{"id":1787,"date":"2022-11-06T09:20:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T09:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/11\/06\/a-contemplative-nun-on-thomas-merton\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T09:20:57","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T09:20:57","slug":"a-contemplative-nun-on-thomas-merton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/11\/06\/a-contemplative-nun-on-thomas-merton\/","title":{"rendered":"A Contemplative Nun on Thomas Merton"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>This just over the transom from Karl White:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hope you're well. May be of interest.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2018I have never met a real contemplative who found Merton useful\u2019: Letters reveal Sister Wendy\u2019s ambivalence about Gethsemani\u2019s famous monk | America Magazine<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
July 30, 2018 Dearest Robert, I feel about [Henri Nouwen] as I do about Thomas Merton. There is much self-deception and muddle in their lives; and yet there is an unwavering concentration on God.<\/span><\/div>\n
www.americamagazine.org<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>Hi Karl,<\/span><\/p>\n

Your message arrives at an opportune moment. The day before yesterday I received Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation: According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross.<\/em> Garrigou-Lagrange's <\/span>work is the real deal from perhaps the hardest of the hard-core paleo-Thomists.<\/span><\/div>\n
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While reading the chapter on infused contemplation, I thought of Thomas Merton. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Merton's sense of the reality of the Unseen Order was weak and underdeveloped because of the strong lure of the secular — to which, however, he never entirely succumbed, <\/span>pace<\/em> the thesis of David D. Cooper's excellent but mistaken <\/span>Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist<\/em> (University of Georgia Press, 1989, 2008).  Cooper attributed the evolution (devolution?) to Merton's failure to achieve infused contemplation. As I read him, however, <\/span>Merton never lost his faith. He did, however, remain to the end deeply conflicted. All the Merton commentators that I have read agree that he came to question the contemptus mundi<\/em> he expressed in The Seven Storey Mountain<\/em>.  As for whether or not Merton attained infused contemplation, if he had why are there no references to it in his journal? There is a paucity of spiritual disclosure in those private pages of a monk who one would think would reveal the most intimate secrets of his inner life. I have read all seven volumes of his journal several times over. He is one of those key figures without whom you cannot understand the 'Sixties.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Thanks for the link.  I read the Ellsberg-Sr. Wendy correspondence with interest.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Regards,<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Bill<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This just over the transom from Karl White: Hope you're well. May be of interest. \u2018I have never met a real contemplative who found Merton useful\u2019: Letters reveal Sister Wendy\u2019s ambivalence about Gethsemani\u2019s famous monk | America Magazine July 30, 2018 Dearest Robert, I feel about [Henri Nouwen] as I do about Thomas Merton. There … Continue reading “A Contemplative Nun on Thomas Merton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,358,41,146,106,155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merton-thomas","category-monks-and-monasticism","category-mysticism","category-sixties","category-spiritual-exercises","category-spiritual-hygiene"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}