Merton as Prophet and Spiritual Gadfly: Review of Prayer and Growth in Christian Life By Thomas Merton

Rockville, MD: Now You Know Media, 2012

13 Lectures on 5 CD Set/$35.95

Reviewed by Nass Cannon

A spiritual gadfly, Thomas Merton buzzes and sometimes stings as he hovers over themes concerning his views on the religious vocation for the Sisters of Loretto in the 5 CD set on Prayer and Growth in Christian Life. The talks center on 13 topics. Although Merton certainly touches these topics don’t expect a well-organized lecture dedicated to each. Instead, expect the creative mind of Merton meandering through these themes as though in a meadow of wild flowers pollinating some while occasionally stinging the religious gardeners of institutional life. The editorial labeling comes later.

In these 1967 recordings, Merton raises difficult questions and speaks with a prophetic voice. He challenges us to move beyond our complacent and tired view of the world and to obtain our religious and human freedom as true sons and daughters of God. Similarly, he challenges the Church, which he thinks is at risk of being an ally of the political order and an instrument of the state.  Because he believes that the religious establishment is embedded within a society of power, might and wealth, which is under the judgment of God, he thinks religious and particularly cloistered religious must become free and prophetic witnesses opposed to it. In so doing, they would identify with Jesus chasing out the moneychangers, or the saints like St. Joan who was tried and killed with the complicity of the Church establishment. From his perspective, too many view religious life as being synonymous with institutional life and are trapped, (a word used by Merton throughout the CD’s) into overwork and meaningless routine. Their lives may be beaten down and shaped into the image and likeness of an institutional norm rather than the image and likeness of God.  By contrast, Merton thinks the real purpose of religious life is to provide space and solitude for nurturing the spiritual and human growth of the individual, to allow the individual to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit to become a creative and unique son or daughter of God.  He thinks such a religious should not only be outside society but also in some measure a prophet and rebel.

 Disk 1

 Merton touches on the topics of “Balance and Grace, “Religious Virginity and Communal Love”, and “The Institutionalized Church”. For the theme of “Balance and Grace”, he circles about the life of prayer.  For him, prayer is a relationship with God through which we are most ourselves. He is concerned about the complexity we make of prayer where prayer is something we do apart from our everyday existence.  He suggests we often think that prayer is a role we play rather than being something as simple as breathing, a natural state of living.  He suggests prayer comes from the very ground of life itself, at the very core of our existence and not something apart from it.  Through prayer we come to the realization that we belong to God and live as children of God in consciousness of this belonging. We also come to understand ourselves not in an obsessive way preoccupied with our faults but as someone who is liberated to have free speech with God, as son to Father without fear. Prayer lessens our ambiguity and frees us from being double-hearted.  Prayer brings us to acceptance of ourselves as we are and even to accept our ambiguity.  Prayer is a response to a personal call from God resulting in an inner awakening of our God intended self to recover our sight and freedom. Through prayer we become open to God and thereby become open to everything else. He thinks that the life of prayer is an end in itself. 

 Merton responds to the following questions from the sisters: the role of emotions in prayer; the issue of evil and hell; consecrated virginity; and the institutionalized church.  Since Merton views prayer as core to our everyday life, emotions are natural during prayer. He does recognize that they may not be accepted by the community at public prayer but recommends some solitary moments to give them expression.  Evil he sees as a potentiality in us, which with satanic help may be expressed in the horrors witnessed during the Vietnam War. However he agrees with Julia of Norwich that God is absolutely free and all may be well even in regard to the notion of hell even though we may not understand it.  In regard to consecrated virginity, Merton emphasizes the relationship rather than the absence of sex. He points out that in marriage the relationship of two loving persons is what is important. In religious community that personal relationship is with God.  Those in religious communities should not look for identity or love from others but rather in their spousal relationship with Christ.  He agrees that the institutionalized church is the sign of Christ’s presence in the world but we may have too limited a view of what this means. In the institutional church, too much emphasis may have been given to hierarchy and rules for example. A consequence of this may be that one interprets love of neighbor in community life as being focused on correcting one another’s faults. In a less institutionalized church, the responsibility to love falls back on the shoulders of the individual who will have to take responsibility for one another. 

Disk 2

Merton reflects on the themes of “Our Dedication to God”, “Escaping Entrapment”, “Ecstatic Life in the Spirit”, and “Education, Learning and Success”. He states Christ came to bring us a more abundant life and that our vocation is to live this life fully.  He contrasts secular life to a dedicated life.  He thinks secular life may be a trap in which man is defined by society and has the freedom only to make money.  A unit of production, a person is rewarded for being a nonperson.  One must play the role society defines which forces the person to being untrue to oneself.  Merton believes individuals often attempt to flee this trap with false escapes. He mentions hypochondria, the abuse of medications, and alcoholism as examples. The purpose of the dedicated life should make false escapes unnecessary.  He points out that a dedicated life is not synonymous with institutional life. He cautions that institutional life may become a trap as well if it attempts to remove a person from life, if it eliminates spontaneity and limits expressions of love, or if it defines one’s life by the rules of the institution.  Merton emphasizes that the freedom of the religious life arises from continuous conversion, which enables a free spontaneous self –donation, rather than one imposed by the institution. A religious order should be open to human possibilities allowing space and time for the Holy Spirit to heal and to allow the individual to express their creative possibilities.  This would include attention to the physical life as well. For example, more attention must be paid to healthy physical activities such as tennis or swimming, and time should be allocated for them. The religious life should be the place, which nurtures a self-definition of the person in freedom with openness to the Spirit. The religious life is for the liberation of the deep things of the Spirit. It is for ecstasy, an inebriation of love, joy, jubilation, and creativity.  Merton notes that the function of both the monastery and the university are places where we learn to live. The purpose of education is for a person to define himself in relationship to the world. The world is more real as the people are free to choose their own lives and save their souls by arriving at a mature identity, discovering their radical self after discarding their masks. Learning to be one self is to rise from the dead. This inmost self is stripped naked, where life and death are equal.  Free from the ego, this true self is a spark, which is the Absolute recognizing itself in us.  The purpose of all education and indeed all of life is to find that spark.  

Disk 3

The themes of Disk 3 are  “Christian Non Violence”, “The Privilege and Obligation of Religious”, “Camus: The Status Quo”, and “Religious Freedom”.  Merton believes we find our identity in addressing the critical issues of mankind such as poverty, world peace, and civil rights. Merton thinks these fundamental issues of mankind should occupy more of the institutional church’s time rather than what he considers secondary issues such as clerical celibacy or the expansion of parochial halls.  He fears religious have chosen privilege, security and respect to live comfortably in a society, which is under the judgment of God. Renewal of the religious life may require prophetic witness and entail serious dissent, which will not be popular. Religious have been apologist for society instead of prophetic witnesses and may have an obligation to be outcast and lose their privileged place in society.  As an example, he points to the accusation of Camus in his book “The Stranger” that the Church through the prison chaplain ops for society over the individual by using the coercion of the death penalty as an argument to force the prisoner’s conversion rather than confronting the societal injustice of the death penalty.  The Church thereby uses religion to justify man’s subordination to society, which for Merton, is a form of idolatry. He cites Joan of Arc condemned in the name of God as another example in which justice was sacrificed to politics.  In such instances, the Church becomes deeply involved in the hypocrisy of the state by insisting that the activities of the state are in the name of God. Instead, Merton thinks we have to grope for prophetic solutions that stand for life and justice and for man made in the image and likeness of God. This will require religious communities to allow for the inner freedom of the religious, to be open to the Holy Spirit, and to be open to the whole world.

Disk 4

This disk focuses on “Monasteries and Contemplation”. For Merton, the ideal monastic vocation allows sufficient freedom for the individual to follow a personal path to union with God like the early desert fathers who worked out their relationship with God after an initial period of training.  For him, this charismatic freedom, which is learned through contemplation, is an essential component of monastic life. It is bought by the renunciation of other freedoms such as desire for worldly pleasures and thereby bound up with restrictions but monastic law cannot dominate monastic life. Instead, this freedom is more like the declarations of St John that the truth shall make you free and of St. Paul referring to the freedom of the sons of God. Monastic renewal cannot be effective without this freedom, which is expressed by Mary sitting at the foot of the Lord.  Merton acknowledges that there is tension between the Martha and Mary types in the monastery. However more importantly, he emphasizes that this conflict exists within contemplatives themselves who are called to make an act of preference for the apparent unproductiveness and uselessness of sitting at the foot of Jesus and listening.  This preference is in defiance of those in the world and some in the monastery who think this is worthless.  He thinks remaining quietly in the presence of God and listening to Him requires grace and is the highest ascetic discipline.  He refers to St. John of the Cross comments about the soul in solitude striving to attain perfection and union with the Word by allowing the Spirit to move her will freely and fill her memories with divine knowledge.  He reminds all of us that there are many mansions in the Father’s house and many ways to union with God. Jesus alone is necessary.  To live in Him takes care of everything, answers everything and to see Jesus is to see the Father. If we are living in Christ, we are face to face to face with the Father but we do not understand or see this. Through abiding in Christ’s love, we will experience that Jesus in us does the will of the Father.  Christ in us doing the will of the father brings the community with its diverse talents and activities into oneness. Christ is the unifying principle, which makes not only monastic and Christian communities but also all of mankind one.  

