Thomas Merton

Twentieth-Century Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century Living

Paul R. Dekar

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781606089705
  9781498212229
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621890188
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Thomas Merton was arguably the twentieth century's most widely published and widely read spiritual writer. This book explores Merton's prophetic writings and experience as they offer guidance for spiritual seekers in their search to experience God, to simplify their lives, to live more humanly, and to shape Christian community in the face of alienation, consumerism, noise, and technology. The book includes parts of three previously unpublished conference contributions by Merton on technology.

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Stirrings of a New Monasticism

The whole purpose of the monastic life is to teach men to live by love.

—Thomas Merton, talk at Bangkok on December 10, 1968, Asian Journal

From December 10, 1941, until his death near Bangkok on December 10, 1968, Thomas Merton lived as a monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, located about an hour’s drive south of Louisville in central Kentucky. The monastic life provided Merton a context in which he produced some of the great spiritual literature of the twentieth century. Merton’s writings have continued to inspire members of contemplative communities that have formed in recent times.

In September 1968, Merton visited the Monastery of the Precious Blood, in Eagle River, Alaska, and led a retreat for the small community of nuns on the theme of building community on God’s love. Merton said that Jesus came “to overcome death by love, and this work of love . . . is our job.” Merton highlighted the victory of love over death on the cross, which reality “seeks to be manifested in a very concrete form on earth in the creation of community.” Merton affirmed that the only real community is one “which is concerned with the problems of underprivileged people.” Merton argued that when people experience the life of love and collaborate with God in transforming the world, they confirm the presence of the Spirit of God.1

Merton’s talks in Alaska opened a window into his prophetic role in two processes. One was to make contemplative practices accessible to every person. The other was to nurture individuals and groups seeking to build communities shaped by and sharing God’s love among all people, especially the poor and underprivileged.

Merton called for a new monasticism. His exploration of monasticism and its relevance for the modern world has transformed the institution and challenged innumerable people around the world to claim their truest selfhood, to deepen their lives of prayer, and to work for a world congruent with a Biblical vision of the dream of God.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre contends that contemporary people must emulate medieval monasteries by forming local communities within which they adopt similar practices and may similarly prolong life through a coming time of decline. In an incisive analysis of contemporary Western culture, he writes,

If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages that are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds of hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.2

In this passage, MacIntyre referred to the “last dark ages.” The dark ages were a time of cultural and economic disruption that took place in Europe after the decay of the Roman Empire. During this time of social collapse in the West, around 540 CE, Saint Benedict of Nursia completed what we now call The Rule of Saint Benedict, a text of 73 chapters giving instructions for forming and administering a monastery. For several centuries, Benedictine monasteries provided Western European society stability. Communities grew up around them. Many leaders were Benedictine monks or patrons of the Benedictine monasteries.

MacIntyre’s suggestion that the “new dark ages” are already upon us offers a commentary about a deep cultural malaise. Early in the twenty-first century, many people whose roots are secular as well as those who have a religious background are rebelling against racing through meals, work, social encounters, and the physical landscape. They have discovered that they have been in too much of a hurry to appreciate or notice fulfillment in living. They wonder what they have been missing. They want to incorporate into their busy schedules more time with God, with family members, with friends, or with themselves alone. They associate their lack of time for God, self, and others with an experienced need to explore new dimensions of freedom, illumination, love, self-realization, wholeness, and calm.

In response, many single and married people, both lay and clerical, are becoming companions of traditional monasteries. The Benedictine order offers opportunities for those who are not monks or nuns formally to associate with a particular monastery and to follow The Rule of Saint Benedict. Members of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO) also follow this Rule, including lay contemplatives. Another stream of Western monasticism, the Franciscan order, provides for celibate male and female communities along with a third order of lay Franciscans who follow many of the practices of their religious brothers and sisters but in a less formal, institutional way.

Many contemporary Christians are also engendering an explosive expansion of new experiments in monastic and communal living. These offer countless seekers a spiritual home in which to ground their lives and address the challenges of living in the modern world.

Nevertheless, negative and stereotypic views abound of monks and nuns, of monasteries and convents, and of the monastic life. One Sunday morning in June 2009, as I entered Canada from the U.S., I stopped at a border crossing. The immigration officer asked, “Where have you been?” I replied, “Rochester, New York.” He continued, “Why were you there?” I answered, “Attending a conference.” Then he said, “What was the conference about?” I simply said, “A monk.” His incredulous response was, “A monk?” followed by silence.

Were my wife Nancy with me, she would have said, “Don’t say anything. . . .” I followed her implicit wisdom and did not.

Waved on, I reflected on this brief exchange as I drove home. Did the official really believe I had attended a conference about some unnamed monk? Did he share any of the negative notions of monks that appear in popular culture?

