Category: Merton, Thomas
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Thomas Merton: Attraction, Repulsion, Fascination
I am attracted by his openness to influence from diverse quarters, his Whitmanic "I am large; I contain multitudes," his Terentian "nothing human is foreign to me," and his relentless self-examination. I am repulsed by his lack of mental rigor and and his liberal propensity for squish and gush in matters political. And then there…
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Merton on Scripture, Scotus, and Thomas
The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Two, 1941-1952, p. 345, August 5, 1949, Our Lady of the Snows: If I had only spent the time on Scripture that I wasted on Duns Scotus, but I never really got around to understanding more than a tenth of what I read with so much labor. There is…
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Three American Sophomores
The Restlessness of Thomas Merton, J. D. Salinger, and Jack Kerouac. On balance, a very good essay, but just wrong in places. For example: Due to our separation from God that occurred in the Garden, all men intuitively sense that they are missing something, that they are radically incomplete.3 Aristotle had this incompleteness in mind when…
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The Paradox of Solitude
Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton
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Trotsky’s (Misplaced) Faith in Man
On 20 August 1940, 84 years ago today, the long arm of Joseph Stalin finally reached Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico City where an agent of Stalin drove an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He died the next day. Yet another proof of how the Left eats its own. The last days of Lev…
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Am I an Intellectual Glutton? Evdokimov, Jackson, Precepts, and Counsels
Study everything! proclaims the first half of my masthead motto. I live by it. Am I an intellectual glutton? The self-critical and conflicted Tom Merton asked himself that very question in a journal entry. I put the question to myself. Example. I am up from a nap and enjoying an iced coffee. I will soon…
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Me and My Marriage; Merton and his Monastery
My marriage is a good fit for me, no ambivalence, no regrets. Her limitations were known beforehand and accepted, and mine by her. There was full disclosure from the outset about what I am about in this world. 42 years into it my marriage is steady as she goes 'til death parts us as impermanence…
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Me, Merton, Vows, and Ecclesiology
I study everything, join nothing. He studied everything, but joined the Trappists. Therein one root of one of his inner conflicts. His natural bent was to range freely over the cartography of the mind, but he voluntarily accepted intramural enclosure physically, intellectually, and spiritually. He took vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. My impression from…
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Thomas Merton on the Destruction of the Liturgy
It was with no excess of charity that I described Merton the other day as "a flabby liberal both politically and theologically." So let me balance that out a bit with a quotation from Volume Five (1963 – 1965) of his Journal. Here is an excerpt from the entry of 13 April 1965, Tuesday in…
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Taming the Wild Horse of the Mind on the Road to Benares
This morning's meditation session ran from 3:10 ante meridiem to 4:00. Before that I was sketching six blog posts in my journal. My mind was on fire with ideas fueled in part by some entries from Volume Five of Tom Merton's journal. As flabby a liberal as he is, both politically and theologically, he is…
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Thomas Merton on Newman and Chesterton
The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Three (1952-1960), p. 374, an excerpt from the entry of 3 February 1960: I have to begin reading Newman, whom without cause I have neglected as though he were, say Chesterton. There is all the difference in the world. At the moment I am much more akin to the…
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Thomas Merton and the Beat Generation
Here
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The Beauty of the Solitary Life
Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people." For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation." Before I…
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‘Nuclear’ Thoughts on Dylan’s Birthday
We've gotten used to living under the Sword of Damocles: One of its more famous [invocations] came in 1961 during the Cold War, when President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before the United Nations in which he said that “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the…