Disk 5

The final disk addresses, “The Contemplative Life So Called” in which Merton suggests love is sufficient unto itself and a deeper experience of God through loving attentiveness to Him is part and parcel of love.  The emphasis is on the contemplative’s relationship with God and one’s dependency on Him in which everything is received as gift. It is a life of faith above works.  A contemplative life is a life of freedom and therefore must be a life of penance.  By penance, Merton does not mean the arbitrary rules he encountered at Gethsemane like walking with eyes down, or sleeping in his habit.  He suggests real penance gets at the deep roots of pride, which is to die on the cross and rise with Christ. This is not simply the penance of ascetic routines but instead the penance of transformation by the Spirit. From this transformation flows the freedom the contemplative seeks which is the freedom to follow the Spirit, to follow Christ, and to listen to His personal message to them.  With this freedom comes peace. The root of this peace is faith in Christ, faith in the contemplative vocation, and faith in the promises of Christ including the admonition that Mary has chosen the better part. Renewal in the contemplative life requires zeal in the contemplative’s prayer for faith, which gives one the vision to see their path and come to a deeper dependence on Christ. Merton concludes these tapes with a voice filled with charismatic enthusiasm by stating that the most fundamental issue for contemplatives is to pray for faith and entrust themselves completely to a Love who is God.

Listening to these CD’s would be beneficial to anyone in the religious life that desire Merton’s perspective on their vocation. However they would also appeal to anyone who wishes a clearer grasp of the contemplative way or more broadly anyone who wishes an audio taste of Merton to sample his clarity of thought, wisdom, wit, and prophesy. Merton’s thinking expressed on these CD’s also has a contemporary relevance as a harbinger of Pope Francis’s vision of the Church for modern times.

 Pope Francis’s “The Joy of the Gospel” guides the institutional church to be more involved in those issues of passionate concern to Merton such as the free market economy, income inequality, spreading unemployment, the environment, and war and peace. Merton, prophet and gadfly, raised these issues throughout his monastic life.  Through Pope Francis, one senses that the Spirit is leading the institutional church in a direction foreshadowed by a prophetic Thomas Merton.  A Church described by Pope Francis as“…bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security".

The time of the end is the time of no room...is the time of a new creation...and room for all nass cannon

This paper reflects upon the paradox in Thomas Merton’s essay “The Time of the End is the Time of No Room” which is in reality the time of the beginning of a new creation with room for all. The inn which had no room for the birth of Christ symbolizes the end time, the time of the final events in humankind’s covenant relationship with God. For Merton, this time is also a final beginning as he observes: “For eschatology is not finis and punishment, the winding up of accounts and the closing of books: it is the final beginning, the definitive birth into a new creation.” His view stems from The Book of Revelation: “Now I am making the whole of creation new…It is already done.” With Merton as guide, this paper will consider Christ’s transforming presence in the world as the source, the guide, and destination of the new man and new creation. The time of the end is the time of no room… is the time of a new creation… and room for all because it is for Merton “…above all the time of The Great Joy” …and for us, through the merits of Christ, the time of our union with God.

 The Time of the End

“…the end’ does not necessarily mean only ‘the violent, sudden, bad end”.

