A FEAST OF STRAW:

THE NATURE MYSTICISM OF THOMAS MERTON

BY

CHRISTOPHER PAGE

VICTORIA, B.C.

MARCH 2001 The authof bas pteda non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence aliowing the exchisive permettant à la NatidLii of Canada to Bihliotbéque nationale du Canada de reproduce, ban, distnie or seii repduie, prêfer, Wbuer ou copies ofthis thesis in microfotm, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or elecûonk formats. la fonne de microfiche/fih, de reproduction sur papier ou sur fônnat électroni~.

The author retains ownersbip of the L'auteur CO-e la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantiai exûacts hmit Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de ceile-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autonsaticIn. Table of Contents

1. Moving to the Centre ...... Il

II . Beyond More ...... 20

III . The World of Huny ...... 36 ... IV . Disciplines of Love ...... 51

V . A Place to Grow ...... 66

Vi . The Sacrament of Creation ...... 82

VII. Healing in Creation ...... 98

VI11 . Hearing God's Word ...... 111

TX . Beyond Distraction ...... 126

Works Of Thomas Merton Cited ...... 138 Works On Thomas Merton ...... 140 Other Works ...... 141 INTRODUCTION

I cal1 heaven and earth to witness against you foday that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.

As the human inhabitants of this earth we need to discover new ways of being in this place we inhabit. Everywhere we look we can see and feel evidence of the destructive impact of our presence. Our choices have brou* untold suffering to earth, air, water, plants, and al1 other living inhabitants with whom we share this planet. in the last twenty years the litany of disaster we have brought to our physical environment has become so familiar that we almost no longer hear the dire warnings of environmental apocalypse on the horizon. Forty years ago, however, the idea that human beings might have a detrimental impact upon creation was a startling new insight.

The damaging effects of our way of relating to our home began to penetrate more general culfurai consciousness throughout North America in the 1960's. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring spoke with a prophetic voice in 1962 rnarking the beginning of a new level of awareness which in the last forty years has exploded into a massive social consciousness of the human impact upon this pianet and beyond.

It may seem logical to assume that with knowledge would come changed behaviour. Nearly forty years of awareness of the temble effects of the human occupation of the earth should surely have altered our way of being in this place, causing us to live more respectfblly in harmony with the systems that sustain our Iife. Changes have taken place. But the changes we have implemented in our patterns of living have not been on an order of magnitude to match the problems we have created. We seem to be fighting a losing battle. And many people who have fought most valiantly to encourage new human patterns of living are beginning to weary of the struggie. They wonder where to look for

[ aii biblical quotations are hmThe New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Page 1 hope and how to sustain the energy and commitment necessary to carry on in the cause of allowing the earth to hd.

In an address to the Canadian Parks And Wildemess Society on November 19, 1998, vice-president for conservation Harvey Locke said; "most of us will leave here to a nagging sensation that we are not dohg enough. Tôat Nature's fabric is unravelling al1 over the warld and that we work valiantly, but in a doamed cause." Facts and arguments, even scary statistics bave not been sufficient to motivate a sizeable enough change in human behaviour to make a substantial difference to the condition ofthis planet, Appeals to self-interest have been inadequate to motivate altered behaviour. Locke argues, "We environmentalists continue to try out our arguments to protect nature and are stymied by the response that the economy is more important.".'

Yet there bave been successes in the environmental movement. Large tracts of wilderness have ken presewed. Legislation has been passai protecting endangered species. Many people take seriously the cal1 to live more responsibly on this earth, More and more people try to recycle, reuse and reduce. increasingly there are attempts to use methods of transportation other than the single-occupant vehicle, to be carehl with water and energy consumption, and to monitor hsechernicals and foreign substances which we reiease into the ecosystern. But, still, the failures outweigh the successes.

How are those in the environmental rnovement to respond to the obvious fact that, as Locke suggests, despite our best efforts, we are on the verge of idicting "on this Earth an extinction event equivalent to the death of the dinosaurs"? Has the hour grown too late? Are the troops too tired? Where might we look for new sources of energy, vitality, hope and vision to sustain us in the drive towards living more responsibly on this earth? Where might the environmental movement Iook for new sources of inspiration and motivation? What are the forces powerfiii enough to motivate ordinary people to change their way of being in relationship to the Living systems of this worId?

Harvey Locke, "Wildemess and Spiriniality" (unpublisbed address detivered to the Canadian Parks and Wiidemess Society 35" Amllversary Dk,November 19,1998). Ibid

Page 2 These are important questions, not just for those who are actively involved in the environmentai movement. They are important questions for al1 people. We al1 need to be concemed to GIid new ways to iive in relationship to creation. There must be healthier, more Lie-giving patterns that we can choose to adopt in relationship to the rest of the world. There must be deeper more creative ways to live in relationship to the rest of the world.

Harvey Locke in bis address "Wilderness and Spirituality" suggests a possible direction in which we might look for renewed energy and vision for living more carefully on this earth.

The answer may lie in a return to the rwts of the conservation movement and in embracing the spiritual community. We need to restore a sense of the sacred to Creation ifwe are to save it. To do this we need to reach beyond the traditional environmentai community to the spirihiai community. We must reach out to those who have religious and intual impulses and stnve with them to protect the full diversity of life on Earth. T

Locke admits, "This is a scary thing to Say to a room full of highly educated people, skilled in rationai and anaiytical thought." But, Locke is not alone in suggesting that the routes of a renewed environmental movement may be spiritual. Writing in Orion magazine in 1998, novelist David James Duncan said

Reverence for life is the basis of compassion, and of biological health. This is why, much as it may ernbarrass those of us trained in the agnostic sciences, 1 believe that every Iife-loving human on earth has an obligation to remain both primitive enough, and reverent enougb, to stand up and say to my kind of public: Trees and mountains are holy. Rain and rivers are holy. Salmon are holy. For this reason alone 1 will Bght to keep them alive. This is not an argument, nota number, not a polIed opinion. It7sjust naked, native belief. But if (sic) we put our fùil conviction in such belief, feel no embarrassrnent over if stand by it agah md again, begin to discover some spirit- power in ourselves, and shoot it hmthere into our ûiends and kids, and into our scientific research, our art, our music or writing, and hmthere into beautiful but threatened laws.

Ibid 'David James Duncan, 'Watives,'' Orion, 17, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 26.

Page 3 in a book published in 1996, Tom Hayden wrote, "Only when enough people awaken to a deep spicitual connection with nature will envkonmentalism become a global ethic." And in his 1992 book, The Trail Home, John Daniel suggests that, in the West we are perhaps beginning to rediscover the spicitual mot of our relationship to creation: "I beiieve that to realize the ethical relationship to land that Leopold envisioned and hdians have lived, we need to rediscover - and pechaps are rdiscovering - a religious relationship to the natural world."'

Harvey Locke is in good Company suggesting that there may be a connection between spirituality and the deepest motivations of the human heart. Locke's more radical suggestion may be in his proposal that "we need to reach beyond the traditional environmental community to the spiritual commun@" (emphasis added). What is this "spicitual community" Locke is suggesting the "environmental community" might reach out to? 1s Locke asking environmentalists to go to church, or synagogue, or mosque? k he pointing the environmental movement back to the historical spiritual traditions of the world's religions? Or, is he suggesting that there may be some quality inherent in the historical spiritual traditions of the world which might have the power to motivate the human community to make different choices?

For a Christian, the suggestion that environmentalists might approach the Christian spicitual community for support and nurture, offers a serious and perhaps somewhat fiightening challenge. Are we, in the Christian church, "Who have religious and spiritual impulses" prepared to contribute these "impulses" to the environmentai movement? Do we in the church have anything to offer environmentalists? Are we ready to provide an alternative vision to the dominant destructive ways of living which seem to characterize the predominant choices of our society? Do we really believe that our tradition has a contribution to make in the debate about how we might live as inhabitants of this planet?

The Christian church has not always been the best aliy of living responsibly in relationship to the other-than-human dimensions of the world. It would be Iess than

6 Tom Hayden, The Lost Gospei of the Earth: A Callfor Renewing Nature, Spirit and Politics (San Francisa: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 14. 'John Daniel, ïïie Trail Home: Essays (New York Panthwn Books, 1992), 169.

Page 4 truthfùl to fail to acknowledge that Cbn'stians have at times been guilty of a dualistic, other-worldly, We-denying spirituality which has viewed the true goal of life as being finally released fiom the prison of this physical existence and receiving our reward in a non-physical heavenly realm. There has always been a sûain of Christian spirituality which has taken the attitude of the 1950's campfire song which declared

This world is not my home I'm just a passin' through My treasures are laid up Somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me From heaven's distant shore And 1 can't get along In this old world no more. At the same time, we need to avoid unnecessary guilt. Christianity cannot be blamed for every environmental disaster. There are many other forces which have contributed to the devastation of our environment. If a single culprit is to be identified in the destruction of our environment, it might more appropriately be the rampant materialist consumerism of the twentieth century rather than any one faith-tradition. The history of Christian theology demonstrates that reverence for creation may have been eclipsed at times in our tradition but it has never been entirely missing. There have always been voices raised in the Christian tradition which have called believers to a more reverent attitude towards creation. Many thinkers in the present theological climate take a profound interest in seriously addressing the issue of how we might live more reverently in relationship to our physical place. There are many theologians and spiritual writers to whom we might look in the present, and historically, for models of spiriîuality capable of guiding us in living and working more responsibly in the world. There are mentors who might guide us into a deeper spiritual relationship with creation.

One of these mentors was a powerfully prophetic figure who lived for fi@-three years in the early and middle years of the last century. Thomas Merton, who was born in 1915, lived for 27 years in the Abbey of Gethsemani in the rollhg fdandsof Kentucky near Bardstown. For most of time Merton seldom left the cloistered walls of his Abbey, But his influence, through his publishd writings and letters, spread around the world. Through his books he guided many people into a deeper contemplative life of prayer. But he also wrote powerfuliy and prophetically about the social issues of his day. in spite of Mgapparently so far removed hmthe maimûeam of society, Merton seemed to have an unemng sense of the important issues facing the world.

There were many contentious issues for Merton to address. He entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani on December 10,1941, three days after the Japanese had bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbow drawing the US. into the Second World War. The afiermath of World War II affected Merton's life in many ways. After the end of the war, there was a great influx of young men into the monastery seeking healing and meaning in a world that had come to seem violent and threatening. Merton's autobiographical Seven Storey Mountain appeared in 1948 and became a publishing sensation. It spoke powerfully to a post-war culture that was seeking desperately for wisdom that could counterbalance the prevailing pessirnism and disillusionment motivated by the horrors of war. in i 965 the U.S. began sending ground combat troops into Vietnam and aerial bombing in North Vietnam. Merton's abhorrence for this war led him to become an increasingly vocal cntic of his govemment and his country.

Merton was deeply touched by the civil rights movement and sickened by the violence he read of against black citizens of the US. On April6, 1968 upon learning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Merton mteof his Yfeeling that 1968 is a beast of a year" (OSM, 78). As Merton's cornmitment to social issues increased so did the tensions between Merton and the hierarchy of his church. Sadly, Merton never lived long enough to really benefit fiom the winds of change which were unleashed upon his church by the Second Vatican Council(1962-1965). As late as Match 1968, for example, Merton's uneasy relation to the Roman Catholic hierarchy can be seen in the wry observation that "there is such a thing as an idolatry of office, and 1 don't yet believe the Pope is another incarnation!" (OSM,72).

Merton's chafing against the strictures of authonty and his scepticism regardhg unquestionable traditions and rigid dogrnatism in many ways paralleled the tumult of the

.. Page 6 "sixties." As his exposure to other faith traditions deepened, Merton Uicreasingly broadened his container of tnith. He came to see that it was possible to discover a profound witness to God outside of his own church and beyond the parameters of the tight and dogmatic theological traditions which he inhaited fiom his early scholastic training. As his openness to other ways of formulating truth grew, Merton engiiged more and more deeply in the world outside the confines of the monastery walls. in 1962, Merton read a review of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. He wrote, "1 have been shocked at a notice of a new book by Rachel Carson on what is happening to birds as a result of the indiscriminate use of poisons" (ïTW, 274). LI Even without having yet read Carson's book Merton was aiready aware of the gravity of the situation facing the inhabitants of this earth. Long before such an insight was generally understood, Merton was able to observe, "We are in the world and part of it and we are destroying everything because we are destroying ourselves, spicituaily, moraily and in every way" ('ITW, 274). He knew that his concem might be viewed as eccentric, but insisted that, "it is by no means to be regarded as an eccentricity of sentimental souls, bird watchers and flower gardeners" (TTW, 274). He knew that he would not be understood but insisted that the awareness of our impact on the earth was '%ery significant and 1 want to know more of it" (TTW, 274).

Merton never swayed fcom his conviction that dealing with the human relationship to the created order represented a fiindamental Christian responsibility. In 1965 he wrote:

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of Christian obedience to God today concems the responsibility of the Christian in technologicai society towards God's creation and God's will for His creation. Obedience to God's will for nature and for man - respect for nature and love for man -in the awareness of our power to hstrate God's designs for nature and for man -to radically compt and destroy natural goods by misuse and blind exploitation by criminal waste. (SJon, 47)

It may be dZ6cult today in the age of The World Watch Institute, David Suzuki, and Greenpeace, to appreciate just how startling Merton's awareness was for the early sixties. As in so many areas of social concern, Merton blazed a trail well ahead of the majority.

8 AU quotations fiom Thomas Merton will be cited with the initials of theu source. Sources and abbreviations can be found at the end of the paper listed under "Works Cited."

Page 7 Merton's pioneering vision gives his insights and observations about the enviconment a hshness and immediacy which is sornetunes lacking in writing dealing with issues which have now been so long familiar. If we can discover the route Merton took to his environmental sensitivity, we rnay recover some of the intensity and immediacy of Merton's insights. We may also fïnd a guide towards a spirituality which cm truly nurture a spirituai base for an environmentai awareness and concem in our own age. He may guide us to learn how we might live today more fully in relationship to creation, as he lived in relationship to his world.

There is no one place we can point to discover Merton's attitude towards the natural world. He had a tremendously eclectic mind. He was able to juggle many subjects at the same time and they ofien tumbled out of his brain in written words in an undisciplined jumble, mixing and overlapping with one another in a chaotic blend of observation and insight. Merton wrote over fifty books, plus thousands of letters and seven volumes of recently published personal joumals. Allusions to Merton's relationship to creation are scattered throughout these writings. in order to come close to understanding Merton's way of relating to the natural world it is necessary to read through thousands of pages. Much of this writing does not relate directly to the nature of the human relationship to the created world. But, occasionally in Merton's writing the careful reader will stumble across sublime nature writing and profound insights into how we might live more closely in tune with the world around us.

