Tag: Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was an American Trappist monk, theologian, author, and social activist who became a prominent voice in 20th-century Catholic spirituality. Living at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, his extensive writings spanned interior prayer, mysticism, pacifism, racial justice, and pioneering interreligious dialogue with Zen Buddhist and Taoist scholars.

by on
Thomas Merton

In a recorded conference for novice monks at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Kentucky, the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton suggests that simplicity is both a reward and a method in the life of prayer:

“The life of prayer is […] the simplest possible kind of life. Simplify your mind. Simplify your thinking. Simplify your thinking about yourself and simplify your thinking about life and simplify your thinking about God”

— Thomas Merton

by on
Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani

A beautiful day. We rise early. I head out into the rain and collect coffee and pastries.

Later, as the sun comes out, we go walking until late into the afternoon.

After Mass, we listen to the sounds of birds and traffic, and settle down for a quiet evening. I read this in Thomas Merton’s journals:

(more…)

by on

Saturday afternoon. Revisiting Merton, Newman, and this from Madeleine Delbrêl:

“We are not lacking silence. We already have it. / If we lack silence, it is because we have not learned how to keep it. / All the noises that surround us make much less din than we ourselves do. / The real noise is the echo that things have in us. / It is not speaking that necessarily breaks the silence. / Silence is the place of the word of God, and if we confine ourselves to repeating this word, then we can speak without ceasing to be silent.”

— The Dazzling Light of God, trans. Mary Dudro Gordon

by on

I recently finished re-reading Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, one of my favourite books. Now, I am dipping into the multi-volume edition of his letters. All of the books are secondhand copies, and I am sure that some of them have their own stories to tell. My copy of the first volume once sat on the shelves of a branch of The New York Public Library at 455 Fifth Avenue in Mid-Manhattan.

The letters are collected according to theme. There’s a volume of correspondence covering Merton‘s close friendships; there’s one devoted to poetry, literature, and the vocation of writing; and yet another two that deal with religious experience. The fifth and final volume collects together his letters on “Times of Crisis”. I think I might start with that one.

by on

cropped-Thomas-Mertons-desk-facing-east-from-the-living-room-of-his-hermitage-frank-geiser.jpg

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

by on

Rose early. Cool and clear morning. Went running around East Bute Dock (one lap). Reading Thomas a Kempis, Flannery O’Connor (her first published short story, ‘The Geranium’), and the diaries of Thomas Merton (describing his meeting with Zen scholar and practitioner D. T. Suzuki).