 The inn symbolizes a gathering up of the kingdoms opposed to the Son of God and therefore a place situated in the time of the end. Merton distinguishes this end of Biblical eschatology from the “vague and anxious eschatology of human foreboding… of secular anxieties and hopes” which through fear may be a death wish for a violent end. The time of the end is one of both revealed fulfillment because of the Incarnation and finality because it is the time when all of the forces arrayed against God concentrate their efforts to thwart His plan of salvation by the birth of Christ. In its historical dimension, those to be numbered gather at the inn because of the mandate by Imperial Rome for a census numbering the people “to be identified with the structure of imperial power” In its eschatological dimension, the inn symbolizes all those forces described in the Book of Revelation who oppose the reign of God…“the demon spirits that work wonders go out to the kings all over the world to muster them for battle on the great Day of God Almighty ” (Revelations 16:14) This for Merton is the time of the end…” the time of … ‘wars and rumors of wars’, of huge crowds moving this way and that, of men withering away for fear, of flaming cities and sinking fleets, of smoking lands laid waste….” However this end may not be a finite point in time. Merton views eschatology as processual and realized in the moment. He says, "I am coming to see clearly the great importance of the concept of realized eschatology-- the transformation of life and of human relations by Christ now rather than eschatology focused on future cosmic and religious events.” Merton interprets realized eschatology as a time of finality and fulfillment. It is the time of finality because the coming of the Messiah marks the end of mankind’s banishment from paradise and numbers the days of the kingdoms of this world. It is the time of fulfillment because God's presence is among us and intimates the glory of the Kingdom of God. Merton notes, “…because my faith is eschatological it is also contemplative, for I am even now in the Kingdom and I can even now ‘see’ something of the glory of the Kingdom and praise Him who is King. I would be foolish, then, if I lived blindly, putting all 'seeing’ off until some imagined fulfillment (for my present seeing is the beginning of a real and unimaginable fulfillment!)” Is the Time of No Room "As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowd it off the face of the earth. As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state. In the time of the ultimate end, there is no room for man.” In its eschatological context, there is no room for the birth of Christ because the inn, symbolic of an unredeemed world, is crowded with man as ruled by demons and opposing the reign of God. “The time of the end is the time of the Crowd” , a crowd spawn from the deceit of a serpent in the Garden. Those occupants of the inn from Cain to Hitler and all those who have soaked the earth with the blood of their neighbors blindly serve the power of this world building up a kingdom of slavery, oppression, and death through their armies, bombs, slaughter and ever crescendoing violence even to the edge of nuclear holocaust. The sinful seed planted in creation from the fall of Adam erupts into a massive kingdom characterized by death and destruction through mankind’s chaotic pursuit of power. Merton explains that "...original sin would be a perversion of man's active instincts, a turning of man's creativity away from God so he produces and creates not the society and the temple which God's own creation demands as its fulfillment, but a temple of man's own power. The world is then exploited for the glory of man, not for the glory of God. Man's power becomes an end in itself. Things are not merely used, they are wasted, destroyed. Men are no longer workers and ‘creators’ but tools of production, instruments for profit. The ultimate extreme of this process of degeneration is reached when all man's powers are directed to spoilage, rapine and destruction, and when his society is geared not only against God, but against the most fundamental natural interests of man himself." Christ could not be born in such an inn because although He emptied himself to become man He “… did not empty Himself to the point of becoming mass man, faceless man.” He is not part of the crowd who occupy the inn and serve the world which Merton perceives as"... the body of those who hate, because they are prisoners of their own narrow illusions and petty desires." In this industrial and technological age, the crowd serves the world of the "isms"- materialism, consumerism, capitalism, communism etc. in which abstract ideologies are transformed into absolutes treated as idols. Merton identifies this phenomena as part of humankind’s falsity in which we objectify our lies and treat them as ultimate truth. "The mother of all lies is the lie we persist in telling ourselves about ourselves. And since we are not brazen enough liars to make ourselves believe our own lie individually, we pool all lies together and believe them because they become the big lie uttered by the vox populi, and this kind of lie we accept as ultimate truth." As a consequence of the crowd’s acceptance of these ultimate truths, there is no room for individual self-understanding and the solitude to obtain wisdom. There is only room for a mass culture that pillages the earth. For Ross Labrie, "The focus of the unspeakable in Raids is the materialism that Merton, as in "The Time of the End is the Time of No room," associated with modern culture....To Merton the materialism that had overtaken modern culture removed from view the latent possibilities of human existence. In particular it overlooked the crucial solitude that was needed for the self to emerge in the face of intense, collective socialization. What compounded this attenuation of human beings was the exclusion of nature as anything but a tool to produce the goods that purported to assuage people's emotional needs...While aware that much of the world was anything but affluent, Merton was also presciently conscious that the affluence of the West was what the rest of the world struggled to acquire. With his attention on what he thought of as the mesmerizing effect of consumer culture, Merton indicated that this particular dehumanization occurred not at the hands of tyrants but rather inside the appetites and emotional urgings of the majority, a mass culture that Merton wryly described in the preface to Raids as one that made 'tsars our of mice.'" The world is a kingdom in which there is no room for man because of the “demons who occupy the heart (pretending to be gods) so that man himself finds no room for himself in himself.” Since the fall, Satan dopes the hearts of men, spewing every expression of concupiscence, violence and war. Demons rule the world through ruling men's hearts and such men create a society of those “who hate” others as well as themselves. The crowd’s hate fuels genocide, the holocaust, the use of weapons of mass destruction, world wars. The source of this hate emanates from our individual false selves seeking meaningfulness where there is none. Merton observes “By way of social myths the false self is projected into the communal lie of the world, understood in the negative sense as that place which fosters our own deepest lie about ourselves”: \ In addition to society’s encouragement of our collective lies about ourselves, Merton believes that there is no room for man because we do not make time for understanding ourselves. We are living in “The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.” Victor Kramer observes Merton’s“…‘view of the modern world was one where many men seemed to be losing any ability to distinguish the true: appreciation of truth was apparently being lost because of increasingly greedy, cruel, and lustful pressures common to a society which encourages man to ignore the truth and to be primarily concerned with fitting in, or with his own satisfaction.” The time of the end is the time of no room for silence, no room for solitude, no room for independent thought, and no room for man to be himself because he is estranged from his true self, made in the image and likeness of God. Estranged from himself, he is estranged from God. He belongs only to the crowd who are like fans at a recent super bowl mesmerized by a gyrating Madonna, numbed by the noise, titillated by the allure of the senses, and made zombies by the grind of being a unit of production. The crowd is mass man, a worker ant, a drone guided by others and capable of destruction. For Merton, sin creates the crowd because it alienates man from himself, from others and from God. Merton views sin as a radical "refusal to be what we are, a rejection of our mysterious, contingent, spiritual reality hidden in the very mystery of God. Sin is our refusal to be what we were created to be-sons of God, images of God." To be truly ourselves, we must have a connection with our Origin; we must be in contact and nourished by the very Source of our being. To be made in the image and the likeness means to be in communion with the Word through which all came to be. “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in Him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth...all things have been created through and unto Him and in Him all things hold together.” As the image of God within us, Christ must be realized in each of us for us to recover our true self. The self that God knows is our unique personhood reflecting our union with the Son of God who dwells within us. We are Christ the monk, Christ the carpenter, Christ the factory worker, Christ the nuclear engineer, Christ the spouse, or Christ the innkeeper. The time of the end is the time of opportunity for us to encounter Christ, recover our true selves, and find our room in the Kingdom of God. is the time of…a new creation With the birth of Christ, time itself experiences its fulfillment… “Not only is Christ the term and fulfillment of creation, but He is also its source and its beginning. The far ends of time meet in His hands.” A new creation emerges with the birth of the God-Child in a damp cave as the Kingdom of God enters time. The reign of God radiates from child to mother and father, to shepherds, to wise men, and later to those of the temple destined to know him. As he grew in wisdom and grace, it spreads to those he met and touched as He walked the earth in silent communion with them. When his time had come, and even before at the wedding feast, it bursts into public awareness. To John who baptized him, the apostles whose hearts followed what their minds could not grasp, and even those bound by that other kingdom who in sickness and suffering sought his cure, He gave a King and Kingdom. The dead rose, the lame walked, the blind saw, all of which provoked that other kingdom into the brutal violence of the cross. However death evaporates through the resurrection and with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit sins are forgiven, and man becomes a new creation. To become a new creation, we must recover our true selves. As a consequence of the fall disorder enters creation as Adam is not only alienated from God but also from himself. Merton notes, “The inner, basic, metaphysical defilement of fallen man is his profound and illusory conviction that he is a god and that the universe is centered upon him… a lasting deformity impressed in our nature by original sin…” Sons and daughter of Adam, we too are alienated as consequence of this original rejection of God. As a consequence, our lives are lived from this false center in which “I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.” Our false self is the lie of “… one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love-outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.” Sin causes us to worship our false selves as an idol and estranges us from our true selves. Sin also effects the very depths of our personality. It “… destroys the one reality on which our true character, identity, and happiness depend; our fundamental orientation to God” To recover our true selves, we have to acknowledge this lie of our false self fermented by pride. “For pride is a stubborn insistence on being what we are not and never were intended to be. Pride is a deep, insatiable need for unreality, an exorbitant demand that other believe the lie that we have made of ourselves. ...It has, as a secondary effect, what theologians call concupiscence: the convergence of all passion and all senses upon the self.” We are assisted in this recovery by the experience of dread. Merton observes”…The experience of ‘dread’, ‘nothingness’: and ‘night’ in the heart of man is then the awareness of infidelity to the truth of our life…it is an awareness of infidelity as unrepented and without grace as unrepentable. It is the deep, confused, metaphysical awareness of a basic antagonism between the self and God due to estrangement from him by perverse attachment to a ‘self’ which is mysterious and illusory.” Dread provides the opportunity for repentance and an opening to grace. We recover our true self by the grace of- choosing growth and integration over division and death, by choosing to love rather than to hate, by choosing to create rather than destroy. We recover our true self by following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, our source of grace, our guide and our destination. Merton believes the Holy Spirit acts in Baptism and the Eucharist to provide grace for our recovery. Through baptism we become a new creation and through the Eucharist we encounter God. He thinks Baptism answers the “…most fundamental question raised… man's true identity.” He states that, “Just as Christ is the New Adam, so Baptism is a new Creation” by giving us a spiritual nature for " the man who has become pneumatikos--spiritual--is indeed a ‘new creature’.... who “ is able to love God for His own sake” and …”lives by the Spirit of Christ.” Baptism also prepares us to be in communion with God and others as it“…opens the way to existential communion.” The Eucharist is an expression of this communion which Merton views as the “Sacrament of charity--that charity by which we dedicate our freedom to God and to one another.” He perceives it to be a source of sanctifying grace which “…not only brings with it the bland, mild diffuse light which spreads over the whole purified atmosphere of the soul's summit, but at the precise peak of the spirit, the apex of man's inmost intellect and will, there now burns the white-hot point of mystical receptivity, that insatiable little diamond of spiritual awareness which is the most precious thing in the spirit of man”.. Contemplative prayer, too, is important in our recovery as we learn to dialogue with God and grow in union with Him. For Merton, “Prayer then means yearning for the simple presence of God, for a personal understanding of his word, for knowledge of his will and for a capacity to hear and obey him.” He advises us “… to listen in silence to …God …(in contemplation) which is to bring man into a conscious communion with God in Christ.” But prayer is more than a dialogue “...it is the communion of our freedom with his ultimate freedom, his infinite spirit.” A fruition of contemplative prayer for Merton is the realization of Christ living in me. “Contemplation...is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source… reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God... is a religious and transcendent gift... Contemplation is the awareness and realization, even in some sense experience, of what each Christian obscurely believes: "It is now no longer I that live but Christ lives in me." Hence, man's search for God through a sacramental life and prayer “...lies essentially in his becoming aware of himself as a person possessed by God the Holy Spirit, totally submissive to the grace of Christ.” Through the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit connects us to our true self and restores our relationship with God. We discover that “The uncreated Image, buried and concealed by sin in the depths of our souls, rises from death when, sending forth His Spirit into our spirit, He manifests His presence within us and becomes for us the source of a new life, a new identity and a new mode of action.” But even more, we become transformed into the likeness of Christ and become divinely human. “Each one of us, in some sense, is able to be completely transformed into the likeness of Christ, to become, as he is, divinely human, and thus to share His spiritual authority and charismatic power in the world.” Transformed into the likeness of Christ, we participate in the time of a new creation. Merton saw Adam as a priest of creation who through his contemplative union with God creation itself participated in worship. It was in the mystical union of Adam's soul with God that the whole world was offered and consecrated to God in sacrifice. Merton notes that “…it was in the sounding solitude of Adam's understanding that things without reason became able to adore their creator, in the flaming silence of Adam's wisdom all that existed and breathed and grew and ran and multiplied upon the earth was united with God in worship and in communion.” Restored in the image and likeness of God we become a new Adam through the merits of Christ and we too offer and consecrate the whole world to God. As members of the mystical body of Christ, we live in the Messianic Kingdom: “Just as Adam is the one chosen by God to reside over the first creation, Christ is sent by Him to institute and govern an entirely new spiritual Creation. For with the death and resurrection of Christ we are in a new world, a new age. The fullness of time has come. The history of the world has achieved an entirely new orientation. We are living in the Messianic Kingdom.” The time of a new creation then is the fullness of time, the time of the Messianic Kingdom which is the time of man’s union with his true self, man’s union with God, and man’s union with others-the time of his union with the mystical body of Christ which has room for all. And room for all In the solitude of his hermitage Merton writes about his experience of this Kingdom, “How men fear freedom! And how I have learned to fear it myself! I know that in fact, without faith, this would be a different matter, this living alone. But with faith it becomes an eschatological gift. I have never before really seen what it means to live in the new creation and in the Kingdom. Impossible to explain it. If I tried, I would be unfaithful to the grace of it- for I would be setting limits to it. It is limitless, without determination, without definition. It is what you make of it each day, in response to the Holy Spirit!” Within the boundaries of time, realization of the Messianic Kingdom evolves as The far ends of time meet in His hands.” In Merton’s view, “The whole life of the Kingdom of God consists then in the gradual extension of the spiritual effects of the death and resurrection of Jesus to one soul after another until Christ lives perfectly in all whom He has called to Himself”. The work of building up the Kingdom belongs to us all for we are not only a new creation and new man but a New Adam. “So it is that we ourselves are the ‘Second Adam’ because we ourselves are Christ. In us, the image of God, which is complete and entire in each individual soul, is also, in all of us the image of God." Merton believes “The New Adam creates himself, not only by the work and suffering and triumph of the Head, Jesus Christ, but also by the labors and sufferings and cooperation of each one of the members. ...Each one of us has his part in this labor, for we, in fact, are all the New Adam”. Because each of us is charged in building the new creation, Merton teaches: “The presence of God in His world as its Creator depends on no one but Him. His presence in the world as Man depends, in some measure, upon men.” In our contribution to the gradual building up of his Kingdom, we hope that there will be room for all because of God’s presence in all things. Similar to Julian of Norwich exhortation that all matters of things will be well, Merton invites us to see that "We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time… And this is something we are not able to see. But if we abandon ourselves to Him and forget ourselves we see it sometimes…that God manifests himself everywhere, in everything -- in people and in things and in nature and in events … So that it becomes very obvious that He is everywhere, He is in everything, and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It's impossible, it's just simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it. ." So in our journey let us ask God to help us see it. As we walk the earth during our brief passage, as we cast our eyes upon the gathering technological furies, as we witness to the division among men and their acts of unspeakable horror, may God help us to see it-a world transparent with His Manifestation. May He shine his light upon us and recreate us in His image and likeness that we may radiate His glory. May He restore us to our true selves that we m ay dwell in His new creation beyond the time of the end into that time everlasting where through His Merits there will be room for all.