Although he died tragicaliy in 1968, before there was any such thing as an "environmental movement," Thomas Merton cm serve today as a mentor for those who seek a deeper spiritual relationship to creation and to God in creation. He can teach us how to find our place in the world, how to live more respectfully on this earth, how to how God more deeply through the created world, and how to receive the wisdom and guidance of God through nature.

Thomas Merton was a spiritual master. Like ail ûue spiritual guides, Merton drew wisdom for the journey kom al1 aspects of his life, As we follow Merton toward a transfonnuig relationship with the world, a number of what might appear to be peripheral

Page 8 issues are drawn into the orbit of ow concem. But as Merton reflects upon al1 aspects of his experience, we will see tbat these reflections cari be applied to our discovery of more heaithy ways of being in the world.

Merton draws wisdom fiom his secret relationship with a young nurse in 1966 and 1967 and directs us to a deeper understanding of the nature of love. He reflects upon his calling as a writer and rerninds us of the profoundly powerful nature of language. We are reminded that the language we use regarding the created world, affects our relationship to that world. Merton challenges us to examine carefully how we use language and to ask ourselves how our use of language may contribute to the dysfunction of our relationship to the rest of creatiun.

Merton also provides a searching examination of the impact of technology on the hurnan way of living in creation. To read Merton's critique of technology is to be called to examine the relationship between the human community and the machines and technologies upon which we have corne to depend. It may not be a comfortable investigation but it is a central exploration in leaming to live more gently on the land.

Above all, as a guide on the Christian path, Merton points us towards the practice ofthe spiritual disciplines. Christian tradition holds that if human beings are to forge new ways of relating they must develop personal spirituai practices. Merton's way of relating to Scripture and his vision of Christian meditatian, point towards two spiritual disciplines with the power to open the human community to a new way of being.

Each of these issues is connected ta the others by the concern which the following pages will argue was centrai to all of Merton's writing: that al1 issues of human conduct are fit issues of the human spirit. It is therefore my thesis that environmental activists will experience renewed life and energy for their stmggle as they discover a renewed comection to the Creator of the environment for which they labour and demonstrate; and that the disciplines of the inner life are the means of sustainhg cornmitment to interaction with the forces of the world which pose such a threat to the well-being of creation. Finally, when dealing with Merton's writing it must be acknowledged that, as much as Thomas Merton was a prophetic voice and a man well ahead of his tirne, he was also a man of his the. Merton lived and worked in the days before there was any concern for inclusive language. Merton's vocabuiary is overwhelmingly masculine. It would be presumptuous to apologize for this fact, and arrogant to change his words. But, it is worth stating that, were Merton wriîhg today, he wouid almost certainly have been sensitive to this important issue and found ways around the constant use of male tenninology that 611s his writing.

Page 10 1. Moving to the Centre

In him al1 things in hemen and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers - al1 things have been created through him and for him. He himeris before a11 things, and in him al1 things hold together.

Human communication is a tricky business. At best, the distance between my words, the meaning 1 intend to communicate, and your perception of what I have said, may be considerable. When we attempt to share our deepest feelings and experiences, the task can be utterly daunting.

Thomas Merton was one of the great Christian communicators of the twentieth century. He had an extraordinary ability to speak to the heart of his generation and has continued to speak to thousands of readers since his tragic death in 1968. Michael W. Higgins has called Thomas Merton 'Wie twentieth century's most eloquent and accessible spiritual figure."

Merton's public writing career spanned twenty-four years. His first published work, a maIl book of poems titled, Thirty Poems appeared in 1944; Merton was hventy-nine. When Merton died he left a number of unpublished works which have since appeared, bringing the nurnber of his books of theology, spirituality, and general essays to over fi@. In addition, since his death, at least seven volumes of Merton's letters have been published and the seven volumes of his private journals have been printed. Merton was a prodigious writer. His journals alone amount to 2,750 pages. Words flowed out of his pen at a rate that is almost incornprehensible. His Collected Poems is a heily volume of one thousand and thirty pages. Merton also left hours of tape-recorded addresses from the spiritual conferences he gave during his fourteen years first as Master of the Scholastics and then as Novice Master at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Michael W. Higgins, Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Menon (Toronto: Stoddart Pubiishing Co. Limited, 1998), 2.

Page 11 It may not be the best-known aspect of Merton's writing, but it remains a fact that, in much of his writing, Merton communicated a profound appreciation for the natural world. His writings point the way towards a rich encounter with God in the midst of creation. His teaching in the context of creation suggests a way towards a spiritual foundation for the hwnan relationship to creation. He points the way for us to live more fully in relation to the created world and more responsibly on this earth. Having had the opportunity to read some of Merton's, at that tirne! unpublished journal writings, Raymond Bailey

Merton's journals are replete with references to nature. The unity of al1 creation could be detected in the order and beauty of nature. Merton's sensorial woods meditations evoke an awareness of man's bond with nature, and the dynamic stillness of his photography provides a contemporary henneneutic for the exhortation of the Psalmist to 'be still and know that 1 am God.' Merton demonstrated that it is possible to revel in the experience of God's 'good' creation in a hypertensive, fienetic age. The cycle of nature, and the mysteries of fire, water, and the semons were symbols of resurrection. Merton's appreciation of the revelatory value of nature rivalled that of the nineteenth-century transcendentalists. 10 Bailey demonstrates a sensitive appreciation for Merton's richness as a nature writer. Merton himself, however, might not have ken entirely flattered by the cornparison to the writings "of the nineteenth-century transcendentalists." As we will discover, much of the power of Merton's relationship to creation lay in his profound reverence for the created order in itself without reference to its utility to the human order of creation. For the American transcendentalist writers, the value of nature lay primarily in its relationship to human beings. Merton points us to a deeper encounter with the created world that allows creation its own dignity and integrity.

Merton may never have fully realized what we now cal1 the ecological implications of his own spirituality. But his writing has the power to point the carefùl reader towards an environmentaily sensitive theology. In an essay in the 1996 Merton Annual, Demis Patrick O'Hara points out the kernels of an ecological theology which he identifies in Merton's writings. O'Hara identifies parallels between the tone and direction of

laRaymond Bailey, Thomas Merton On Mystichm (New York: Image Books, 1974), 219,220.

Page 12 Merton's writing and the more hlly worked out eco-theology of the Catholic eco- theologian Thomas Berry. OYHarasuggests "Were Merton alive today, it is plausible that his evolving spirituality would have bmught him to many of the same conclusions as Berry." IL

Whether or not Thomas Merton cm be accurately viewed as an early forerunner of the environmental theologians of our day, there can be no doubt that Merton had a deep love for nature. Merton fiequently demonstrated this love in the beautifil poetic language which he used to describe the wonder he felt in his naturai surroundings. But in al1 of his attempts to communicate his love of nature and his mystical encounters with God in creation, Merton remaineci deeply aware of the limitations of language and the difficulties of human communication.

Words can odycommunkate so much. Human language is hemmed in on every side by limitations. The challenge of human communication is profound and must be approached cautiously. Whenever we lose sight of the limitations of language and take our words more seriously than they merit, we risk creating an id01 of language. Sallie McFague has warned that when language becomes cut off fiom "a religioiis context," "it becomes idoIatrous because without a sense of awe, wonder, and mystery, we forget the inevitable distance between our words and the divine reality." '* The idolaûy of language lhus nits us off fiom the reality we are trying to cornmunicate. We must always remain conscious of the distance between the deepest truths and experiences of our lives and the words we use to communicate those truths.

As a writer, Merton struggled to achieve a deep authenticity in everything he wrote. The transparency of Merton's writing has led Anthony Padovano to the rather extraordinary conclusion that, those who knew Merton best "were those who read his books. They knew him better than those he taught or those with whom he lived." l3 Merton the writer

" Demis Patrick O'Hara, "'The Whole World ... Has Appeared as a Transparent Manifestation of the Love of God': Portents of Merton as Eco-Theologian," The Merton Annual 9 (1996): 1 16. " Sallie McFague, MeraphoricalTtheology.. Model. of God in Religiow Language (Phhdeiphia: Fortress Press, 1983), p. 2. '' Anthony Padovano, The Human Journey.- Thomas Merlon: Symbol ofa Cennny (New York image Books, 1984), 34.

Page 13 was obsessed with tbe challenge of being absolutely honest when trying to describe bis own experiences or to communicate his struggles with faith, or to share his relationship to God and to the world around him.

Early in his writing career, Merton set the tone for much of his most illuminating wciting when he wrote in The Sign ornas, "I am content that these pages show me to be what I am - noisy, full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds lefi by my sins. Full of my own emptiness" (SJon, 47). Merton desired to use words to present his life as openly and as honestly as possible. He believed that, if he shared his tiumanity, he would be able to touch the humanity of his readers and encourage us to live more humanly. Merton's determination to be honest about himself and forthright about his weaknesses led him at times to what some critics have considered an embarrassrnent of self-revelation. But, as much as Merton wrote and as honest as he tried to beywords remained, even for hh,imperfect vessels to translate the true nature of human experience,

Merton understood that his writing could only ever partially communicate what he intended to the reader. When he was still just twenty-six years old, only two months before entering the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton wrote in his journal of his awareness of the distance between the reality of his personal experience and his desire as a writer to transmit that experience in tenns that might be intelligible to the reader. Merton was teaching English at St. Bonaventure's College and working hard at his own fiction writing. He had reread a short story he had recently written. This story he says made him "f'eel very sick." Then, sitting alone and melancholy in his room, Merton thought about the natural world outside the College walls, the world beyond books, and words and ideas. Merton found himselfprofoundly moved by the recollection of time spent away hmbis desk in creation.

The gras like green silk under the tree: and the sun and the silence and the wind moving in the branches and the heat pouring on the landscape: and 1sit under the tree full of ail this, not able to say anything myself about it, because it was al1 incomprehensible as soon as 1iried to descnie it as a possessed experience. An individual material reality is uninteIligile: what 1was trying to descriie was not an experience, it was nothing comprehensiile, the matter of an experience, raw

Page 14 matter. Tbat you can descriie so as to seem to describe it, but you are really descniing another thing, an experience - not this moment itself, but your experience in it. (RTM, 412) The very act of attempting to communicate an incommunicabie experience in words changes the nature of the experience. What ends up being described is something other than the original experience - "The human dilemma of communication is that we cannot communicate ordinarily without words and signs, but even ordinary expenence tends to be falsified by our habits of verbalization and rationalization" (ZBA, 48). Words caanot contain reality. The written description of an expenence is even different fiom the author's original experience. Whatever out words might communicate is ultimately somethiig different in the perception of the reader than in the original expenence of the writer.

In a beautifil passage in Thoughts In Solitude Merton identifies the essential limitation of language.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us ftom the world nor fiom other men, nor from God, nor fiom ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. (TiS, 93)

Things do not come with labels attached. Language is a human construct built out of the reflections, observations and projections of individual human beings and cultures. Our experience of words points most fully to the barriers which separate us hmone another.

Merton would ceaainly have approved of Bede Griffiths' observation that "The etemal Truth has to be expressed in the foms of space and time, under social and historical conditions, yet these very foms will always tend to beûay it. l4

It is sometimes temfjmg to be forced to recognize what can happen to the words we speak when they traverse that vast open space between the mouth of the speaker and the ear of the hearer. At times Merton seems to have questioned whether his use of language had really been a waste of tirne. On October 13,1962, in his journal, Merton wondered,

'' Bede Griffith, Remto the Center(Springfield, Illiaois: Templegaie hblishers, 1977), 108.

Page 15 "Mat has been the use of al1 the things 1 have said, al1 the spiritual conferences 1 have given in the last eleven years?" ('MW, 257)

in his book Thomas Merton 's Dark Path, William Shaunon argues that Merton's awareness of the limitations of language led him to a deep appreciation of the apophatic tradition of Christian spirituality. Shannon suggests that, "Merton never denied the value of the kataphatic approach to God, but he was strongly conviuced that ultimately it must yield to apophaticism." '' Shannon explains the apophatic tradition as it is characterized in Merton's writing, saying that this tradition recognizes that

once you seem to have found God, it is not He whom you have found. Once you seem to gcasp God, He eludes you. For God is not an object or a thing alongside of other objects and things: God is the All whom we can discover only in the experience of not discovering Him. 16 Our awareness of the profound difficulty of achieving authentic human communication, especially in relation to those tniths and realities which touch the deepest chords of the human condition, might lead to despair. Perhaps we should abandon altogether the attempt to communicate verbally. At various times throughout his life Merton seems to have entertained this possibility: that he should simply lapse into silence. in Nm Seeds of Contemplation, Merton wrote about the discipline of theology and the inevitable limitations which the use of language impose upon the work of the theologian: 'Wieology does not tnily begin to be theology until we have transcended the language and separate concepts of theologians." This is the reason, Merton says, that "St. Thomas put the Summa Theologica aside in weariness before it was finished, saying that it was 'al1 straw'" (NSC, 148).

Yet despair is not the only possible response to recognizing the Limitations of words. if we can recognize, as Merton suggested in Thoughts In Solitude, that we mut "no longer tmst entirely in language to contain ceality," we cmcontinue to use words but with a new perspective. Words are sacramental. Words particeate in the mystery to which they

'' William H. Shannon, Thomrrs Merian's Dark Path: The Inner Erperience of a Contemplative (New York: Farm Sbaus Giroux, 198 l), 10. '' Ibid, 11.

Page 16 point. But the mystery towards which ow words are groping is vastly deeper than the words we use can ever hope to contain. Words that speak of truth emerge out of the silence of our wrknowing and must be allowed to dissolve back into the stillness where we acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge and our understanding, We must never cling to our words. Language is not an end in itself. Words always point beyond themselves to a greater reality.