Around the time of the conference, Canada’s national weekly current affairs magazine Maclean’s published an interview with Gaston Deschamps, age eighty-six, a member of a Cistercian monastery relocating from Oka, Quebec, to a smaller, quieter place seventy-five miles northeast of Montreal. Brother Deschamps joined in 1941, a time when the order was growing. Once two-hundred strong, there are now only twenty-six monks in the community. The interviewer, Martin Patriquin, asked about the long-term viability of the monastery. Brother Deschamps responded, “It brings me a lot of pain to think about this . . . we pray a lot for our survival. . . . You need religious people in the world, to pray for everyone.”3

The interview prompted two readers to comment about “monk bunk.” David Magrel of Winnipeg, Manitoba, observed that there are many interesting people in Canada; reading about this “archaic way of life was a waste of time.” Adrian Peetoom of Edmonton, Alberta, wrote, “Monastic life is not a virtue when all it amounts to is ‘to live inside ourselves.’”4

In a recent book of “nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality,” Donald Miller mentioned monks with a negative image. Miller was living in the Rockies with some friends. They had adopted a militant Christianity and were “manning up to Jesus, bumping Him chest to chest as it were, like Bible salesmen on steroids . . . necklace on my neck . . . cross in the center, a reminder . . . that we were going to be monks for a year . . . after a while that necklace started to choke me.”5

Are Christian monastics bound by restrictions and controls? In some sense, of course, but any community has checks and protocols. Is monasticism archaic? By no means. Monasticism offers a way to engage God, self, and others deeply. Is monasticism a waste of time? It is a waste of time only if you believe that living by love is a waste of time. Do monks or nuns live inside themselves? This has been neither my experience, nor that of many others.

James Orbinski, who is not a monk, implicitly offers another perspective. Orbinski is a Canadian physician, human rights activist, and past international president of Doctors without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières). In his autobiography, Orbinski records his struggles with questions about humanitarian service, politics, and the relationship between the two. On several occasions as a young person, Orbinski visits a monk at Oka, Brother Benedict. With his counsel, Orbinski finds direction in his life and life-long friendship with his spiritual mentor.6

Reading Orbinski’s story resonated with my own experience. In the mid-1970s, I began a teaching career at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I sometimes found work deadening and my ever-accelerating pace of life a problem. I felt a great need to recover a sense of God’s presence in my life. I was especially aware of a lack of connect between my work and the whispers of my heart.

To address this need, I sometimes attended retreats organized for pastors and other leaders of my congregation’s denomination, at the time the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. I discovered that the focus was on the speakers who gave talks or led seminars and workshops. The gatherings felt like they were just conferences filled with words rather than opportunities for spiritual renewal.

Once, I slipped away. With a beautiful hilltop view, I sat beneath a cross and read in the Bible, prayed the Lord’s Prayer, and meditated. Refreshed, I was returning to the main meeting place. A pastor, notorious for his disregard for theological educators like me, saw me coming down the hill, approached me, and asked incredulously, “Did you finish your sermon or class?”

At the time, I said nothing. The question may have been innocent. However, the apparent supposition bothered me that I was at the retreat preparing a homily or lecture.

As I reflected on this brief exchange with the pastor, I considered a possible difference in reasons for which we were attending the retreat. I realized that prayer was a major need in my life. I also pondered whether this pastor had any time to experience the presence of God in his life. He was perhaps too busy with the presence of others in his life. He had possibly received little training in the historical practices of Christian spirituality. Maybe no one encouraged him to do continuing education around this aspect of professional ministry.

This musing led me to seek to fill a real lacuna in my personal life. I became part of a prayer group with other people active in social ministry. We were intentional in bringing together people from diverse economic situations and several traditions: Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Quaker, United Church of Canada, Presbyterian, and seekers. We met weekly for an hour of silence and reflection at the Welcome Inn Community Center, which served (and serves) the underprivileged in the poorest neighborhood in Hamilton. Occasionally, family members and friends joined us for a meal or a day of reflection, renewal, recreation, or participation in public witness for peace and justice. Upon moving to Memphis, I sought out a similar group of soul friends. Notably, this led to participation in the Memphis School of Servant Leadership.

Another resolution was to take an annual spiritual retreat. Thanks to this decision, I have visited many monasteries. Monks and nuns have helped me to develop my spiritual life. They have helped me to experience God’s power in my life and thereby to live in a more humane manner.

A third consideration had to do with my professional work in pastoral formation at McMaster University and, later, Memphis Theological Seminary (MTS) in Tennessee. I introduced regular courses on prayer and contemporary monasticism in the curriculum of each institution. Over the years, these classes attracted over two hundred students. The syllabi included books by Jo...

Table of contents

• Thomas Merton
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Stirrings of a New Monasticism
• 2. Introducing Thomas Merton
• 3. Thomas Merton on Monastic Renewal
• 4. Thomas Merton on Simplification of Life
• 5. Thomas Merton, Guide to the Right Use of Technology
• 6. Thomas Merton on Care of Earth
• 7. The Root of War Is Fear
• 8. Twentieth-Century Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century Communities
• 9. Building Communities of Love
• Appendix One
• Appendix Two
• Bibliography