Stand on Your Own Feet!

Thomas Merton and the Monk without Vows or Walls

Nass Cannon

"From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet,” proclaims Thomas Merton on the day of his death. He was quoting an abbot, who gave this advice to the Tibetan monk, Trungpa Rimpoche, confronted with fleeing or staying in the face of an advancing Chinese communist army. Merton interprets this saying to be “an extremely important monastic statement” and asserts that “the time for relying on structures has disappeared.”(AJ 338) This paper explores the concept of a monk standing on his own feet without walls or vows. Traditionally, we view the monk as someone enclosed by physical boundaries, adhering to a particular spiritual tradition, bound by vows. However, stripped to its essentials what constitutes the vocation of a monk? Can its essence be hidden within any vocation? With Merton as guide, this paper focuses on the basic elements of being a monk for those both in the monastery and in the world. It considers the visible monks in the world such as the lay monk, Brother Wayne Teasdale, those of the New Monasticism, and the New Friars as well as those more hidden invisible monks. Concentrating on Merton’s thoughts in regard to purity of heart and reconciliation, the paper will review the transformational process which molds all monks and guides them to “final integration.”

An Atypical Traditional Monk

Thomas Merton is a model of a traditional although atypical monk who stands on his own feet. Secluded behind the walls of a monastery, he continues his vocation as a writer. His yearning for the freedom of solitude leads him into a hermitage. He advocates the peace movement by publicly decrying the Vietnam War and railing against the atomic bomb. He joins the civil rights movement. He studies Eastern religions. Through his writings and actions, he reflects someone who stands on its own feet, arrives at his own conclusions, and speaks the truth with the light that he is given. On the surface, he appears to be an anomaly -- an outspoken monk afloat in the cultural waters of the Cistercian traditions who bridges monastic isolation through diverse activities including a dialogue with men of goodwill from various faiths, traditions, and cultures, rendezvous with the famous such as Joan Baez, and affection for a student nurse. Although he shatters the iconic image of a monk, Merton personifies an authentic selfhood congruent with his interior convictions, a man of integrity. From him, we learn that a monk who lives from the center of his authenticity reveals his true self which is the image and likeness of God, uniquely expressed through his personhood as it exists at a particular place and time in history. For Merton, this meant integrating within himself other cultures, traditions, and religions as he sought to expand his interior boundaries to become more inclusive as expressed in his comments on “final integration”:

The one who has attained final integration is no longer limited by the culture in which he has grown up. ‘He has embraced all of life’… He passes beyond all these limiting forms, while retaining all that is best and most universal in them, ‘finally giving birth to a fully comprehensive self’. He accepts not only his own community, his own society, his own friends, his own culture but all mankind. (CWA 207)

Merton realizes that the human race in all of its diversity is the body of Christ and that all of creation pulsates at its core with energy divine. “We must, first of all, see all material things in the light of the mystery of the incarnation. We must reverence all creation because the Word was made flesh.” For Merton, the monk with this realization has begun his journey to attain final integration which is not a discovery of the mind through words or images but an exploration of the heart.

He was a Trappist Monk living in a monastery, within the enclosed walls of Our Lady of Gethsemane Abbey, at least most of the time. He was fed by the silence and solitude of a monastery which was a “tabernacle in the desert upon which the shekinah, the luminous cloud of the divine Presence, almost visibly descends”. He felt both nourished and restrained by his environment. His writings suggest that at times he was dancing with angels as when he proclaims, “Love sails me around the House. I walk two steps on the ground and four steps in the air. It is love.” On deep issues of conscience, he appears bridled by convention and the arbitrary whims of his superiors and censors, as illustrated by his lament to James Forest in the Cold War letters, “The orders are, no more writing about peace. This is transparently arbitrary and uncomprehending…” However, of greater importance, he was bound by ascetic vows:

The whole ascetic life of the monk, in all its aspects both positive and negative, is summed up in his consecration of himself, his whole life, all that he has and all that he is, to God, by his five monastic vows. The life of the monk is the life of the vows…. Conversion of manners means striving to change one's whole life and all one's attitudes from those of the world to those of the cloister…Obedience means the renunciation of our own will, in order to carry out in our whole life the will of another who represents God. Stability means renouncing our freedom to travel about from place to place, and binds us to one monastery until death. Poverty and chastity are not explicitly mentioned in the rule of St. Benedict because they were considered by him to be included in conversion of manners, but they form an essential part of the monk's obligations. (MJ 52)

Particularly during his hermitic solitude, these vows challenge him to the very depths of his existence.