The heart of the Christian mystical experience is that it experiences the ineffable reality of what is beyond experience. It "knows" the presence of God, not in clear vision but "as unknown" (famquamignotium). Christian faith too, while of course conceming itself with certain tniths that have been revealed by Gad, does not terminate in the conceptual formulation of those truths. It goes beyond words and ideas and attains to God Himself. But the God who in a certain sense is "known" beyond those articles. (CWA, 185, 186)

From his earliest writing about nature, Merton recognized the inadequacy of an approach to the natural world which viewed nature as signifLing nothing more than itself. in 1939, Merton wrote, "If we look at an object, a creature: Say, a tree, for itself, its own sake, it means either nothing at all, or else something not very important - an obstacle not too difficultto get around as we walk through the woods on the way to sel1 our Grandmother to the pimps" @TM, 26,27). We must become convinced that there is something more to nature than just nature. When we speak of creation Our words point to more than mere particles of matter which happen by random chance to have accumulated into a particular

in The MonasficJourney Merton wrote that "Visible creation is held in being by the word. But the word Himself has entered into material creation to be its crown and its glory" (MJ, 35). For Merton, creation is imbued with a deeper presence than the mere extemal reality which presents itself to the human eye might at first suggest. Demis O'Hara argues that "Merton is claiming that ail of creation is a manifestation of the love of the divine mystery." There is a reaiity that lies at the heart of "materiai creation" which is greater than the creation itseîfand which gives to that creation its greatness and its dignity.

- -

" OyHara,"Portents of Merton as Eco-theologian," 96.

Page 17 At Mass, which was ail before sunrise and without lights, the quality, the "spirituality" of the pre-dawn light on the altar was extraordinary. Silence in the chape1 and that pure, pearl light! What could be a more beautifhl liturgical sign than to have such light as witness of the Mystery? (TTW, 268)

As the traditional English hyrnn declares, "Al1 nature sings, and round me ringsithe music of the spheies." '' The whole created order shares in the lihugy of worship in which al1 creation encounters the ineffable light of that Mystery which exists within al1 life. When we speak of the created world we speak of a reality deeper than we can ever understand. When we speak of creation we are touching upon the mysterious source and reality that lies at the core of its existence. We must therefore approach our use of langriage in speaking of creation with the greatest hurnility and caution.

The Christian church has not always done a good job of bearing testimony to the essential mystery of language. We have often given the impression that there is an exact mathematical correlation between the words we use and the realities we intend to indicate by those words. We have faiied to acknowledge that our words are poor clay pots into which we pour the tiny portion of the great Mystery of al1 king towards which we have tentatively fumbled with our feeble intellectual concepts and our inadequate theological formulations. Christians most of al1 should be eager to admit to the imperfect nature of al1 language. William Shannon states that

Christian theologians, at least in their better moments, have always understood that no conceptual formulation can adequately embody God's self-revelation. We must admit, however, the fact, to which history testifies al1 too well, that obsession with correct doctrinal formulas has often made people forget that the heart of Christianity "is n living experience of unity with Christ which far transcends ail conceptual formulations. 19 Christians are people who have been touched by the vastness of the Mystery of the universe in the face of which al1 formulations, concepts, and theologies pale into insignificance. Having glimpsed the fieeting shadow of God's giorious presence, we know that our words can only ever be a vague approximation of the reality which

laMaltbie D. Babcock, 'This is My Father's World," The Book of Cornmon Praise (Toronto: Oxford University Press, revised 1938), #60. l9 Shannon, Thomas Merton's Dark Path, 203

-. Page 18 breaks beneath the surface of all existence. So, we corne humbly to any conversation, sitting iightly to our words and willing at any moment to let go of the straitjacket which language can so easily becorne. Oaly then will we be i?ee to move towards the depths of Mystery which we toucb when we use language to speak about the wonder of creation.

As Merton cautions us, "if we are too anxious to pry into ihe mystery that surrounds us we will Iose the prophet's ceverence and exchange it for the impertinence of soothsayers. We must be silent in the presence of signs whose meaning is closed to usy' (NMi, 62). The tmth is that we do not Wly understand the mystery of creation. We may comprehend a little about the processes which function in the nahiral wodd. But our knowledge of the real workings of the world in wbich we live, is in fact extremdy limited. We do not understand the aged grey branches of a Garry Oak twisting out of an impossibly srnall crack in a granite rock outcropping to grow strong and ta11 for generations. Who can begin to comprehend why there should be a hundred shades of colour blending hmone delicate degree of hostwhite to a pi& that is nearly rose in every peony bloom in spring? Why are we able to predict an eclipse centuries in advance of its occurrence but unable to predict the weather with any real accuracy even a week before it occurs? Awe and silence lie at the rwt of dl good communication about creation. Awe is always accompmied by a humility which recognizes how little we know and how much less we understand.

Page 19 II. Beyond More

Take care! Be on your guard against al1 Ends of g.eed;fir one 's life dues not consist in the abundance of possessions.

(Luke 12: 15)

As for whatfell among the thorns, these are the ones who heur; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cures and riches andpleasures of ire, and their fruit does not mature.

(Luke 8:14)

The environmental degradation which we have inflicted upon every aspect of creation is driven in part by the insatiable hwnan demand for "more". We live in a culture which extols the virtues of bigger, faster, taller, stronger. It is always better to be more wealthy, more powerful, more beautifùl. Aviation is estimated to account for twelve percent of the world's transport related carbon dioxide emissions as we frantically rush around the globe at humanly ludicrous speeds to exotic destinations as far fiom our place of origin as possible. Somewhere else is always better, more interesting, more exciting, more glamorous. We build machines that can produce snow to lengthen the ski season so that we can ski for more months of the year on mountains that have been raped for our recreational enjoyment. We discard perfectly adequate old cornputers so that we can buy new ones with more memory, more speed and more space to perform more arbitrary tasks in pursuit of endless distraction and the accumulation of more information than we wiil ever be able to comprehend. And the more we have, and the more we are able to do, the busier we get and the less peace and contentment we experience.

It is not just work which crarnps our scheduies. The gadgets we buy to lighten the load of labour in our lives and spare us tirne require constant upkeep and cm. The frivolous pastimes we pursue squeeze out any possibility of quiet and reflection hmour days. Home becomes the place we stop briefly to sleep and refiiel before rushing off to the next important activity in our family's busy schedules.

Busyness is the enemy of the environment. Endless fienetic activity blocks the way to an authentically human encounter with the naîurai world.

Page 20 With my hair almost on end and the eyes of the soul wide open 1am present, without knowing it at ail, in this unspeakable Paradise, and 1behold this secret, this wide open secret which is there for everyone, free, and no one pays any attention ("One to his fami, another to his merchandise" Luke 1416-20). Not even monks, shut up under fluorescent lights and face to face with the big books and the black notes and with one another, perhaps no longer seeing or hearing anything in the course of festive Lauds. (TTW, 7)

Busy with their important studies about God, even monks are cut off hmthe creation which has the power to make "the eyes of the soul wide open." The rush of important activities in our lives undermines our ability to be "present." Chasing fiom place to place, hmone hyper-stimulation to another, we are unable to be where we are at the moment. We are so preoccupied with career aspirations, financial goals, the accumulation and maintenance of things, with discovering new experiences and fresh bills, that we are unable to experience the "unspeakable Paradise" right before our eyes.

We measure value in terms of activity. The person with the fullest daytimer is the most important. We exhaust owselves with eighteen-hour days, and then attempt to squeeze some meagre satisfaction out of impressing our üiends with casual allusions to our long work hours. We Wear our bumout as a badge of accomplistunent. The office tights burn tàr into the night and the really virtuous person sneaks back to his desk for a iittle extra work on the weekend. A "vacation" is just another form of whirlwind activity in which we rush fiom the distraction of our business life to the distraction provided by an entertainment theme park.

The insatiable hurnan activity, which is driven to accumulate more and more, has fuelled the astronomical pwthof an inhumane technological industry. And, as technology has grown, we have become increasingly cut off hmthe natural world. In an extraordinary passage, early in his writing career, Merton recounted a train trip fiom St. Bonaventure's to New York. "It suddenly stnick me," he writes, "as a painfully offensive thing for me to ride whùling through those rocky valleys in a train exclaiming '1 know al1 these bills!"' (KM,282)

Technology separates us fiom the natural world. It gives us the ability to manipulate our naturai smoundings to satisfy our own needs and purposes. We rush fiom air- conditioned automobile to climate-controUed maU, never needing to feel the blistering heat of a summer day. We swim year round in climate controlied recreation centres in a heated pool filled with chemically disinfected water. We Live in an artificial world in which we are sheltered hmthe reality of the naturai forces around us. We never need to go outside and confiont the elements.

On his train joumey through the countryside, Merton came to a profound recognition of the degree of separation which technology had created between himseifand creation.

It is a terrible thing to ride encased in the glass, stenle, train asking the hiils who they are, and being cut off fiom any reai answer in a sealed tube of scientifically cleaned and heated air, not the same air as fills the bitter, hostile woods outside. When hills go to answer, they are defeated; so is the questioner. The answer can't get through the glass. (RTM, 282) There are undoubtedly advantages to some of the extraordinary technological developments of the last hundred years. But technology always cornes with a cost. Merton cannot hear the answer of the hills through the glass. The hticrush of technology fonns an impenetrable banier. The only way to hear the Song of creation is to stop the rush, get down out of the "sealed train" and walk quietly in the hilIs: "ln order to know these hills, 1 ought to set foot upon their earth in quietness" (RTM, 282). We must be willing to sacrifice some comfort and some control if we are to reconnect with the natural world.

In the summer of 1941 Merton visited a summer resort at Watch Hill, Rhode Island. in the midst of the busy clutter of this summer tourist spot Merton observed, "Suer resorts are more boring to me the more ambitious they are as resorts." An "ambitious" summer resort was one filled with activity, busyness, prograrns, and endless entertainment for the perpetuai diversion of the paying clientele. Merton would not have done welI in Disneyland, a kingdom devoted to encouraging escape into the fantasy world of cartoon existence. Merton longed to Live in reality. He rejected anything that rnight anaesthetize him fiom encountering the real world. He wanted to live awake.

Even on Rhode Island, Merton sought out the one place which might afford him the opportwuty to enta more deeply into the reality of the created world.

Page 22 The least boring place here is a mile and a haifaway at the end of a long sandspit: an abandoned and wrecked fort overgrown with grass, a good place to sit, perfectly quiet, and look at the sea. Nobody goes there. It is swell. 1was out there almost al1 attemoon. Al1 you could hear was the sound of the waves and a bell buoy. (RTM, 387) This is not the most popular location on the Island. No one comes here. They prefer the hustle and bustle of "holidaying" in the midst of noise and clutter. They avoid the one place where "Al1 you could hear was the sound of the waves and a bell buoy." if 1 am not willing to give up the noise and the clutter of diversion, 1will not be able to face the silence in which 1 might hear "the sound of the waves."

XII his book Contemplation In A World of Action Merton points out that the English word "vacation" comes from the Latin root "vacare" which means "to be empty." A vacation is supposed to be an emptying time, a time when we make a break from the over-fullness of the rest of out lives. When we take a vacation we are not intended merely to exchange one form of crazy busyness for another. A vacation should be an opportunity to experience some space and some silence in our lives. But such a vacation seems to have become an impossibility for modern human beings, even in Merton's day. Raymond Bailey observes that Merton had understood that ''Technological progress had resulted in the enslavement of man to work and of society to industry." ' Slaves of course do not take vacations. Slaves do not have the freedom to stop and Men to the silence of creation. Slaves are driven by the voice of the master they serve to a life of constant activity, agitation, and noise. The slave is driven by fear of the master's displeasure to fil his time with %orthwhileY'actions.

Merton knew that the silence of nature scares many people. He knew that the clutter and noise of our tives are chosen because we fear our own emptiness. We will fil1 any available space with distracting noise so that we will not be forced to face ourselves.

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through dent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their plane seems for

1 Raymond Bailey, Thomas Merron On MysticSm, 1974), 143.

Page 23 a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sly, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquillity of the clouds dlremain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is reai. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and aii of our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion. (N'MI, 257) Merton mtethese words in the early fifties. It is not hard to imagine the despair he would feel today as the screaming enghes of recreational snowmobiles shatter the silent winier woods, and the tranquil waters of a peaceful lake are destroyed by the incessant whine of water skidoos. Human beings with time on theü hands go to incredible lengths to avoid sitting still, to avoid the calm of nature in which they might discover a mirror that would reveal the chaos of their inner lives. Bailey sums up Merton's insight, saying tbat for most human beings, "The difficult thing to do is to stop and let ourselves be found."

We need to stop, to face our illusions, to recognize that we are chasing a fantasy. "Our noise, our business, our purposes, and ail of our fatuous statements" are not accomplishing anything real. The faster we nui, the farther away we get tiom encountering the reality for which our hearts are longing. We are like the man described in The Way of Chuang Tm who became temfied of his shadow and hated the sound of his own footsteps, Determined to escape fiom his fear he began to nui fiom the haunting shadow presence and the annoying ring of his feet on the ground. Everywhere he ran his shadow followed and his footsteps grew louder and louder: "He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough. So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead" (WCT,155). The picture may seem ridicuioiis. But, if we stop for a moment and look around, we will see that this fnghtened man driven to nui hmhimself is a deeply true pichire of much of human iife in our day. We are driven by fear to fil1 every available moment, lest we might be confronted with the ache of our own loneliness and emptiness.

The begianiug of a solution to our destructive impact upon the enWoument may be simply to stop our fiantic fearful flight. We mut face our fears before they destroy us.

Page 24 The man who fled his shadow "fhiled to realize that if he merely stepped into the shade, his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed sîül, there would be no more footsteps" (WCT,3). When we stop running we may corne to recognize that sometimes less can be better than more -truly, that less is more.

We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much Iess than usual! (NMI, 122)

This is an extraordinarily radical concept for twenty-first century Western culture. It is hard to think that it might be better to actually choose to have a smaller life, to have fewer things, to have less variety, and fewer options. We are the willing victims of a multi-billion dollar advertising industry whose sole purpose is to deepen ow conviction that the source of happiness lies in having more. But, as radical as the idea of downscaling our lives may be, it is not a new idea.

Jesus said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20). Throughout his writing Thomas Merton extolled the virtue of voluniarily accepted poverty. Merton did not intend anyone to welcome imposed poverty. He never suggested we find virtue in the grinding poverty that is forced upon those who are disadvantaged by a desperately unjust distribution of creation's bounty. He never sat complacently by in the face of the extraordinary inequality and violence that the rampant consumerism of the Western world has inflicted on those parts of the world which have been unable to share in ow orgy of conswnption. Merton spoke forcehlly against injustice and the abuses of social systems and governments which deprive many of the basic necessities of life.

