajectory and to have some sense of its course for the future. Although adolescent spirituality is a common phrase in pastoral ministry today, the emergence of the concept of adolescent spirituality is rather nuanced and novel within the historical context and understanding of the domain of spirituality. Although adolescent spirituality has evolved from various forms of catechetical practices, the Vatican II Council acted as the catalyst that created a real recognition for Catholics to address the needs surrounding adolescent spirituality.

Due to this evolution, some scholars date the advent of Catholic adolescent spirituality from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based on the religious educational missions to outcasted and neglected adolescents, such as the wo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Images
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Thomas Merton
• Chapter 3: Education
• Chapter 4: Rituals
• Chapter 5: Silence
• Chapter 6: True/False Self
• Chapter 7: Passion
• Chapter 8: Athletics
• Chapter 9: The Arts, Part I—Music/Poetry
• Chapter 10: The Arts Part II—Painting/Photography
• Chapter 11: Advocacy
• Chapter 12: Bullying
• Chapter 13: Dialogue
• Chapter 14: Community
• Chapter 15: The World
• Bibliography