…all day and all night, the hermit beats his head against a wall of doubt. That is his contemplation…a kind of unknowing of himself, a kind of doubt that questions the very roots of his existence, a doubt which undermines his very reasons for existing and for doing what he does. It is this doubt which reduces him finally to silence, and in the silence which ceases to ask questions, he receives the only certitude he knows; the presence of God in the midst of uncertainty and nothingness as the only reality. (MJ 206-207)

In this desert, Tom Merton disappears (perhaps foreshadowing his last publicly spoken words before he is electrocuted) (AJ 343) and is “swallowed up in Him” (God). (MJ 207) In union with the Holy Spirit, his liberated spirit radiates a creative openness to others reaching fruition in his speech in Calcutta when he says “we are already one…and what we have to recover is our original unity.”(AJ 308) Transcending the limits of monastic formalism, a transformed Merton can ask: “Can there be a monastic life without vows? Is a monastic life with vows necessarily better and more authentic than one without vows?” (CWA 187) He continues with the observation, “In the earliest days of desert monasticism there were no vows, no written rules, and institutional structure was kept at a minimum. The monastic commitment was taken with extreme and passionate seriousness, but this commitment was not protected by juridical sanctions or by institutional control.”(CWA 187) Merton is “…convinced that monastic life without vows is quite possible and perhaps very desirable. It might have many advantages”. (CWA 190) He wonders, “Why could not married people participate temporarily, in some way, in monastic life?” (CWA 188) Finally, he questions the very structure of monasticism, “A greater flexibility in the monastic structure would permit the development of ecumenical monastic communities. There is no reason why non-Catholics and even unbelievers should not be admitted to a serious participation -- at least temporary-- in monastic community life”. (CWA 190-191)

Visible Non-Traditional Monks

Brother Wayne Teasdale

As if in response to his musings, self-declared monks in the world appear after Merton’s death. One of these, Brother Wayne Teasdale, refers to himself as a hermit in the city. Influenced by the works of Merton and the spiritual direction of Thomas Keating in the 60’s, Brother Wayne is no ordinary hermit secluded from others; he taught at a number of institutions including Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. After living in an ashram in India for two years, he became a Christian sanyassi under the influence of Bebe Griffiths who explained to him that “the real challenge for you, Wayne, is to be a monk in the world, a sanyassi who lives in the midst of society, at the very heart of things.” In 1989, the Archbishop of Chicago formally professed him to be a lay monk.

A contemplative, Brother Wayne was active in a variety of social issues such as the cause of the Dali Lama, homelessness and the environment. He also espoused interfaith understanding through “interspirituality” which he views as the commonality of mystical experiences in diverse religions. He defines a monk as “…a person who has dedicated his or her life to seeking God.” (MW XXVI) Teasdale asserts, “The daily tasks of earning a living, paying bills, saving money, getting along with others, being entertained, enjoying healthy recreation, and learning how to interact with difficult people are all part of an active life. So they must also be part of life for a monk in the world, at the crossroads of contemporary culture and experience.”(MW XXIV) For monks in the world, he suggests “…the question becomes how to integrate their glimpse of monastic peace into their everyday lives in the world, how to cultivate contemplation within an active life.” (MW XXVI) He thinks, “To achieve this integration requires the realization that the real monastery exists within them as a dimension of their own consciousness.” (MW XXVI) Brother Wayne views the structure of “Monasticism in all its forms-Eastern, Western, primitive, inventive, contemplative, active, and mixed-exists to nurture the development, fruition, and gifts of the inner mystic or inner monk”. (MW XXVII) He espouses Keating’s pronouncement that “The essence of monastic life is not its structures but its interior practice, and the heart of interior practice is contemplative prayer.” (MW XXVII)

Similar to the desert fathers who went out to the desert and were tested by demons, Brother Wayne thinks “…in our age, the desert is the city—that is civilization.”(MW 13) He desires for there to be more monks in the world because he believes, “A contemplative in the heart of the world has the opportunity to be aware of, to relate to, to touch and heal this suffering, to be a sign of love and hope to those who are so vulnerable in this difficult and indifferent world.”(MW 15) He advises those who wish to be monks in the world to focus their life of prayer on contemplative meditation, spiritual reading, the practice of nature, including walking and sky meditation and allowing for silence and solitude.(MW23-24) He counsels that an effect of contemplation is to root out the hidden motivations in our unconscious, the seeds of selfishness and negativity and to further our integration.(MW 41) A monk transformed by contemplation can envision a society of compassion, mercy, and love and be the leaven to radically transform the world by transforming others, eliminating cultural and economic selfishness.(MW 135)

Teasdale views Merton as a forerunner of interspirituality through his study and appreciation of Eastern spiritual classics. He also believes that Merton’s notion that “we are already one…and what we have to recover is our original unity”(AJ 308) goes beyond our cultural, psychological and religious differences, points to the future of monasticism and is key to transforming the world. To enable this transformation, Brother Wayne envisions a universal order of mystics or contemplatives which would …”include people from all traditions and no tradition at all. They would include young and old, men and women, certain and skeptical, confused, and enlightened.” (MW 218)

New Monasticism

An expression of Teasdale’s vision may be the new monasticism movement.
Although some of the communities date to the early 1970’s with a heritage going back to 1930, the term, “New Monasticism” was popularized by Jonathan Wilson in the 1990’s. It is based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer belief, “the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.” Wilson proposed a new monasticism which would aim at healing fragmentation and eliminate the distinction of sacred and secular vocations. This would be accomplished by a small group of disciples who through intense theological reflection and commitment would lead contemplative and communal lives with a focus on hospitality and concern for the poor. In 2004, a number of existing communities formulated a rule of life, known as the 12 marks. They include living at the margins of society, sharing economic resources, hospitality, just reconciliation, submission to the church, formative process like a novitiate, nurturing common life, support for both celibate singles as well as married couples and children, communal geographical proximity of members, care of the local environment and support of local economies, peacemaking and conflict resolution, and commitment to a contemplative life. Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove believes the work of a new monastic community “…is to tend to a culture of grace and truth in the world”.(NM 135-136) Doing this requires a reliance on the church, where the “the church is called to be a people who love one another and make a life together, tending to a culture of grace in a world broken by sin.”(NM 145)

The New Friars

Another expression may be the “New Friars”. Scott Bessenecker believes
“…we are at the front edge of another missional, monastic-like order made up of men and women, many of whom are in their twenties and thirties, burning with a passion to serve the destitute in slum communities of the developing world—not from a position of power but from alongside them, living in the same makeshift housing breathing the same sewage-tainted air, subject to the same government bulldozers that threaten to raze their communities. They are new friars, flying just below our radar because they have not come under any single denominational or suprachurch banner.”
Like their historic counterparts, he views this movement as having the same roots and reflects the same qualities which he describes as incarnational, devotional, communal, missional, and marginal. Bessenecker thinks, “Slum communities are kinds of chapels in which one can meet face to face with Christ in the dispossessed.” (NF 87) The new friars spirituality revolves around Christ’s pledge, “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”(Mt. 25:40) Their vocation is lived out over months or years alongside the destitute, those who are garbage scavengers, prostitutes, homeless, abused children, and those who are dying.

Brother Wayne Teasdale, the New Monastics, and the New Friars appear to be heroic individuals who stand on their own feet, open to grace. They have responded to the invitation of Christ’s Spirit to “Follow Me” as they serve Christ in their work with the poor and the marginalized. Although their numbers may be small, their hearts are large and their efforts like mustard seeds will have their fruition in the kingdom of God. These individuals are very visible monks in the world. But there are more invisible ones who without vows or walls live outwardly a very ordinary life.

Invisible Non-Traditional Monks

Invisible monks, called to contemplation and solitude, live and work in all strata of society. Their external circumstances appear like those of their neighbors. They work, marry, have children, and socialize while nourishing a hidden vocation to live a life of prayer and to dwell in God’s presence. The paths of their work in the world and their interior life may appear in conflict early in their spiritual journey with time set aside for solitude and contemplation stolen from time set aside for family or work. Ideally at some point, the inner and outer paths join so that in both being and doing their whole life becomes a living prayer.

The hidden vocation of this invisible monk is the same as that of the professed; it is to dwell in God’s presence through a life of prayer. All monks quest to see the face of the Living God and this steadfast pursuit either inside or outside the walls of a monastery, either with or without vows characterizes this individual as a monk. The quest of the invisible monk is that of all monks who desire to be transformed into a new creation in which the old man becomes a new one dwelling in the presence of God.

The monastic monk assisted by vows, monastic practices, the office, the liturgy and the support of his brothers, seeks God alone. However even with monastic support, a monk faces doubt, interior struggles, and obstacles to his pursuit. Just as all of the activities in a monastery is directed or should be directed to facilitate a monk’s union with God, a monk in the world is surrounded by those elemental forces which seek to separate him from God. How then can such a person in the world be a monk? It would appear impossible because of all of the world’s distractions, its temptations, and necessary preoccupations. For the invisible monk without walls or vows or a rule guaranteeing time set aside for prayer, much of his life may be consumed by an occupation or worldly concerns. However such a person discovers that the Spirit which calls one to contemplation also arranges time for silence and solitude. This individual with his whole life surrounded by the obstacles of a secular life may find the core of his existence wound around the pursuit of the presence of God.