The poverty Merton valued is the poverty which we, the affluent, might fieely choose by reducing our consumption and narrowing the focus of our lives. It is the poverty that can recognke that 1have al1 1 need where I am. It is not necessary to traver to the far corners of the earth in order to fiii my emptiness. Travel, material wealth, prestige, glamour, and promotion can never fuifil1 the deep longings and desires of the human heart. As much as we may worship at the altars of power, ambition, and achievement they are not the

Page 25 means of contentment. The extmal rewards derwhich we chase so frantically are a sign of the deep herpoverty afîiicting so many individuais in our society. Merton encouraged the choice of a simpler life, able to resist the urge to endlessly accumulate the glittecing toyç the possession of which is the goal of so much of our culture.

As we allow our lives to be less cluttered by the things and ambitions of the world the bticpace of our lives will ease. We will discover that we have time and space to contiont our true selves. in this confrontation we can experience the inner poverty which in Matthew's version of Jesus' statement is expressed as king the experience of those who are "poor in spirit" (Matthew 53). For Merton, this inner poverty of spirit, though temwng, is also beautifil and life-giving. It is the place within ourselves where we are able to experience God's love.

1 exist apart fiom God in the depths of an awhl poverty which is nevertheless loved by Him. 1 am never allowed to forget that poverty. 1 wish 1knew her beauty as well as Saint Francis did - for the extemal poverty he marrieci was simply the expression of the nothingness which he loved in himself. (SJon, 198) Tme poverty is the recognition of the nothingness that lies at the heart of al1 existence apart fiom God. Monica Furlong writes that in his early book, The Ascent to Trurh, Merton had already discovered that, "What the contemplative must strive for is 'nada' - nothing."' Those who accept and enter into their own poverty become rich because the acceptance of poverty is the acceptance of need. And the acceptance of need always elicits God's gracious, self-giving response of love.

It is ofien difficult even for religious people to embrace the true depths of our poverty: "Poverty is a gift that few religious people really relish." in fact Merton argues, religion is ofien used as a tool to avoid facing the reality of how poor we really are: "They want their religion to make them at least spiritually rich, and if they renounce al1 things in this world, they want to lay hands not oniy on life everlasting but, above dl, on the 'hundredfold' promised to us even before we die" (Tm,268). Our obsession with accumulating spiritual blessings and rewards can be just as sou[ destroyuig as the drive to increase our financial holdings. if the church's oniy fiinction is to redirect our

Monica Furiong, Menon: A Biography (New York: Bantam Bwks, 1980), 202,

Page 26 cornpuisive dnvenness towards spiritual accumulation, it has done very little to bring the liberty of the Spirit which is the promise of the Gospel.

There is a greedy demanding acquisitive spirit which a££iicts some contemporary expressions of Cbristianity that makes people as restless and dissatisfied in the church as those outside who are rushing to purchase lottery tickets in the hopes of realizing their wildest fantasies. 1 run to more and more spiritual workshops and buy more and more spiritual books, in the desperate hope that 1 may hit the jackpot in the spicitual lottery. 1 am driven by the conviction that there must be something out there which can satisb my hunger. 1 pray fervently to be filled by God. 1 long for the gifts of God's Holy Spirit to convince me that my life is full and rneaningful and powerful. 1 want sure, certain, fixed answers to the problems, struggles and uncertainties of my Iife. 1 don't want to have to struggle any longer with the ambiguity and confusion of life in an irnperfect world. 1 desperately search for a secure resting place where 1 will no longer have to face the gaping need for God that stalks every hour of my waking life.

Ross Labrie argues that Merton saw a direct link between this desperate, fienetic human drive which he called "greed" and a destructive sexuai compulsion which destroys the earth. Labrie writes, "The monsters bred by greed and sustained by the political and economic infiastructure entrenched in contemporary Western Society are provocatively Iinked by Merton with a ruthless sexual drive to seize and rape the earth for profit." ' We "rape the earth for profit7' in the hope that we might satisQ the hunger of our hearts, in the sarne way that the spiritual "jjuny' pursues fullness through the accumulation of spiritual experiences.

As long as 1am driven to accumulate spirituai experiences, or to sunender my intellect to tidily packaged "answers," 1 am a slave every bit as much as the person who is driven to acquire materiai weaith or to surtender himself to the demands of worldly ambition, I am bound by my addiction to the flash and passion of emotionai intensity found in spirituai ecstasy. The hope that 1 might come to a place where 1might no longer experience my

'' Ross Labrie, "Merton and the American Romantics," The Maon Annual (Coiiegviiie, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 49.

Page 27 poverty holds me in bondage. The only way to escape this bondage is to recognize and embrace the poverty inherent in the human condition.

Poverty is the door to fieedom, not because we remain imprisoned iu the anxiety and constraint which poverty of itself implies, but because, finding nothing in ourselves that is a source of hope, we know there is nothing in ourselves worth defending. There is nothing in ouselves to love. We go out of ouselves therefore and rest in Him in Whom alone is our hope. (TB,52) How desperately our culture needs to find this true "rest."

When 1 acknowledge and embrace the poverty of my human condition, I no longer have anything to fight for. There is nothing left to prove. The glittering prizes the world has to offer lose their power. The incredible compulsive drive to fil1my life with things no longer forces me to clutter every moment of my day. Because 1am poor and have nothing, I know that 1 need nothing other than "Him in Whom alone is our hope." i begin to be able to live with a degree of uncertainty. My security no longer lies in having al1 the right answers, or knowing exactly how evey aspect of life should be unfolding. I can live more gently in the world. The willingness to accept my poverty lies at the heart of the human change necessary to enable us to live in a more healthy relationship with the natural world.

But how am 1 to corne to a place where it is possible for me to know my human poverty as something life-giving and good rather than as something to be despised?

1 wiil not be brought to the realization and acceptance of my poverty through a change in any social structure. 1cannot be legislated to recognize the tiitility and poverty of material existence. There is no human program that cm lead me to the awareness of my true human condition. A deep inner work must take place if 1 am to acknowledge the true nature of my human condition. Merton fiequently used the word "emptiness" in place of the word "poverty," John Teahan says of Merton's use of this word that "Emptiness is not a consequence of spiritual ambition or meditative technique but the manifestation,

Page 28 through grace, of one's deepest reality."* Accordhg to Merton, it is tbis "manifestation" of my "deepest reality" as empty, which 1must be willing to accept before I cmbegin on the road of bertransformation.

1cannot be the author of my own, or of another's transformation. Deep inner change cannot corne about as a result of tiakering with the external condition of human life. People who focus their energies exclusively on altering social structures and human systems will inevitably at some point in their efforts experience a measure of disillusionment and even despair.

Like al1 social movements, there can be a restless uneasiness in the environmental movement that cornes hmtrusting in the wrong things. Changing external hurnan behaviour wilI not bring about radical change in human awareness. As long as we place hope in manipulating hurnan structures, we will never find rest. Rest begins within individual hurnan beings. In the 1960's Merton wrote powerfulty about the way towards achieving world peace. He was a strong and vocal advocate, as a Christian for the peace movement. But Merton never forgot that peace is not redized by changing this or that social structure. Peace is not found by forcing al1 people on earth to agree togettier. Peace in the world wilI only be realized when individuais find peace within îhemselves.

Perhaps peace is deral1 not something you 'work for.' It either is or it isn't. You have it or not. ifyou are at peace there is peace in the world. Then share your peace with everyone and the world will be at peace. (TTW,176)

The same words rnight be addressed to the environmental movement. If you are "green" then there is "gree~ess"in the world, Share your "greenness" with everyone and the world will be "green." This may seem an individudistic, reductionist vision for social change. But, it represents a redistic awareness of how social movements become tmly influentid in çociety. Social stnicâures change as the people within those structures change, Tnie change begins with the willingness of individual human beings to view Life diffmntly and then to choose to live in accordance with this new vision, When we Çeely

John F. Teahan, "A Dark and Empty Way: Thomas Merton and the Apophatic Tradition," The Journal of Religion 58, no. 1 (Jarniary 1978),280.

Page 29 choose to live by metent values, we are tmly changed. And, when we are ûuiy changed, the world naturally changes around us.

Merton had a deep abhorrence for any kind of coercion, even in the hterests of an apparently good outcorne. In a review article Richard Parry discusses Merton's relationship to the just war theory, which, he says, 6'allows violence under certain, supposedly strictly limited, conditions." One of the comerstone phciples of just war theory is that a just war must intend to establish some good or correct some evil. Parry argues that Merton could not accept an evil such as war even in the interests of establishing greater good or correcting a greater evil.

the kind of non-violence Merton was talking about was pacifism; it was the refùsal to countenance the use of violence to achieve even - or especially - the kingdom of Gd. It seemed to be the notion that nothing could be used to establish the kingdom of God which would not be compatible with what that kingdom would look like once it was established.

Merton was deeply committed to the value of human fieedom. He did not believe that a good end, achieved by a bad means, could ever be a good end. Reflecting upon the cal1 to teach others to pmy, Merton wrote, "the best way to prepare ourselves for the possible vocation of sharing contemplation with other men is not to study how to talk and reason about contemplation, but withdraw ourselves as much as we can fiom talk and argument and retire into the silence and humility of heart in which God wil1 purifj. our love of al1 its human imperfections" (NSC, 278). We cannot be argued or reasoned into a spirituai life. Only prayer that is chosen is real prayer. Only change that begins with the fieely given consent of the individual person will be lasting change. Real change requires deep inner transformation.

We will not change people by ;'taik and reason." We can only bring change by king tnily changed people ourselves. Merton recognized at times in the peace rnovement that activists' sense of hstration and somw at the tragic condition of the world occasionaily created within them a tendency towards violent attitudes, angry thoughts, and even on

Richitcd D-Parry, review of Pussionfor Peace: The Social Essays, by Thomas Merton, The Merton Annual 9 (1996), 262. 7 Parry, 262.

Page 30 occasion savage actions ail in the name of-. And he knew that the advocate of peace who hates or violates his opponent has already lost the stmggle to bring peace.

Anthony Padovano argues that, for Merton, "Nonviolence represented far more than cessation of armeci confiict. Indeed, he wondered about the subtle belligerence of some elements in the pacifist movement!' lndeed io 1965 the "belligerence" whkh Merton feared in the pacifist movement erupted into a tragic aad dishirbing event. in November of 1965 Merton was deeply troubled by the death of Roger Lapocte, a staff rnember for The Catholic Worker. Laporte di& as a result ofburns he suffered when he set himself on fire in hont of the United Nations building in protest against the Vietnam War. As a result Merton immediateiy sent a telegram withdrawing as a sponsor of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, On November 11, 1965, Merton mtein his journal: "1 cannot understand the shape of things in the Peace Movement or the shape of things at al1 in this country. What is happening? 1s everyMy nuts?" PWL, 3 14). He seemed to be deeply distwbed by the incongruity of a movement which on the one hand espoused peace, and on the other led to the self-inûicted death of a young man. A violent means could not, in Merton's mind, bring about a peaceful conclusion. VioIence could only beget more violence. A truly pacifist ethic must go deeply to the heart of the human condition. It must address larger issues thm simply armed conflict between nations.

Viable environmental ethics similarly must stem hma belief chat is rooted deeply in the heart of the human spirit. The heart of an environmental ethic must be deep respect for the other. Environmentalists must be su üansforxneâ within themselves that this respect extends even to those who mpe and pillage the landscape. True respect is a seamless garment. Ewe cannot respect our living human adversary, we cannot ûuly respect the non-human dimensions of the created order. if we withhold respect hmthe non-human parts of creation, we wiil never Mybe able to respect and honour human beings. An inability to respect any part of creation ultimately reflects an inability to respect the Creator.

Anthony T. Padovano, Tlie Human Jotaney.. Thomas Merton: Sylrnbol ofa Cenrury (New York: image Books, 1984), 64.

Page 3 1 A full respect for al1 of life will never be achieved by force. Respect cannot ultimately be legislated or even educated into existence. Respect for creation comes about as a result of respect for the Creator who is 6rst encountered when we abandon al1 hope and recognize our own inner poverty and need for God. The forces and motivations at work in the heart of the crusader are deeply complex. Human power is a seductive tempter. It is dangernus even in the interests of a good end to resort to force and coercion. Merton counsels, "Our intention cannot be completely simple unless it is completely poor. It seeks and desires nothing but the suprerne poverty of having nothing but God" (NMI, 74).

In order to be free to embrace my own poverty 1 must have faith that there is something or some One within that poverty who will meet me in the emptiness that 1 fïnd when I stop my Bantic rush to fil1 the spaces of my life. Faith trusts that God is there at the centre: "The more we are content with our own poverty, the closer we are to God, for then we accept our poverty in peace, expecting nothing hmomelves and everything from God" (TiS, 52). 1 am not alone in the emptiness. Paradoxically, the emptiness 1 have fled in fear is in fact the fullness of God's presence- The darkness, which has driven me to seek escape in the distractions of the world, is the light of God buming at the centre of al1 being. As 1embrace this darkness, 1discover the light of God. 1 discover that God's light shines in al1 of life, even in those places and those people where 1 might least expect to encounter such light.

Poverty is the key to respect. When 1 recognize my own inner poverty, 1will know that 1 am one with the destructive land deveioper who is driven fonvard with no regard for the devastation his building plans leave behind. Just as the developer is driven to build without regard for his impact on the world by his own refusa1 to embrace his inner poverty, 1can recognizc that, when 1am compulsive, htic, agitated, bitter, resentfüi and mgry in my campaign to stop the developer, 1 too am being driven by fear of that emptiness which 1 sense at the centre of my own being. When I sit stiii in the darkness of being, 1discover that God's light is present, even if unrecognized, in the desperate darkness of my enemy. We are the same. The polluter and 1share God's presence; we are one in the reality of God's light which sustains our common Me. The developer is my brother. And, if 1hope ta make any change possible in tu's iife, I must treat him with the respect, love and cmwith which 1would treat any other member of my family.

It requires a courageous act of faith to accept the poverty 1 share in common with the person with whom I disagree. The path of faith is a circle. Until 1embmce my poverty and emptiness 1 will not have the courage to stop my fienetic panicked rush to fil1 the emptiness 1exparience at the centre of my life. But until 1 stop my desperate activity, 1 am not open to the emptiness at the heart of which 1ca. encounter the Creator and Lover oPmy being and be set heto love the other person whose emptiness makes him so distastehl to me.