What sets both the visible and invisible monks apart is their focused response to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to pursue the beatitude, “Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God.”(Mt. 5:8) The means to this end is contemplation, a flight of the will and mind and heart towards God. This lifetime journey begins with an assent to an invitation from the Holy Spirit to allow the divine fire of contemplation to burn them. Like fire burning a log, this spiritual fire described by St. John of the Cross is oppressive to the soul as it burns away the grime and habits of sin. This solitary work digs at the roots of sin and gives rise to self-knowledge of the interior division and strife and the self-hatred which results from sin. It uncovers the boundaries separating one from one’s true self and from others and from God. As the Spirit breaks down these boundaries, the monk opens himself more fully to the presence of God, particularly as expressed in the presence of others. This presence of God may be discerned not only in those like him but in those who differ, not only in Christians but in Buddhists, and Muslins as well as agnostics and atheists--in all of creation and the family of man. With a mature discernment, one can say with Merton that "we are already one and we have to recover what we are.”(AJ 308)

Of course, the journey to this awareness may be turbulent as monks falter and soar. They appear caught up in the liturgical cycle of the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ as He comes to be born, dies, and rises in them as they live out their lives interpenetrated by sin and grace. Yet this spiritual work wrought in them by God's grace and His Spirit remains hidden from them. They see it dimly but do not know its fruits. In fact, their way of living in the world does not make sense even to themselves. They question their sitting, their meditation, their contemplation, their leisurely gazing, and their dim awareness of the realization of the presence of God. They wonder about the futility of their existence as measured by the productivity of their more active brethren. Days, months, years, decades past and it seems like they have not even made a beginning in the spiritual life. However they are at peace living this marginal life which appears to them to be not only marginal to the world but seemingly even marginal to God. They live in a no man's land in the boundary between Eden where they witness to the light emanating there and a redeemed world darkened by sin. Somehow through the merits flowing from Christ's great sacrifice, they hope to participate in His mediation.

Christian monks participate in that mediation by their interior exploration in which they encounter not only their own heart, but the heart of mankind in which both grace and sin abound. Although, they may be aware of the presence of God and the light of grace, they are also in contact with the darkness of sin and its destructive power in themselves, the world, and others. In some small measure, it is their mission to bring this darkness to the light of Christ. In all hiddeness and solitude, it is their task to allow through them this heart of darkness be filled with the light of Him who is the light of the world. It may well be that they cannot distinguish the darkness within others or the world from that within themselves. It may seem that it is their own darkness, their own sins, that must be exposed to the light of Christ. Perhaps monks share in the sins of mankind as well as share in the redemptive work of He who took upon himself the sins of the world. They may be a conscious meeting point of the light and darkness. As a consequence of this interior struggle, monks seek reconciliation for themselves. In doing so, they become an instrument of reconciliation for others and for the world. Theirs is a never ending task. The solitary journey into the center of their own heart becomes a journey into the center of mankind's darkened heart as they seek to discover the center of their true self where they find God. In their journey, every arrival becomes another departure.

Stand on Your Own Feet

With each arrival and departure, the monk increasingly learns to stand on his own
feet. He does this by withdrawing from an active external identity and concentrates on exploring an inner realm which seeks God through solitude. He stands on his own feet through his faith in God and dependence on Him and through his faith in his community and dependence on them. He stands on his own feet by accepting the responsibility of his freedom and the necessity for obedience.

A monk stands on his own feet by his journey in faith through which he realizes that God is the supporting ground of his existence. He also discovers this support is often expressed through others. God stands such a person on his own feet by allowing him to lean on the backs of others drawn from family, friends, workplace, community, church, society and even the world family. However, the cement holding him in relationships may dissolve as the monk surrenders his group identity for his individual unique identity in God. Later, he may recover these relationships at a more profound level as they become more centered on God. He may even realize St. John of the Cross's pronouncement, “…the soul knows creatures through God and not God through creatures”.”(JC 645) In exchange for his dependence, the monk shares the gift of presence, not only his own but that of the risen Lord. By his fidelity to the quest of seeking the face of the living God, his union with God, however limited, allows him to become a transparent bearer of God to others. The notion that God became man that man may participate in the divine (so often expressed in the liturgy of orthodox and eastern rites) is viewed by the monk as a promise. His whole life revolves around this notion. It forms the core of the "work of God" which has been traditionally expressed through the office, liturgy, choir, the vows, and monastic stability. The monk without walls or vows may use some of these (but also other) means to solitude seeking the same result. All of these ways exist to provide the individual time, silence, and focus, to seek God, be transformed by God through grace, and through union with God participate in some mysterious way in his divinity.

A monk stands on his own feet when he accepts the reality of his freedom and its consequent responsibilities. Of course, this assumes that one is free and not in a state of denial, projection, or evasion of one's situation in life. Accepting one’s mental hang-ups and foibles, one must at least be aware of one’s freedom to decide, to choose, to act. This is not the freedom of the shopping mall, a choice of one material object over another, which may only represent a bondage to consumerism. This notion of freedom involves one's whole orientation to life and creation, to oneself and one's relationship to others. It is a conscious awareness of the freedom of one’s existing in relationship to the world, to others, to God. However, in accepting one’s freedom, one experiences dread. There is much anxiety associated with the acceptance of one's responsibility for one's own life, one's own decisions, and one’s own allocation of resources without others upon which to project blame. This dread arises from the root fear that one is living an inauthentic and illusionary life as situated in the context of the fear of one's death. The very ground of who one perceives oneself to be as determined by relationships, work, wealth, place in the world, dissolves as one realizes the reality of one’s own extinction. One's instinct is to flee this dread and to attempt to fill this void with distractions which is a flight into unreality. Instead, if one opts to live at the center of this dead, the dread itself becomes a school of faith. At its secret roots, dread opens into faith for in this barren desert faith blossoms into the obscure and opaque boundary between the ground of ourselves and the ground of our being, the interface between us and God.

Through faith, a monk encounters God and recovers his freedom. One who stands on his own feet accepts this freedom realizing that he lacks perfection and that his choices may be flawed. He is also aware that his choices may have consequences beyond himself, to others, to creation and to one’s relationship with God. The recovery of one’s freedom requires growth in purity of heart which unties the knots of attachments that limit one’s freedom. The recovery of this freedom also requires obedience to the Spirit of God who heals the wound that estranges one from one’s true self. This wound has primitive roots extending back to the Garden of Eden:

The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you? " he asked. "I heard the sound of you in the garden;" he replied "I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. "Who told you that you are naked?" He asked? "Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?" (Genesis 3:8-13)

Like Adam, a monk is afraid and his fear is linked to his disobedience to be a true son or daughter of God. This disobedience makes him afraid and he hides. He hides from God, he hides from his true self, and he hides from others. He fears that he will be discovered, unmasked, unclothed, and be naked before the truth of God which is God’s truth in him. This refusal is not merely a refusal to live authentically in one's vocation, but a much more profound refusal to be the image and likeness of God.

God created man in the image of himself:
in the image of God he created him,
male and female he created them.(Genesis 1:27)

The restoration of this image and likeness is the primary defining task of the monk whether living in the monastery or within the world. The monk’s task is to return to Eden, to return to the presence of God.

The monk accomplishes this by recovering his true self through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. For those in monasteries as well as those in world, the monk’s journey entails a life of prayer, grace, silence and solitude. Prayer exposes their interior through self knowledge, allows the mercy of God to heal their interior wounds, leads them to union with God, and communion with others. Grace liberates them from the false self through the actions of the Holy Spirit who prompts them to seek the truth of themselves as they seek the Truth that is God. Grace restores the lost innocence of Eden through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, their source of grace, their guide and their destination. Silence guides them to the solitude of their true self and the ground of their being where they encounter God and peace.

With the recovery of their true self, they stand on their own feet by discovering their real but hidden identity in Christ in which their spirit and God’s spirit become one. As they awaken to the mystery of the presence of God and increasingly live in this presence, they accelerate their maturity as sons or daughters of the Father. They have not attained to final integration but they are awake and aware of their shortcomings and strive to overcome them. They seek wholeness by pursuing integration of their bodies, minds, and spirits subject to the Spirit of God which enables openness to all persons of cultural and religious diversity, the family of man. They hope for a final and complete integration through full union with the Divine…conscious within Consciousness… realized within Reality… Heaven… where they will experience the deepest aspiration of a monk, to stand on his or her own feet before God and see Him, face to Face.

Attending to the Presence of God

Attending to the Presence of God

Thomas Merton & Le Point Vierge

Nass Cannon

As lightning flashed around our house, I opened the door to the family room to see our three children and Della, our housekeeper, sitting on the couch unafraid and intensely looking out the window while raptly listening to the booms and cracks of the storm. She was softly repeating, "My mama always said when it is thundering and lightning be still because God is talking and you are suppose to listen.” Della says she took on our family after the Lord gave her a dream of a flock of white children tumbling in her front yard. She maintains a running dialogue with the Lord as she effortlessly listens and responds. Many times I would come home early to hear her carrying on a conversation out loud while washing dishes. After journeying with our family for 37 years, Della recently retired at age 80 only to have two prosthetic knees and one hip replaced. Her life, work, and prayer flow together with a natural rhythm and have a unity reminiscent of Merton. Both achieved ever deeper integration attending to the presence of God.