Stopping is the beginning of our movement towards God and towards a ttue encounter with al1 of God's people and di of God's creation. At first this stopping will simply be a temiQing experience. 1 must hold myself in stillness by a caurageous act of the will. 1 must tell myself, '1 will sit here; 1 will do nothing, expect nothing, look for nothing.' [t requires a massive determination to stop the lunatic rush characteristic of so much of my Eearfùl life.

Despite his extraordiniiry productivity, Merton seems to have been bom with an innate awareness of the value of "doing nothing." In a delightfidly humorous prose poem published as "A Signed Confession of Crimes Against the State," Merton wrote:

1 confess that 1am Sitting under a pine tree doing absolutely nothing. 1have done nothing for one hour and hlyintend to continue to do nothing for an indefinite period. 1have taken my shoes off. [ confess that 1bave been listening to a mockingbird. Yes, I admit that it is a mockingbird. 1hear him singing in those cedars, and 1am very sorry. It is probably my fault. He is singing again- This kind of thing goes on ail the time. Wherever i am, 1find myself the centre of reactionary plots like this one. (Reuder, 117)

It may be that the most revolutionary activity in which we can engage is the act of "sitting under a pine tree doing absolutely nothing." This action, Merton suggests, motivates creation to sing its Song "Tt is probably my fault. He is singing again." The begimhg point of Merton's entry into a deep encounter with creation is the revolutionary act of stopping. "AU 1want is a place to sit in the grass and look at the sea. At least there is that here" (RTM, 388)- "To go out to walk slowly in this wood -- this is a more

Page 33 important and significant means to understanding at the moment, than a lot of analysis and a lot of reporting on the things 'of the spirit"' (LL, 23).

Peacefully walking, silently sitting for an aftemoon in the stillness and quiet of the world, allowing the silence of nature to penetrate into one's being, demanding nothing, trying to achieve nothing -these are the devotionai disciplines of the human encounter with creation. These are the means by which we become able to move beyond the compulsive drive towards more and recognize the abiding presence of God who permeates the created world: "1 have got in the habit of walking up and down under the trees dong the wall of the cemetery in the presence of God" (SJon, 22).

The silence and the emptiness of creation are not the silence and emptiness of absence. They are the silence and emptiness of the fuilness of God's presence.

The first chirps of waking birds - "lepoint vierge (the virgin point)" of the dawn, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in silence opens their eyes and they speak to Him, wondering if it is tirne to "be"? And he tells them "Yes." Then they one by one wake and begin to sing. First the catbirds and cardinals and some others 1 do not recognize. (TTW, 7) God is the Life of ail creation. The movement of nature is inspired by the breath of God. The birds sing with the "permission" of their Creator. All of nature breathes with the presence of God. if God were removed fiom creation al1 being would cease to exist. As we rest in the presence of God, the emptiness of our king is filled with the tùllness of God's presence. The silence of creation is filled with the songs of the Creator. The deeper we go into the presence of God, the more Mly we will encounter the world God has made.

But we must aiways bear in mind that it is God whom we encounta when we enter deeply into communion with the naiurai world. The goal of the environmentalist must not be simply the preservation of the natural world for the sake of the natural world, or even for the sake of some perceiveci human goad. We have a much higher calling than simply presenring a cornfortable material environment for the well-being of al1 life forms. Our work to preserve creation is hdamentaiiy an act of worship by which we honour

Page 34 the Creator. if we invest more significatlce or value in nature than nature can bear; we set ourselves up for disillusionment and despair.

The hlfihent we tind in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reality that is hmGd and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a pater reality in the abject of our desire tha.is actually there: a pater hifiIlment than aq created thhg is capable of giving. (NSC,26)

Creation, despite al1 of its magnificence and beauty, cannot meet the deepest longings of the human heart. Humanly rnanufactured social movements which invest more significance in their goais and aspirations than they merit wiil become a banier between us and God. And, when we lose sight of God at the centre, we separate ourselves hm God and therefore hmGod's creation. The path to relationship with creation lies dong the road of God's cal1 to us to enter the depths of our own loneliness, emptiness, darkness, and silence and to receive the gift of love present in every blade of grass.

It is God's love that warms me in the sun and God's love that sends the cold min. It is God's Love that feeds me in the bread I eat ... It is God's love that speaks to me in the buds and streams. (NSC, 16,17)

Merton summed up his awareness of the beauty and the limitation of God's presence in creation in a beautifid image he used in his journal writing in 1949:

this sadness generates within me an unspeakable ceverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pure and perfect and they belong io God and they are mirrors of His beauty. He is minoreci in all îhings like sunlight in clear water: but if 1 try to drink the light that is in the water, 1only shatter the reflection. (ES, 369)

1honour creation by acknowledghg that creation always signifies its Creator. When 1 try to satis& my human iongings through creation instead of Creator, "I ody shatter the reflection" of the Creator in the beauty of creation. I [ose both Creator and creation. The highest cailing of the environmentai movement, lüce all social justice and liberation movements, is to recognize that beyond the compulsions and obsessions of fiawed human strivings, is the reality of God's lovhg presence. This love guides us to sûuggle for the weIfare of ail people and the preservation and honour of ail creation.

Page 3 5 III. The World of Hurry

Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lurd our W.

Corne, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a narne for ourselves.

(Genesis 11 :4)

Throughout the 1950's Thomas Merîon was plagued by a constant tension between his growing desire for sosolitude and the communal demands of life in the monastery. In 1955, a creative solution to the problem was proposed. Merton would become the lookout at the fire tower on Vineyard Knob. As tire spotter Merton would be completely alone on top of the tower except for a daily visit to the monastery for mass and one meal. This plan would enable Merton to continue to make a contribution to the wmmunity while at the sarne time relieving him of the burden of active involvernent in comrnunity life. Unfortunately, this ingenious plan had not taken into consideration the distance between the monastery and the tower. In order to get supplies and to make regular visits to the monastery Merton would have to drive a monastery jeep each day from the tower to the monastery and back again. At forty years of age, Merton had not yet mastered the skill of operating an automobile. To solve this problem the abbey mechanic at Gethsemani volunteered for the task of teaching Merton to drive.

The mechanic had been working for two weeks on one of the old monastery jeeps to get it ready for Merton's use. Merton's biographer, Michaei Mott recounts the story of Merton's first, and, as it tums out, last dnMng lesson as told to him by Brother Alban Herberger-

Merton got up a gmd speed, though he did not use the clutch pcoperly when ctianging gears. He fbiled to tum on the fïrst corner and rammed the jeep at such speed into a pst that the post ran right through the radiator. In thirty seconds he had undone the work of two weeks. The brother mecbanic cdhim out of the yard. There were no Cistercian hand signals on this occasion. The mechanic used "sound." ' This was the end of driving lessons. It was also the end of the scheme to allow Merton to become a hennit in the tire tower. It was not, however, the end of Merton's longing for greater solitude, nor the end of his uneasy feelings about the marvels of machines.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, throughout his Life Thomas Merton was a serious critic of tecûnological development. His writings, especially in the sixties, are filled with reflections on the hazards of unrestrained technology. He felt particularly that technology had the dangerous ability to create an impenetrable barrier between human beings and the rest of the nonhuman created world. It would be a mistake, however, to view Merton's insights about technology in purely negative terms. Merton's relationship with technology was more complex and ambivalent than might appear from a superficial reading of his work. He was conscious of, and willing to admit to, the potential benefits

O t technological progress. Merton himself experienced these benefits particularly when he finally achieved his long time goal of building a hermitage on the property of Gethsemani.

On October 9, 1960 a concrete foundation was poured on the hiIl near the Abbey which the monks called Mount Olivet. This foundation was the beginning of the construction of a small, low ceilinged rectangular cinder-block building which would eventually become Merton's hermitage. On the front, this two-room cottage had a long open porch that looked out over the Kentucky hills; behind was the dense bush of the forest. This primitive building was less than a mile away fiom the main monastery and was officially intended to be used for ecumenical conferences. Its real purpose was to provide Merton with the chance to be alone. Merton's little hermitage was not ready for use until January of 196t and, even then, it took months of perseverance before Merton was permitted to spend long periods alone at his hermitage.

It was not until March 20,1962, that Merton was able to spend his first whole day in solitude at the hermitage. And he would have to wait until1965 before hally gaining

' Michael Mot4 The Seven Mountains of Thorna Merton (Botston: Houghton hMiin Company, 19841,287.

Page 37 pennission to remain at the hennitage ml-the. On February 16,1965, Merton described a major step forward in making his littk solitary cottage a suitable place for permanent residence.

Yesterday in the morning when I went out for a breath of air before my novice conference 1saw men working on the hillside beyond the sheep barn. At last the electric line is coming! Al1 day they were working on holes, digging and blasting the rock with small charges, young men in yellow helmets, good, eager hard- working guys with machines. 1was glad of them and of American technology pitching in to bring me light as they would for any fmerin the district. It was good to feel part of this, which is not to be despised, but admirable." (D WL, 206) Electicity brought the obvious advantage of adequate artificial lighting to enable Merton to carry on his studies and his withg as well as saying his daily offices beyond the hours of natural daylight. The arriva1 of electricity would also provide a source of heat other than the large inefficient open fire place which dominated one wall of the larger O f the two rooms and had been the only source of heat through many Kentucky winters when the temperature ofien plunged well below freezing. However, fier admitting to the possible advantages to be gained hmthe arriva1 of electricity, Merton added in parenthesis: "Which does not mean that Ihold any brief for the excess of useless developments in technology" @W,206).

In the mid-sixties Merton also came to value another aspect of technology. Basil Pennington points out that, "This severe critic of technology ...does not hesitate with the tme Ereedom of the son of God to use a bit of technology - the camera - to produce some real art that powerfully highlights and shares his contemplative insight." But, despite those few areas where Merton could appreciate the vahe of technology, he maintained throughout his life an uneasy relationship with technological progress.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Merton acknowledged, "1 am as ready as the next man to admire the astonishing achievements of technology. Taken by themselves, they are magnificent." Again, however, he feels compeUed to add a cautionary note, "But taken in the context of unbalance with the other aspects of human existence in the world,

2 Basil M. Pennington, 'Thomas Merton And Byzantine Spultualiv: The AmhnBenedictine Review 38 no. 3 (September 1987), 274.

Page 38 the very splendeur and rapidity of technological development is a factor of disintegration" (CGB, 72). Merton's often stinging critique of technology must aiways be seen in the light of his desire to maintain a measure of balance.

Merton was not a Luddite, determined to avoid any use of machinery. But he was deeply conscious of the risks involved in the use of technology. While accepting possible benefits of technological progress, Merton was not willing to join the theologians of his day who he believed were so "occupied with the Christian and the world" that they were "not ~~cientlyaware of what technology is doing to the world and in failing to make distinctions, they tend to embrace al1 manifestations of progress without question" @WL, 228). Merton would not uncritically embrace al1 developments as necessarily positive and helpfùl to the human community simply because they were new and exciting.

Having recognized the potential values and benefits of technology, Merton argued: 'Tt is essential to recognize the danger to human values that exists in that very technology which pronlises man abundance, leisure, and, indeed, an earthly paradise" (LH, 121). Ross Labrie argues that Merton shares with al1 romantic writers a deeply conflicted relationship with technology. in the romantic's writing, "Nature, the backward leaning soul, and God are pitted against futunsticaily oriented society and technology, and typically (in a romantic writer) the sou1 peeks out at night when it is not overwhelmed by the active day, which eclipses the imagination - the soul's mute of survival."

What then is the danger Merton saw in the advancement of technology? Technology has the power to alienate human beings hmreality, to cut us off Erom God, fiom one another and Erom creation.

There is alienation arnong us, and there is still more among the Marxists. in either case it is due not to religion or to pseudoreligion. It is due to technology and to the moral collapse of a matkalist world. (CGB, 60)

Ross Labrie, "Merton and the Amecican Romautics," The Merion Annual: Studies in Culture. Spintuality. and Social Conced (Collegville, MiMinnesota:The Liturgical Press, 1996), 43,U.

Page 39 Technology has a tendency to work towards the destruction of the human self, the break- down of human community and the separation between human beings and nature.

It is precisely this illusion, that mechanical progress means human irnprovement, that alienates us hmour own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinceci that ow iife, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we conternn (sic) and destmy our own reality and the reality of ow natutal resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. in losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes. (CGB, 222) Technology is focused on extemals. Technology is incapable of taking into consideration the inner reality of human life. It denies or at least discounts the importance of the secret unseen being within ail of created beings. Anyone who concentrates on extemal reality to the exclusion of inner life cuts themselves off Born reality and diminishes the creative life-giving work of God in their lives.

Technology appeais to that superficial, extemal aspect of the human make-up which Merton referred to using a number of expressions throughout his writings. William Shannon Lists the most common expressions Merton used to speak about this aspect of hwnan nature, including: "the superficial self, empirical self, shadow self, smoke self, contingent self, imaginary self, private self, illusory self, false self, petty self." Shannon describes this 'Taise self' as

a human construct tbat we bring into being by ow own actions, especiaily our habits of selfishness and our constant flight hmreality. It is an empty self. Out of touch with my inner reality, it is the complex in me of al1 that is not God and, therefore, al1 that is ultimately destineci to disappear. 5 For Merton, the forces and motivations driving this illusory self are exactly those forces which lie behind the most destructive technological developments of our age. They demonstrate the human determination to be in control. Technology deals always with the surface level of reality. Consequently, it presents a barnet to the hwnan encounter with God which occurs below the surface in the hidden depths of the human spirit.

WiiiiamH- Shannon, 'Something of a Rebel' Thomas Merron His Lijë And Work Rn Inrroducrion (Cincinnati, Ohio: St Anîhony Messenger Press, 1997), 88. * Ibid, 89. Robert hperato suggests that Merton viewed techuology as an elaborate means of escaping from reality.

Secular society escapes through diversion. The escape is from a selfthat is not grounded in relationship with God. The secularized existence is dependent upon things for the escape hma persona1 sense of nothingness. 6 Throughout his life Merton was possessed by a bumhg desire to maintain a deep connection with "reaiity." He never wanted to escape. He was always determined to face himself, and conhnt the tmth about his life and the world. To escape fiom reality was to descend into the Taise self' and break contact with God who is encountered as we immerse ourselves in reality.

Merton's awareness of the danger of technology was rooted in his understanding of the nature of God and of creation as it reflects the character of the Creator. "The FIame of God is the Flame of pure life, infinite Being, Absolute Reality" (SL, 171). For Merton, al1 creation came into existence as a result of God's creative activity. To be created by God is therefore to share in some measure the quaiities of the Creator. To be created by God is to partalce of God's "pure life, infinite Being, Absolute Reality."

Merton says that "AL being is from God" (CGB, 220). We are human beings, not human things nor even human doings. As Thomas King points out, one of the greatest dangers Merton saw in technology was its power to reduce human beings to the level of what we are able to do: "We have been reduced to our fhction, and this is the servile and alienated condition that makes Amencan society. One can no longer enjoy Iife, for human value is determined by production goais." '

For Merton, human beings are not mechanical objects which came into existence as a result of random chance or pure biological necessity simply to serve the mechanistic fiuiction of production. Rather, as created beings we share the characteristic of being with all other created beings. Merton acknowledges that there is a unique dimension of

6 Robert [mperato, 'Thomas Merton On Human Fullness," The Americon Benedictine Review 40, no, 4 mec. 1989), 412. 'Thomas M. King, Merron Mystic At The Center ofArneria (Coiiegeville, Minnesota: ï'he LinugicaI Press, 1992), 91.

Page 41 being in the human creation, but also afEms that the non-human dimensions of God's creation share as well in God's nature. Sadly, he argues, we seldorn see the common dimension of being shared by al1 living dity: "Anyone cmSay; 'This is a tree; that is a man. But how few are ever stnick by the reaiization of the real imporî of what is really meant by 'is'?" (CGB, 221). "1s" irnplies being, life, reality. When we say, 'This is a tree; that is a man,' we are a£firming that man and tree shm in common the dimension of being which is reflective of God. We are saying that trees and hurnans are real, that they both participate in that created life which is the giff of Cod. We are affirming that in the order of creation there is a community of being in which al1 created reality shares and is united.

Technology is not a part of this community of created beings. Technology is not created by God. The products of the technological sciences do not participate in the being, the life, or the reality of God. Technology makes things;only God makes beings. There is therefore always an inherent danger that technology may become destructive towards those qualities in creation which bear the stamp of God's character. Technology always contains the risk that it will diminish being.

Technology can elevate and improve man's life only on one condition: that it remains subservient to his real interests; that it respects his tme being; that it remembers that the origin and goal of al1 being is in God. But when technology exploits and uses up al1 things in the pmut of its own ends, and makes everything, including man himself, subservient to its processes, then it degrades man, despoils the world, ravages life, and leads to min. (CGB, 253) The harsh reaiity of life in a technologicaily-dominated society diminishes my connection with the forces of life inherent in creation. When 1 spend my entire life waücing on hard, paved sidewalks, breathing artificially recirculated air in an office tower, and being assaulted by the manufactured images of television, print media and advertising, it is difficuit to maintain connection with reality. And the more disconnected 1become hm reality, the less aware 1will be of the impact technological developments are having on the created world.

Technology may have given us the ability to achieve wonders in the area of hansportation. We are able to cross extraordinary distances at a speed that would have

Page 42 been unimaginable to our ancestocs even a hundted years ago. But, in order to acquire the energy necessary for our miracles of travel, we must burn fossil fiiels. The emissions fiom bumuig fossil fbels, in addition to creating energy, also create photochemical smog. This smog now covers major portions of the northern hemisphere, threatening the world's food supply with harmfùl levels of ozone, an air poilutant produced in photochemical smog. The miracles of transportation made possible by technological developments participate in the degradation of our world's food sources. Each advance in technology seems to carry with it a conesponding danger.

So powerfùi is technology's capacity to degrade, despoil, ravage and lead to min that, Merton argues, technology ultimately has the ability to frustrate even God's purpose and design for the world.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of Christian obedience to God today concerns the responsibility of the Christian in technological society toward God's creation and God's will for His creation. Obedience to God's will for nature and for man - respect for nature and love for man - in the awareness of our power to hstrate God's designs for nature and for man - to radically corrupt and destroy natwal goods by misuse and biind exploitation, especially by criminal waste. @WL, 227) Technobgy has given hurnan beings the ability to alter the very structures of created existence to a degree that Merton writing in 1965 could not have irnagined. Surely, in his wildest fantasies, Merton could not have foreseen that thirty years derhe warned of humm beings' ability 90 radicaily corrupt and destroy natural goods," scientists would seriously suggest we might dine happily on genetically-altered produce, irradiated fish and meat, and milk fiom super-cows treated with bovine growth hormone. Technology has taken fiightening leaps fonvard in its ability to meddle with the very core of God's purpose for creation.

Merton sums up God's "will for His creation," speaking of the purpose of human Iife: "Before the Lord wills me to do anything, He fhtof ail wills me to be. What I do must depend on what 1 am" (NMI, 57). Anything which hinders the richness and depth of my experience of "being," is contrary to God's purpose for creation. There are times in al1 of our lives when the requirements of hctioning within society will require to some degree that we compromise the integrity of our own being. But 1must rernain conscious of the

-- - ...... Page 43 cost of living contrary to "what 1am." For the good of the entire created order, 1 must sûuggle to diminish the influence of those forces in my life which stand in opposition to my authentic being.

Machines and science often work against being.

Technology is not in itself opposed to spinhiality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. for instance where many machines are used in monastic work (and it is right that they should be used), there cm be a deadening of spirit and of sensibility, a blunting of perception, a loss of awareness, a lowering of tone, a general fatigue and lassitude, a proneness to unrest and guilt which we might be less likely to suffer if we simply went out and worked with our hands in the woods or ui the fields. (CGB, 25)

The problem with technology is that it allows us to live without any necessary connection to the natural rhythms or requirements of life: "It is hard but gwd to live according to nature with a primitive technotogy of wood chopping and fires, rather than according to the mature technology which has supplanted nature, creating its own weather, etc., etc." OWL, 201). Because we have electricity, we no longer need to obey the pattern of waking and sleeping which nature would suggest is most beneficial. We no longer even need to respect the natural processes of death as witnessed in the ment delivery of a baby who was bom two years after her father's death. The moîher was impregnated with spenn that had been extracted fcom her husband's corpse, then stored for two years until the mother felt ready to bear her posthumously-conceived child. Merton is surprised that it so seldom even occurs to us to question the value of the unnaturai patterns which technology encourages: "Why should 1 automatically suppose that because it is possible to have electricity and read more, it is therefore necessary to do so?" @WL, 164). We live in a fiîghtening world when tbat which is unnatural and foreign to our deepest being is caimly accepted as the nom. We need to question the forces that have such a powerful impact upon our lives. We must challenge those forces that would separate us f?om nature.

Page 44 In his book Timelock, social commentator Ralph Keyes argues tbat technology has made it possible for us to live at unnatiaal and hurnanly ccippling speeds. ' We create time- saving devices to allow us to pdomtasks more quickly. However, over tirne, new technologies establish new standards of speed for performing the original task. Eventually, the new speed becomes the nonn until it begins to feel slow. In response we clamour for newer, faster, more efficient technologies. Keyes suggests that in the days of more primitive technologies there was a natucal Limitation placed upon the speed with which we could perform a given task; so life remained at a relatively constant pace. The rapid advancements in technology have removed al1 such limitations. We can go faster and faster without boundaries or consideration for the detrimental impact this increased speed is having upon our quality of life. We are no longer bound to any natural rhythms or patterns of life.

When we live ignoring the natural patterns and rhythms ofcreation, we no longer need to pay attention to the created world. ironically, despite the enomous strides technology has allowed us to make in exploring the universe, that same technology blinds us to the wonder of creation right at hand: "today with a myriad of instruments we can explore things we never irnagind. But we no longer see directly what is cight in front of us" (CGB,308). Despite the marvels of technology we have become cut off fiom the wonders of nature. We are unable to discern the wisdom which creation has to impact to those who are able to see.

Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is al1 amund 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 fmand another to his merchandise." Lights on. Clocks ticking. Thermostats working. Stoves cooking. Electric shavers filling radios with static. "Wisdom," cries the dawn deacon, but we do not attend. (CGB, 132)

Cut off fiom the wisdom of God in creation, we have lost our way. Important guideposts which have directed civilizations for centuries are now uninteliigible to those who have become blinded by the bright lights of human iagenuity: "it does us no good to make fantastic progress ifwe do not know how to live with it, if we cannot make good use of it,

Rdph Keyes, Tinielock: How Life Got So Hectic and Wliot You Can Do About It (New York: EiiupeiCoiiins Publishers), 199 1,

Page 45 and if in fact, our technology becomes nothing more than an expensive and complicated way of cultural disintegration" (CGB, 73). It is questionable whether our extraordinary sûides in technological development have equipped us better to address the challenging questions which face us in our rapidly changing culture.

True wisdom comes slowly. It is discemed by those who are willing, like Merton, to stand aside fiom the fienetic unnatural Pace of world a£fairs and to enter into communion with God and creation. in a world domiaated by technology, life moves too quickly: "When a car goes by you can feel the alien fienzy of it. Someone madly going somewhere for no reason" (LL, 3 16). Life happens at such a Pace that there is little time to think. There is nowhere to escape the mad '"frenzy of it," to recollect ourselves and gain enough distance to begin to think clearly about the style and the priorities of our lives. We are not even sure we want to think seriously. It is easier simply to accept the predominant values and pnorities of our culture without question rather than swim against the tide of prevailing opinion. We will make up our morality as we go dong and not trouble ourselves about the larger ethical issues.

The speed at which "life" happens has exploded in the last twenty years with our increasing reliance on the persona1 computer and with access to the wonders of htemet communication. Five years ago there was no such thing as a commercial Web site posted on the Internet, Today the internet service provider Yahoo! receives 3,000 submissions of new websites a day. The computer dùes not save time and provide greater leisure; it exponentially increases ou.options for how we might spend the Little leisure time available. It makes accessible untold quantities of data and drives us to perform more and more unnecessary tasks. I am not sure that the quality or wisdom of my life has been improved by my ability to read the Nav York Times every day on my computer. The Intemet may expand my horizons but it does not help me process or think wisely about al1 the new information to which 1 now have access. The internet does not give me ski11 in processing the avalanche of material to which 1 am now exposed.

It is bard in a tecbnological culture to withdraw fiom the constant "knzy" of our machines and the busyness which those machines generate long enough to think about

Page 46 the impact those vecy machines are having on our lives. The serioumess of this problem is increasing because of the extraordinary complexity of issues which technological developments mise and the increasing power technology wields in out lives.

There is no tirne to reason out, calrnly and objectively, the moral implications of technical developments which are perhaps already superseded by the time one knows enough to reason about them. Action is not govemed by moral reason but by political expediency and the demands of tecbnology. (CGB, 22) In politics the only ethical guideline oAen seems to be getting re-elected* in business the dominant challenge is fiequently the financial bottom line. international aff'are dominated by self-interest and the desire to provide secure, stable markets for the export of manufactured goods.

Having lost the ability to think ethically about the rapid developments taking place al1 around us, we surrender control over technology to those who have the most power. The marriage of technology and power often results in technological progress being put to violent use.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us fiom ourselves? This is the most important of al1 voyages of discovery, and without it al1 the rest are not only useless but dis;istrous. ProoE the great travelers and colonizers of the Renaissance were, for the most part, men who perhaps were capable of the things they did precisely because they were alienated hmthemselves. in subjugating primitive worlds they only imposed on them, with the force of cannons, their own confusion and their own alienation. (W,11912) Et is surely one of the most profound ironies of the dawn of a new millennium that we who have experienced such an unlimiteci explosion in technological advances at the same tirne live in a world whose brokenness and misery have in no way abated: "when technoIogica1 ski11 seems in fact to give man almost absolute power in manipulating the world, this fact in no way reverses his original condition of brokenness and emr but only make it al1 the more obvious" (ZBA, 83). As Merton observes wryly, "the development of technology is not really geared to human needs" (CWA, 49). Technology, whkh appears to wield such great power, is in fact powerless to solve the most reai problems of the human condition: "The demonic gap between expressed aims and concrete achievements in the conduct of the Viet Nam war, for instance, should be an object lesson in the impotence of technology to corne to grips with the human needs and realities of our the" (CWA, 168).

We live in a civilization, if such a society cm be calleci civilized, which has the ability to create miraculous fighting machines and yet lacks the ability to prevent minor local ethnic skirmishes fiom escalating into international confiicts. Whm international diplomacy seems to have failed, the generals can always cal1 upon an airplane capable of reaching anywhere in the world without touching ground then refbelling in midair while carrying sixteen precision guidai missiles able to strike targets with unpiuaileled accuracy. This flying miracle is opmted by only two pilots, requires no other crew and can fly into "enemy" territory, undetected by conventionai radar: hence its name, the 8-2 Stealth Bomber. Perhaps even more remarkable is the price tag of two billion dollars for each ofthese flying fortresses which intelligent people seem to be witling to pay in a world where 840 million people, including 200 million children worldwide, do not have enough food to eat each day. Technology has achiwed remarkable advances in our li fetime. But worldwide problems have grown dongside technological developments at an alarming rate. We may be able to bomb with precision, but we are powerless to stem the inexorable tide of AIDS ravaging the UcanContinent.

How are we to respond in the face of the alienating destructive tendencies characteristic of most tecbnological development? Or should we ban dl further research and sacrifice the good ends which technology has achieved in the interests of curtailing the hmthat techology often hcludes? Should we remove ail restrictions on technological deveiopment and encourage unrestrained growth in the hopes of a bright tomomw brought into king by the marveb of ''intelligent" machines that have the power to produce a paradise on earth?

Merton suggests that we will only begin to live in a more heaithy relationship to technology when individually we break the tyrarmy of activity in our personal lives and recomect with being: "We are so obsessed with doing that we have no theand no imagination Ieft for being" (CGB, 308). We must rediscover the value of doing nothing:

Page 48 "We have not yet rediscovered the primary usefulness of the useless" (CGB, 309). We need to hdways to unclutter ow lives and our minds so that we can be restored to some sense of proportion and value. We need to duceour dependence upon machines and find space for our minds to wander down unfamiliar and creative paths. When blasting innocent people with tons of explosives seems to be the best solution we can corne up with, it is theto admit that ow fancy gadgets have cmwded our Iives to the point where we are no longer able to discover creative solutions to difficult problems. tn "A Note to the Reade? written in 1965 in his book The Ww of Chtiang Tm, Merton suggests that the emergence of the fascination of Western cuihue with Eastern religions indicates that Westerners are beginning to seek ways to respond to and live more creatively with the challenges of technology.