We encounter Thomas Merton’s realization of le point vierge, the hidden point at the center of his true self where his spirit touched God, through the copious meditations which flow from his journals and books. He empties himself in self revelation as he pours himself out onto the page with lines which transform into hot brands to sear the mind that encounters them. Emanating from this virginal point, those lines share the spiritual quest of this monk, prophet, social activist-this seeker of the no-face of the living God. As if on a flowing river, his lines carry us on a meditative barge through his youth, his monastic life, his journey to the East, his death. They cascade like a waterfall flowing from its source at le point vierge and, if we enter into their contemplative rhythm, could ferry us to God.

Thomas Merton’s poetic prose propels us on this journey as he trumpets:

"Here is an unspeakable secret. Paradise is all around us and we do not understand. It is wide open. The sword is taken away, but we do not know it: we are off 'one to his farm and another to his merchandise.' Lights on. Clocks ticking. Thermostats working. Stoves cooking. Electric shaver's filling radios with static. Wisdom cries the dawn deacon but we do not attend."1

Heeding the cries of the dawn deacon, Merton silently attends to the presence of God to become a transparent messenger of Wisdom born in solitude and encourages us to embrace paradise through our own pursuit of wisdom. In this essay, I reflect upon some of his writings, which focus upon his attending to the presence of God, in the hope that they may bear the fruit in us of knowing that all around is paradise. To know, we must ask: What prevents us from realizing that all around is paradise? If our false self is the barrier, what are the means to the recovery of our true self? What is the true self?

Merton teaches that we have a choice of two identities: the external mask of our false self or a true self which can attend to the presence of God.

"The presence of God in His world as its Creator depends on no one but Him. His presence in the world as Man depends, in some measure, upon men. Not that we can do anything to change the mystery of the Incarnation in itself: but we are able to decide whether we ourselves, and that portion of the world which is ours, shall become aware of His presence, consecrated by it, and transfigured in its light. We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real and which lives by a shadowy autonomy for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. It is this inner self that is taken up into the mystery of Christ, by His love, by the Holy Spirit, so that in secret we live 'in Christ."2

What prevents us from realizing that all around is paradise? Our choice of an exterior mask or our false self, originating in sin and fruitlessly questing to be a god, blinds us. Authored by original sin and sustained by our infidelities to reality, the false self centers relationships on itself and estranges us from God and consequently from others as well as the natural world. At its core, this false self wishes to be a god.

"The inner, basic, metaphysical defilement of fallen man is his profound and illusory conviction that he is a god and that the universe is centered upon him. ...Yet in our desire to be as gods-a lasting deformity impressed in our nature by original sin-we seek what one might call a relative omnipotence: the power to have everything we want, to enjoy everything we desire, to demand that all our wishes be satisfied and our will should never be frustrated or opposed…It is a radical falsity which rots our moral life in its very roots because it makes everything we do more or less a lie."3

This radical falsity births a selfhood that God does not know and according to Merton, “that is altogether too much privacy”.4 This external mask creates a lens through which one falsely sees creation only in relationship to oneself, i.e., “…it is man's own technocratic and self-centered worldliness which is in reality a falsification and a perversion of natural perspectives, which separates him from the reality of creation, and enables him to act out his fantasies as a little god, seeing and judging everything in relation to himself.”5

Arising from our true self, an interior voice accuses us of this infidelity to our innermost being and to God, generating a struggle within. We drown that voice by engaging in distractions. In a world of overwhelming sensory barrage, we should be reminded of Merton’s view that that these distractions suppress our discontent and delay the confronting of our false self. We, thereby, delay facing our self-hate arising from the lie we make of our lives.

"What is it that makes every man struggle with himself? It is the deep, persistent voice of his own discontent with himself. Fallen man cannot abide to live with himself. Now the apparent peace which the world gives is bought with the price of continual distraction. Distraction merely drowns out the inner voice, it does not answer any questions, or solve any problems, it merely postpones their solutions. And behind the smokescreen of amusements and projects, the inner dissatisfaction marshals all its forces for a more terrible assault when the distraction shall have been taken away. At last, the spirit that has fled from itself all its life, is stripped of its distractions at death and finds itself face to face with what can no longer be avoided; there is nothing now to prevent it from hating itself utterly, and totally, and for ever."6

Merton existentially views this false self to be a cramp of non-entity and nothingness which leads to despair. Merton infers that, “The chronic inability to relax this cramp begets despair. In the end, as we realize more and more that we are knotted upon nothing, that the cramp is a meaningless, senseless, pointless affirmation of non-entity… a makeshift identity which is nothing.”7 Man’s no-to-everything and yes-to-himself allows him to acquire such products of his will as wealth and power forgoing the inner longings of his heart for love and the meaning of his life. For Merton, “He is as a god and therefore everything is within reach. But it turns out that all that he can successfully reach by his own volition is not quite worth having. What he really seeks and needs -- love, an authentic identity, a life that has meaning -- cannot be had merely by willing and by taking steps to procure them.”8 What cannot be achieved by willing can be received as a gift if we are open to it. Merton insists, “In order to be open, we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless 'I' that is all we know as ourselves.”9 Although our false self barricades our realization, our true self touching God at le point vierge knows that indeed all around is paradise.

What are the means to the recovery of our true self? The Holy Spirit through the modalities of prayer, grace, silence and solitude leads us to the recovery of our true self.

The journey to our true self entails a life of prayer. Merton believes prayer leads us to our center where we can experience the mercy of God.10 It opens the door to self-knowledge which allows the Holy Spirit to shine upon the alleyways of our dark interior.11 Prayer leads us to union with God and communion with others.12 Prayer allows the community to touch God and God touch the community. For Merton, “The mind that prays in me is more than my own mind, and the thoughts that come up in me are more than my own thoughts because this deep consciousness when I pray is a place of encounter between myself and God and between the common love of everybody.”13

The recovery of our true self requires grace. Merton observes: “Once we find ourselves in the state of ‘knowledge of good and evil’ we have to accept the fact and understand our position, see it in relation to the innocence for which we were created, which we have lost and which we can regain.”14 Grace restores our innocence through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, our source of grace, our guide and our destination. Realizing that the “only source of the spiritual life is the Holy Spirit,”15 Merton believes grace prompts us to seek the truth of ourselves and our lives as we seek the Truth that is God. Grace prompts us to love rather than hate, to create rather than destroy. By our choice to follow or reject the Spirit, we choose either growth and integration or division and death.

Through grace, we recover our true self by the work of Christ in us who transforms us by shrouding himself with the wounds of our sins. Merton states, “The Christ we find in ourselves is not identified with what we vainly seek to admire and idolize in ourselves--on the contrary, He has identified himself with what we resent in ourselves, for He has taken upon Himself our wretchedness and our misery, our poverty and our sins.”16 By actualizing the recovery of our hidden identity in Him, Christ transforms our self-hate to love which promotes peace within us and thereby with others. Merton observes, “The peace which Christ brings is the outcome of this war faced and fought on earth: man's war with himself, in which (by God's grace) he overcomes himself, conquers himself, pacifies himself, and can at last live with himself because he no longer hates himself.”17 Through the power of the Holy Spirit, grace liberates us from sin’s creation, the false self.

Silence and solitude allow us to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp of our “I” to immerse ourselves in the mystery of our identity in God, for “When we are quiet, not just for a few minutes, but for an hour or several hours, we may become uneasily aware of the presence within us of a disturbing stranger, the self that is both I and someone else.”18 Silence is healing since “… silence makes us whole if we let it….It helps us to concentrate on a purpose that really corresponds not only to the deeper needs of our own being but also to God’s intensions for us.”19 Silence guides us to the solitude of our true self and the ground of our being where we encounter God and peace. Merton thinks, “There is perfect peace, because we are grounded in infinite creative and redemptive Love. There we encounter God, whom no eye can see…”20 In this solitude, the inner door of one’s heart opens allowing the Spirit to flow and Love be spoken.21

In our journey to our true self, Merton cautions against particular ways or methods. Instead, he suggests we cultivate an attitude of openness.