The fashion of Zen in certain westem circles fits into the rather confuseci pattern of spicitual revolution and renewai. It represents a certain understandable dissatisfaction with conventional spintual patterns and with ethical and religious formalism. It is a symptom of western man's desperate need to recover spontaneity and depth in a world which his technological skill has made cigid, artificial, and spiritually void. (WCT,15)

People at the tum of the century, driven to despair by the unrelenting pressures of life, are seeking more authentic ways ofbeing. The fact that many people feel compelled to look to the East for creative new ways of living surely represents an enonnous challenge to the established religious institutions of the West. Are we willing to mode1 different ways of being in the world? Or, are we in the chwch caught up with the same warped values and hvisted priorities which undermine peace and harmony in the rest of society?

Merton viewed the role of the monk as pointhg the way towards the possibility of living a healthier life in relationship to technology.

The monk - who cm perfectly well use the latest technology on his monastic fm - is there to show that one can use technology without placing al1 his hopes in it and without dependhg on it for dtimate happiness. (CWA,244)

The monk is a signpost, an indicator that there may be a mirent way of doing things. There may be a healthier way of Living. For Merton, the monk stood in opposition to the

Page 49 dominant destructive patterns of the world. Where then are the "monks" of today who might point us in a new and hopeful direction? in an intereshg passage in Conjectures of a Güilty Bystander; Merton suggests that we might expand our vision of monastic life and look beyond the conventional strictures of iraditional monasticism foc modern "monks." He is speaking about the witness in medieval society of "men and women of the laity who wete pefectly obedienr to GoS'. These people were not connected to or associated with any established monastic tradition, and yet

[Tlhey were simple and straightfomard signs of contradiction in the middle of worldliness, prejudice, cnielty, despair, and gceed. They were no? rebels at all. They were meek and submissive instruments of God who, while being cornplecely opposed to the corrupt noms amund hem, gave every man and every authority his due. (CGB, 162)

Christians are cailed, not to rebel, but to live as "sûaightforward signs of contradiction in the middle ofworldliness, prejudice, cnielty, despair, and greed." We can live as monks- in-the-world if we are willing to explore what it might mean to live by a set of values that contradict the technologism of our culture. Merton defmes b?echnologism" as "the substitution of mechanical order for the fertile unpredictability of life" (LLiv, 101). When we choose to move away firom "mec~calorder" and to live instead by the "fertile unpredictability of life," we stand against the dehumanking, dienation and destructive forces of technological culture. We affirm the inherent value of the being of al1 created life. We bring ourselves more into tune with the forces of nature and we live respectfiilly on this earth. These are the countercultural virtues of monasticism that can be lived in the face of the destructive forces of the world by anyone who chooses the ficedom and vitality of life over the deadenhg rigidity of technology. N. Disciplines of Love

This is my commandment, that pulove one another as 1have loved you. No one has pater love than this, to Lay dom one's lie for one's fnends. (John 15:12,13) Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as somethiig to be exploited, but emptied himself.

Thomas Merton's personal joumals which only began to be published twenty-five years fier his death contain some of his most lyrical natwe writing. in many places scattered throughout these journals we find writing which illustrates the profound relationship that Merton enjoyed with the natural world. We read of Merton entering into deep communion with the land, with animais, birds and plants. Merton fiequently expresses this communion using beautiful, poetic language.

Merton loved the dawn of each new day.

Now the rising sun cornes over the bank of lowly slate-coloured clouds out there, and 1 can no longer look straight into the East, beyond the woods where the crows are breaking silence. The three scarecrows in the vineyard begin to be crucified in fire: at least one of them. The others hang against the mist that is more northward and less red. The door of the haylotl in the cow barn yawm into the rising sun, the grass is full of crickets, and black birds whistle sofily under the water tower. (SS, 9) Merton had a perceptive eye, carelklly attuned to catch the fine detail in any natural scene. At the end of the day he wodd look out over the hills towards the West and notice the minute details of the scene before him.

Quiet sunset. Cool, stiii &y and another fire over toward Rohan's Knob. Peace and silence at sunset bebd the woodshed, with a wren playing quietly on a heap of logs, and a detached fragment of gutter hanging hmthe end of the roof, bare branches of sycamores aga& the blue evening sky. Peace and solitude. (TTW, 311)

Page SI Nothing was too mal1 or apparently insignificant for Merton to pay attention to and to honour by recording it in his journal.

Meadowlark sitting quietly on a fence pst in the dawn sun, his gold vest - bri@t in the light of the east, his black bib tidy, tuming his head this way, that way. This is a Zen quietness without comment. Yesterday a very small, chic, black and white butterfly on the whitewashed wail of the house. @WL, 123)

Merton honoured the buds and the animals that hquented the woods around his hennitage. He seemed to feel that he knew them as intimate fiiends.

1 saw my Towhee in the bushes the other day - silent - but today 1 heard him, and his discreet, questionhg chkp, in the rose hedge. There is a solitary rnockiig bird, apparently with no mate, that patrols the whole length of the rose hedge and tries to keep every other bird î?om resting there. (OSM, 64)

Perhaps most of all, in his reflections on the natural world, Merton retumed again and again to the familiar rolling Kentucky hills.

Marvellous vision of the hills at 7:45 a.m. The same hills as always in the aftemoon, but now catching the Iight in a totally new way, at once very earthly and very ethereal, with delicate cups of shadow and dark ripples and crinkles where 1 had never seen them, and the whole slightly veiled in mist so that it seemed to be a tropical shore, a new discovered continent. And a voice in me seemed to be crying, "Look! Look!" (TTW, 321,322) While Merton seems at an early age to have had an observant eye and a close connection with nature, as a young adult his life might not have seemed to be headed towards the kind of intimate communion with creation which his mature writing exhibits.

When Thomas Merton entered the monastery of Gethsemani he was two months short of his hventy-seventh birthday. Prier to entering the rnonastery, Merton had been a sophisticated, urbane young scholar, man of letters, and teacher of English litecature and composition. He had studied for a year as a scholarship student at Cambridge in England. Then he had completed a BA in English Literature and a Masters degree with a thesis on William Blake at Columbia University in New York. He was starting PhD. studies, hoping to work on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Merton seemed destined for a career in the literary and academic establishment of his &y, travelling in the elegant circles of the artistic elite of New York City.

Page 52 Mer eight years as a monk at Gethsemaui, Merton's chief delight was to escape to a broken dom old garden shed and sit among the abandoned tools conternplating the wonders of the naturai world.

my chief joy was to escape to the attic of the garden house and the little broken window that looks out over the valley. There in the silence 1 love the green grass. The tortured gestures of the apple trees have become part of my prayer. 1 look at the shining water under the willows and listen to the sweet songs of al1 the living things that are in our woods and fields. So much do 1 love this solitude that, when I walk out dong the road to the old barns that stand alone, far fiom the new buildings, delight begins to overpower me hmhead to foot and peace smiles even in the manow of my bones. (ES, 419) How did the cosmopolitan Merton who published book reviews in the prestigious Sunday literary section of the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, sold poems to The New Yorker, and counted among his fnends publishers, scholars, artists and poets, become transformed into the lover of creation who could include in his prayer the "tortured gestures of the apple trees" and find beauty in "the attic of the garden house and the little broken window"? What caused the naturaily bookish young man to move away fiom his desk and embtace creation with such joy and enthusiasm?

Raymond Bailey, in his book, Thomas Merton on Mysticism, suggests that the roots of Merton's deep respect for and connection to the natural world may be found in young Merton's relationship with his parents. Bailey writes:

Tom's ewliest home environment must have contributed to his mysticai sense of unity of all, Le., a sense of himself as a part of nature, and nature as a part of him. The deep respect of his parents for nature prompted them to place him under its tutelage. It was almost inevitable that the thewould come when he would proclaim and job the author of Genesis in proclaiming the goodness of ail creation. 1 XBailey is correct, Merton must indeed have been an early prodigy and a quick learner of the mysticism of cteation. Merton's mother died when he was six years old, leaving the young boy in the care of bis father. in the ten years fiom his mother's to his father's

' Raymond Bailey, Thomas Merron On Mystickm (New York: Image Books, 1975),34.

Page 53 death in 193 2 Merton lived with bis father for only three or four years, spenàing most of his time after 1928 in two English boarding schools.

Yet, while his parents may have planted seeds in Merton's life that blossomed into the Ml-blown natwe-mysticism of his later years, it was his deep encounter with Christian theology and spifituality which really led Merton to a more profound engagement with the created world.

To follow Merton on his journey towards the created world, we need to understand a fundamental premise about creation wtiich he laid dom in bis book on the Psalms, Bread in the Wilderness. [a a discussion on "Poetry, Symbolism and Typology," Metton wrote of the complicated relationship between biblical imagery and the use of "cosmic syrnbols in which God has reveded Himself to ail men." To explain the relationship between symbolism and creation, Merton used the illustration of a window.

Creation had been given to man as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into men's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, min, the sea, the crops, the flowering tree, al1 îhese things were transparent. They spoke to man not of themselves only but of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. (BiW, 60)

Tragically, the effects of the fdl began to cloud the "glass" of nature until human kings were no longer able to see cIearIy through the glas to the worId beyond. Human vision was confined to the contemplation of the tiny Little world of out own consciousness.

To appreciate the full impact of Merton's use of this image, we need to imagine ourselves sitting in a room during the day in hntof a large picture window looking out on a beautifhi natural scene. As long as it is day, and we keep our eyes open, the wonder of God's creation is plaidy evident through the window. As dusk begins to settie, the scene fades a litîle but rernains visible in the half-light of eady evening. Even as the grey shades of evening darken to night, we can still discm the outline of branches against the sky and we begin to see cIearly the beauty of stars and planets as ttiey iighten up the heavens.

Page 54 Gradually, as we sit in the deepening darkness, we begin to feel uneasy, even firightened. We are not able to do useful thhgs sitting in the dark; we can't read, or sew, or "rnake good use of our tirne." So, with al1 the ingenuity and complacency of those who are immune to the consequences of technology, we switch on the lights and begin to read our book. Mer reading a few chapters, we glance up at the window for a moment, hardly noticing that the world outside has been plunged into absolute darkness, By tuming on a light in the room, we have radically Iimited our ability to see out the window. The outside world has become a blank. We can no longer see the outlines of trees. Even the beauty of the night sky has been obscured. The window, which earlier had revealed the magnificence of God's creation, now reflects only the confined Little world of the interior of our room. Over time we forget the beautifil world beyond the window. We stop believing in the reality of trees, and rocks, and lights glistening in the dark sky. Our mom is the whole of our reality. Everything we need is here. Our room is comfortable and wm. We feel protected against the threatening menace of the night, as long as we keep the lights buming brightly in the foriress of our home.

We will only start to leam to encounter creation with the depth and richness which Merton enjoyed when we refuse to turn on the lights. We al1 fear the unknown, and our fear drives us to search desperately for lights to turn on. We want to understand the world. We demand answers to al1 the hard questions of existence; we long to be able to rnake sense of the forces of nature which so often seem arbitrary and threatening. We want to make the world a safe place, to rid the world of anything which might cause us to feel uncertain or insecure. So we exert al1 our efforts to be in control. We work hard to keep chaos at bay. We clean and we tidy and we schedule and we plan, hoping al1 the tirne that we will anive at a place where we can relax and feel at peace.

But creation is not safe. Life is not predictable; it does not bend easily to the dictates of human determination. As much as we may struggle to gain mastery over the natural forces of life, nature seems to fkd new ways to manifest its invincible power over human societies. We dam a river to provide irrigation for farmiands and create massive fiocding in another part of the country. We build above-ground pipelines to transport natural gas to heat our homes and interrupt the delicate migratory patterns of elk. We log watershed

Page 55 forests and allow silt to leach into streams, destroyhg spawning punds for salmon. Wherever we interfere, %unhg on lights" for our own cornfort and protection, we create havoc.

Merton knew that the beginning of encountering creation was allowing creation the dignity of being itself: "The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. So too the mountain and the sea" (TiS, 5,6). We begin to be able to know the natural world when we stop meddling and accept it as it is, no longer needing to transform it "into something else." Human beings will only realize the holiness of creation as they allow creation to present itself on its own terms: "Sanctity, Merton rather unusually goes on to suggest, consists in something or someone, king itself, or himself, even if it is 'only' a tree or a flower or an animal."

Merton viewed the challenge to allow creation to be itself as a cal1 to human beings to become more like God in relation to the natural world.

His alone is the gentlest of loves: whose pure flame respects al1 things, God, Who owns al1 things, leaves them al1 to themselves. He never takes them for His own, the way we take them for our own and destroy them. He leaves them to themselves. He keeps giving them al1 that they are, askig no thanks ofthem Save that they should receive fiom Him and be loved and nurtured by Him, and that they should increase and multiply, and so praise Him. (SJon, 346) This is a stunning reversal of insight for those who are accustomed to thinking of God primarily in terms of control, power and domination. For Merton, we behave more like God in relationship to the created world when we allow that world the dignity of its own king. We mode1 ourselves &er God when we are willing to leave "al1 things" to themselves.

Tt is curious that, as human beings, we have often viewed ourselves in some sense at the top of a hierarchy of being in the natural order. We have viewed ourselves as the benefactors of the rest of creation. However, in reality, it is clear that the rest of creation would be much better off without human beings than human beings would be without the rest of creation. The trees, the deer, the fish and the vegetables which grow naturally in

'Mo- Furloog, Merton: A Biography, (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), 155.

Page 56 the world would survive far better without our presence than we would if these non- human dimensions of creation were to suddenly vanish fiom the earth. Creation does not need us as much as we need creation. But we are the ones with the power to destroy Our natural environment. We are also the ones who face the challenge of choosing to extend ourselves towards the created world with a love that is patterned after the love God has for al1 the world. We are the ones who are responsible to insure that the rest ofcreation enjoys the fieedom to be itself, to develop and unfold as its own inherent being would dictate.