"We should not look for a 'method' or 'system', but cultivate an 'attitude', an 'outlook': faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, that we live in Christ, that in the Spirit of God we 'see' God our Father without 'seeing'. We know him in 'unknowing'. Faith is the bond that unites us to him in the Spirit who gives us light and love."22

Permeated by the Holy Spirit, prayer, grace, silence and solitude will restore us to our true self.

What is the true self? Merton believes our true self is our real but hidden identity in Christ in which our spirit and God’s spirit become one. This point of union is le point vierge which is the hiding place of God within us, inaccessible to our meddling but realized by those who see God through grace and purity of heart. By the recovery of our innocence before God, we see through spiritual eyes that paradise is all around, that every point is equidistant to God, that God’s light shines through the natural world, and a blazing light like a diamond resides in everyone. Our true self fosters a life without care, a life of peace and union with others, and communications that become communion.

In Merton’s view, the Spirit leads us to the core of our being and awakens us to our true identity in Christ.

"But in fact the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the New Adam, completely restored human nature to its spiritual condition and made possible the divinization of every man coming into the world. This meant that in each one of us the inner self was now able to be awakened and transformed by the action of the Holy spirit, and this awakening would not only enable us to discover our true identity ‘in Christ’, but would also make the living and Risen Savior present in us. …Each one of us, in some sense, is able to be completely transformed into the likeness of Christ, to become, as he is, divinely human, and thus to share His spiritual authority and charismatic power in the world."23

When we come to know our true self, we, in some degree, have returned to paradise as a new person with a measure of the innocence present before the fall. Merton states he “who has realized in himself purity of heart…has been restored in some measure to the innocence lost by Adam.”24 Merton’s experience at the corner of Fourth and Walnut reflects this innocence. Through the lens of his recovered true self, he realizes “le point vierge” as a point of poverty and nothingness which is the Glory of God within us. Consequently, he sees other persons radiating a heavenly light.25
"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God… This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere."26

In writing of this experience, Merton uses the phrase, le point vierge, which has its origin in the teachings of a ninth century Sunni mystic. Al-Hallaj taught that the core of the human heart was accessible only by God but that our spirit may touch God at the virginal center of this core, le point vierge. At the time of his experience at Fourth and Walnut, Merton was reading the writings of Al-Hallaj as popularized by Massignon with whom Merton corresponded.

The recovery of the true self awakens us to the mystery of the presence of God. For Merton, an initial awareness of this presence led him to the Catholic Church: “On the contrary my conversion to Catholicism began with the realization of the presence of God in this present life, in the world and myself, and that my task as Christian is to live in full and vital awareness of this ground of my being and of the world’s being. Acts and forms of worship help one to do this, and the church, with her liturgy and sacraments, gives us the essential means of grace. Yet God can work without these means if He so wills.”27 Through the Church with her liturgy and sacraments, he found the grace to break through his false self to his true identity in Christ.

As we attend to the presence of God, the Spirit mothers us into a spiritual being that grows in union with God. That is “…the spiritual awakening of mind and heart… is an awareness that we are not merely our everyday self but we are also one with One who is beyond all human and individual self-limitation.”28 This spiritual rebirth is continuous, beginning on earth and growing with the intensity of our union with God. For Merton, “The true Christian rebirth is a renewed transformation, a ‘passover’ in which man is progressively liberated from selfishness and not only grows in love but in some sense ‘becomes love’."29 We become one flame burning with an ever increasing brightness.

To find the presence of God within ourselves, we do not need to journey into strange lands, or seek some exotic vantage point. For, "…we do not need to leave the point where we are and seek it (God's presence) somewhere else, but to forget all points as equally irrelevant because to seek the unlimited in a definite place is to limit it and hence not to find it."30 The only relevant point is the center of ourselves in which we"…return to the heart, finding one's deepest center, awakening the profound depths of our being in the presence of God who is the source of our being and our life".31 It is our encounter with this presence which accelerates our maturity as persons of God. Before this presence, "…all the burdens of our autonomous self disperse before the 'piercing presence of God. God unclothes, undoes us, ‘prunes away every branch that does not bear fruit’. He even takes God away from us."32

The interior journey to our true self and God is reserved not only for the monastic but also for ordinary Christians who “…though it may well be that recollection, silence and a certain measure of withdrawal from the agitation of life are necessary for perceiving this…are called to taste God.”33 Also, the availability of this deep presence of God and in mystery Christ at the center of our being is not limited to the professed Christian. Merton declares that “I honestly think that there is a presence of Christ to the unbeliever, especially in our day, and that this presence, which is not formally religious and which escapes definition (hence the inadequacy of terms like invisible Church or latent Church), is perhaps the deepest most cogent mystery of our time. The Lord who speaks of freedom in the ground of our being still continues to speak to every man.”34

By attending to the presence of God, Thomas Merton bore “immense fruit in the souls of men (he) will never see on earth.”35 That fruit manifests itself in us as we engage him by entering into the contemplative rhythm of his words. Much more than just receiving the instruction of his writings, we are caught up in his contemplative experience and brought to our own ever deepening realization of the presence of God. His prayerful writings are animated by the union of his spirit with that of God. Through them, the Holy Spirit can direct our spiritual formation, deepen our attention to the presence of God, and awaken us to the transparent mystery of God shining through all.

"The thing that we have to face is that life is as simple as this. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story, it is true. And this is something we are not able to see. But if we abandon ourselves to Him and forget ourselves we see it sometimes and we see it maybe frequently: that God manifests himself everywhere, in every thing -- in people and in things and in nature and in events and so forth. So that it becomes very obvious that He is everywhere, He is in everything, and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It's impossible, it's just simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it. This again is what we are here for."36

The Holy Spirit also can deepen our communications with one another to become communion through which we recover our unity.

"And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but Communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. What we have to recover is our original unity. We have to be is what we are."37

We, like Merton, can aspire to become transparent bearers of God’s presence and radiate the flame of God’s love to enkindle the hearts of others. Through our encounters with them, we may awaken to realize Merton’s insight, “we are already one…and what we have to recover is our original unity.”38 We may seek to build in our own communities the monastic ideal of persons in contact with God radiating his presence and peace into the world where we create, “…a new creation, an earthly paradise in which God once again dwells with men and is almost visibly their God, their peace and their consolation.”39

Attending to the presence of God in our lives will bring us to peaceful union and unity with our brothers and sisters and allow us to see the “one truth shining forth in all of its manifestations”.40 If we heed the cries of the dawn deacon, we, like Thomas Merton, will attend to Wisdom and recover our true self.

Early dawn on a rain drizzled day decades ago, my wife and I scurry to a hospital room, the residing place of Gail’s grandmother who is dying of heart failure at age 99. As her mask dissolves in dying, this gentrified lady looks at us and bequeaths her last will and testament in between gasps for breath. Emanating from the reclaimed depths of her virginal heart, she proclaims, “All I have to give you is my Love!” Like her, like Merton, may we heed the cry of the dawn deacon, attend to Wisdom, and allow the Love we encounter at le point vierge enkindle us to transfigure an ashen world. Then indeed we may know all around is paradise.



1. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image Books, 1968), p. 132.

2. Lawrence Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master The Essential Writings (Maywah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 255.

3. Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1957), pp. 13-15.

4. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1972), p.33.

5. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 294.

6. Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey, ed. Brother Patrick Hart. (New York,: Image Books, 1974), p. 101.

7. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 224.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton in Alaska, ed. Robert E. Daggy (New York: New Directions, 1989), p.160.

11. Merton, Thomas Merton in Alaska, p. 160-161.

12. Ibid., p.136

13. Ibid., p. 135.

14. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), p.128.

15. Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 271.

16. Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey, p. 102.

17. Ibid., p. 101.

18. Thomas Merton, Essential Writings, ed. Christine M. Bochen (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), p. 74.

19. Ibid., p. 77.

20. Ibid., p. 77.

21. Ibid., p. 78.

22. James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press,1978), p. 93.

23. Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience, ed. William H. Shannon (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), p.38.

24. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), p.131.

25. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.158.

26. Ibid., p. 158.

27. Ibid., p. 320.

28. Merton, Essential Writings, ed. Christine M. Bochen p. 65.

29. Ibid., p. 66.

30. Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p. 127.

31. Ibid., p. 99.

32. Ibid., p. 139.

33. Merton, The Monastic Journey, ed. Patrick Hart, p. 226.

34. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.326.

35.. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1948), p.462.

36.. Merton, Essential Writings, ed. Christine M. Bochen,
p.70.

37.. Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, eds. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart & James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1968) p. 308.

38. Ibid.

39. Merton, The Monastic Journey, p. 66-67.

40. Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, (Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) p. 207