Early in his life, Merton was given a vision of a kind of non-possessive love which he would corne to identifi as characteristic of God's love. When he was eleven years old, Merton was left by his father for Christmas and sumrner vacation with the Privats, an elderly couple living at Murat in the Auvergne district in France. In the Privats' home, Merton discovered a love which gave itself fieely and desired only his well-being. It was a love which allowed Merton to be the child he was and did not demand that he conform to some rigid adult expectation of behaviour and conduct. Reflecting many years later upon his experience with the Privats, Merton would write in The Seven Storey Motintain:

1 was glad of the love the Privats showed me, and was ready to love them in retum. It did not burn you, it did not hold you, it did not try to imprison you in demonstrations, or trap your feet in the snares of its interest. (SSM, 57) Although God "owns al1 things," God "leaves them al1 to themselves." This is not neglect. This is a love which does not need to "hold you," or "imprison you in demonstrations." This love respects you enough to give you the fieedom and autonomy to grow into the fullness of your God-given potential. For Merton, "God is present in al1 thingsfieely" and, therefore, "it is by encountering God's free presence that we are set fie."' This love does not demand, manipulate, or coerce. It does not "ûap your feet in the snares of its interest." Instead it wants to cooperate with you and support you in growing in accordance with the integrity of your created nature. This is a love which extends to al1 of creation the autonomy of its own inner being.

.' Thomas King, Merton Mystic At The Center of America, 86.

Page 57 In his essay, '%ove Can Be Kept Only By Being Given Away," Merton described the opposite kind of love to that which he experienced with the Privats.

A selash love seldom respects the rights of the beloved to be an autonomous peson. Far fiom respecting the ûue being of another and granting his personality room to grow and expand in its own original way, this love seeks to keep him in subjection to ourselves. It insists that he conform himself to us, and it works in every possible way to make him do so. (N'Mi, 9) This "selfish love" only has the appearance of love. in reality it is not love at al1 as it is unable to tmly value the beloved. It views the beloved only as another means of meeting its own needs. Everything, and everyone, is an extension of itself. Such a love "is not love rit all, but only the need to be sustained in our illusions, even as we sustain others in theirs."

Merton's description of "seffish love" suggests a powertùl vision for the positive love characteristic of al1 healthy relationships. We can extend this vision beyond human relationships to include our relationship to ail of aspects of creation. People who live in a healthy relationship to creation are people who "respect the rights" of al1 components of the mtural world to be "autonomous." They recognize the need of creation to have "room to grow and expand in its own original way." They do not seek to keep creation in subjection to themselves, or insist that nature conform to human plans and schemes. They do not use creation exclusively to meet their own needs or simply to satisîjtheir own desires for entertainment, distraction, or aesthetic enjoyment.

It takes a certain kind of person to love in the way the Privats apparently loved Merton and in the way that God loves creation. It requires a strength, stability, and security to love in a way that sets the beloved fiee to explore the potentiai God has created within them. When Merton sat in the attic of his Little garden house outside Gethsemani and looked out over the valley, he was content to ailow the scene to be as it was. He felt no need to scheme schemes or make plans to cultivate the landscape, or to erect buildings in the empty spaces. Merton was able to be there in the space of nature, opening hiseIf

* Esîher de WaaI, A Seven Day burney with Thomas Merton, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Pubiicaüons, 1992), 72.

Page 58 and allowing the stillness, the silence and the peace of creaîion to penetrate his being. Here we see a picture of Merton as a lowig being, who recogaized that "Man's greatest dignity, his most essential and peculiar power, the most intimate secret of his humanity is his capacity to love. This power in the depths of mans' sou1 starnps him in the image and the likeness of God."

Esther de Waal says that Merton's "description of pure love"

is wonderfully freeing. If it makes me so totally certain of myself, of my own dignity and my own lovableness for the best and highest of reasons, then I no longer need to make demands on my brothers and sisters to prove anything to myself, turning to them to make up the lacunae and inadequacies within myself. 1 try to see what it means if I am to love my brothers and sisters as God would have me do fiom such a confident and assurd base. For it is only as 1 fmd this freedom within myself that 1 can afford to relax my grasp on others, since 1 now no longer need their dependence. 6 Merton extended this pro found freedom to love beyond his relationships with humans to embrace the whole of the created world. He did not want to "grasp" and hold even the beloved trees, flowers and hills that surrounded his hemitage at Gethsemani. They did not exist to serve his purpose but to stand in their own glory and bear witness to the goodness of their Creator.

Merton discovered within himself an unusual ability to welcome creation simply as it presented itself to hirn. Just before entering Gethsemani, he mte, "Really, 1 like every season, and the season I like best is the one 1am in at the time. I like al1 the seasons best, in turn, one after the other" (SecJ, 21 1). In fairness he does admit, "but one 1 do get tired of: winter." But the principle is important: creation can be accepted, welcomed, loved, and valued as it is, in itself, no marter what the season may be. There is something of value and worth in every season. It is questionable whether we will ever really enjoy and relish any season if we are unable to discover the merits in evey season of the year.

Alan Altany, ''Thomas Menon: The Rediscoved Geography Of An Americm Mystic," (Research On Contemplative Life: An Elecironic Journey 2, no. 1 (December 7, 1995), 4. Esther de Waal, A Seven DqJourney, 74.

Page 59 Merton was willing to finci the beauty in al1 of creation as it presented itself for his contemplation. For Merton, this willingness to gant fieedam, autonomy, dignity, and value to the other was the definition of love.

The beginning of this love is the will to let tbose we love be pecfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. ifin loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love hem: We only love the reflection of ourselves we find in hem. (N'MI, 168)

Creation wiU not always cooperate with human designs. We will ofien be hstrated by the forces of nature at work amund us. To love creation is to accept that our plans for the world may not be the anly plans that have merit or value. We love creation when we remain aware of the needs, values, and autonomy of creation as worthy of consideration in al1 decision-making processes. Love ror creation is demonstrated by out willingness to surrender our own sense of self-importance and to sacrifice our needs in the intcrests of the other.

How can we achieve this disinterested, selfless love Merton holds out as a goal to which we might aspire?

The key to îhis love is in Merton's picture of the person sitting in a room as the dark of night settles over the world outside. We become able to truly love, as we are willing to sit in the room of our life in the growing darkness without rushing to tum on the lights. in the darkness we surrender our own ego needs. We give up our determination to be in control. We stop imposing our will upon the world outside. In the darkness of surrender we encounter ûod. We allow an empty space to open within ourselves. in that open space, Gdgives us the gift of love.

The man who has tmly found his spirihial nakedness, who bas realized he is empty... loves with a purity and fieedom that spring spontaneously and directly from the fact that he has fully recovered the divine likeness, and is now tùlly his true self because he is lost in God. He is one with God and identified with God and hence knows nothing of any ego in himself. Al1 he knows is love. (ZBA, 129)

To alhw this empty space to open withh, we must, as Wiliam Shannon points out, "empty ourselves of what is human in the ignoble sense of the word, which really means

Page 60 less than human." This "ignoble" humanness is, Sbannon says, "everything that is focused on our exterior and self-centered passion, as self-assertion, greed, lust; as the desire for the survival and perpetuation of our ilIusory and superficial self, to the detriment of our interior and tme self." ' hnically, for Merton, the joumey to encounter the extemal world in love depends upon the interior joumey to discover the love at the core of the human spirit.

We become our hue selves when we most fully reflect the image of God. We reflect the image of God who is love when we open aurselves in love to al1 the world. When we love, we are "lost in God," because God is Ioving in and through us. This experience of oneness with Cod is the essential experience ofthe spiritual life.

We cannot generate, or manufacture this experience for ourselves. We are not the source of love. We cannot work our way into this union and identification with God. It is beyond human powers to accomplish such a miracle. We can only prepare ourselves to receive the gift of God who comes to us as love, by opening ourselves to this priceless gi fi.

In March 1966, Thomas Merton met a Young nurse in St. Joseph's hospital in Louisville. She is identified in his journals only as "M." Within days of their fust meeting, Merton sensed within hirnself a deep love for this sensitive and Lively young woman. Throughout the following year she and Merton maintaineci intennittent contact by mail, phone, and occasional visits. It was a year of desperate turmoil for Merton during which he struggled to understand the üue nature of his callbg in the monastic and eremitic Me. On June 24, 1966, eleven days &er his relationship with "My'had been discovered by Abbot James, Merton wrote in his journal of his understanding of a central characteristic of his vocation.

1 am here for one thing: to be open, to be not "closed in" on any one choice to the exclusion of al1 others: to be open to God's will and fieedom, to His love which comes to Save me hmaii in myself that resists Him and says no to Him. This I must do not to justify myself, not to be ri&, not to be good, but because the

'William H. Shannon, Thomm Merton 's Dark Pathr The Inner Erperience of a Contemplative (New York: Fm,Straus, Guoux, 1981), 124.

Page 61 whole world of lost people needs this opening. (IL, 345) Terry Graham suggests tbat "if Merton had been deficient in his realization of human love, the moment came to recti@ this situation a year after his reflection on his deficiency in this area," in his reIationship with "M."

Through his relationship with "M," Mecton seemed to come to a new and for hitn unusual adult experience of another person. in this experience he came to know and value another person as completely distinct fiom himself and yet deeply valuable in that distinctiveness. Perhaps, even more importantly, in "M," Merton may have for the first tirne, come to know himself as an adult who could be known in al1 of his oddity and bnikenness and yet could be deeply loved and valued as a unique individual human being. "M" renewed in Merton the vision of love he had ociginally received in France while staying with the Privats, an open and accepting [ove, fùndamentally characterized by welcome.

The love that can accept the other in al1 of the other's othemess cm only be received by a complete openness that resists being '"closed' in on any one choice to the exclusion of al1 others." In the end Merton felt compelled to pull back from his active relationship with "M." He knew that he could not marry and leave the monastecy, though there is considerable evidence that he was deeply drawn in this direction. For Merton, one of the deciding factors which seems to have swayed him towards continuhg to pursue the life of a hennit at Gethsemani, was his belief that the kind of loving openness which he had come to cherish could, for him, only be preserved in a life of solitude. For Merton the openness that made rwm for love was ultimately sustained by being alone. Earlier in his June 24th journal entry, Merton wrote: "In the last analysis what 1am looking for in solitude is not happiness or fulfillment but salvation" (LL, 345).

For Merton salvation meant a person's 'W discovery of who he himself reaiiy is. Then 1mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers" (NMi, xv). Salvation means becoming whole, becoming whoiiy the person 1was created to be. In order to hd

Teny Graham, "Sufism: the 'Sirange Subject': Thomas Merton's Views on Sufism," Sufi 30 (Summer 1996), 37.

Page 62 this salvation, 1need the space, the value, the freedom, and the respect that only love can give. Merton knew himseifweU enough to know that, in orda to 6nd this space within and to provide it for others, he mut bave great quantities of tirne to withdraw fiom the cornplex, demanding, ofien artificial engagements of human community.

In a journal entry long before his relationship with "MW,Merton had drawn a direct connection between his experience of solitude and his ability to love others.

It is in deep solitude that 1 find the gentieness with which 1 can ûuly love my brothers. The more solitary 1am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverence for the solitude of others. (ES, 398) We do not withdraw into solitude in order to escape fiom the world, or to ignore human community. We withdraw into solitude because it is there that we discover the power within ourselves to embrace the world with 'pure affection." In solitude we become able to retum to the world filled wiîh revetence and respect for al1 aspects of creation. Solitude allows us to regain contact with the true self that we so ofien lose connection with in the midst of the distractions and confusions of the world.

Merton wams us that, "those who cannot be alone motfind their tme being and they are less than themselves" (ES, 399). Kour meself' is characterized by the selfless love of God, then we can only be this tnie self when we are able to be alone and to enter into the depth and silence of God. And it is only as we maintain contact with ouf true self that we are able to give ourselves to the world in love. We can only tnily receive the other as other when we are able to receive our tme self in al1 of our own complexity. The silence of solitude rnakes it possible for us to hear the authentic voice of our tme selves.

Merton viewed the absence of silence in our wodd as a sign of disease.

the turmoil and confusion and constant noise of modem society are the expression of the ambiance of its greatest sins - its godlessness, its despair. A world of propaganda, of endless argument, vituperation, criticism, or sirnply of chatter, is a world of atheism. (ES, 440)

Page 63 Constant noise banishes our bue selfand shuts God out. Noise is the punishment we suffer for ow unwillingness to respect and value the nch othemess of the world and of other people. Al1 our manipulations and schemes create interminable noise.

North Americans seem to have a terror of silence. In the car we play our quadraphonic stereo systems at hl1 volume. We tolerate a constant background hum of television and radio in our homes. When we jog or walk in creation, we plug our ears with the headset of our tape player. We are addicted to noise. And ears that are filled perpetually with the artificial technological noise of human civilization are unable to hear the quiet voice of God speaking gently in the beauty of a Garry Oak rneadow or in the soft caress of a summer breeze. in The Sign of Jonas, Merton counselled, "Those who love God should attempt to preserve or create an atmosphere in which He can be found." What is the atmosphere in which God "cari be found"? Merton asserts shply that, "Christians should have quiet homes." Then he suggests, "Throw out television ...Radios useless. Stay away tiom movies..Maybe even form srnail agrarian communities in the country where there would be no radios etc." (SJon, 3 11). The specific details are not important. The point is to find a way to build room for quiet into the noisy clutter of our hectic lives, to reduce the impenetrable sound barrier which routiaely blocks awareness of God Erom our lives.

Merton's understanding of silence penemted deeply into the centre of hwnan consciousness. Merton encourages us to silence every aspect of our being allowing outselves to be present to God and opening a space within ourselves where we can receive the reaiity of God's creation.

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When yow imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparenîiy with the Reality of God: for now I know that the Creation which htseems to reveai Him, in concepts, then seems to hide Him, by the same concepts, finally is revealed in Him, in the Holy Spirit: and we who are in God find ourselves united, in Him, with al1 that springs hm Him. This is prayer, and this is glory! (SJon, 343)

Page 64 Merton proposes a silence deeper than not speaking. The silence to which Merton points quiets our whole being. Our mind ceases to m in tight little circles of self-imporîance; it stops worrying, htting and endlessly scheming and just grows still. In silence we finally corne to rest in God. This level of silence allows us to be open to God and in God to be open to creation. At this depth of silence the boundaries between ourselves and the oiher begin to blur. We start to know ourselves as intimately connected in God to al1 aspects of the extemal world. So, in loving creation, we are loving God and ultirnately loving ourselves and al1 other beings.

We begin to see that when we give fieedom to the rest of creation to be itself, we are in fact granting fieedom to ourselves. We are creating an environment in which it is possible for a11 beings to pursue the fullness of their created destiny. in silence and solitude we are able to embrace the whole of life, to welcome al1 aspects otcreation in their own uniqueness. In extending this welcome to others we discover that creation welcornes us. We experience creation as home, a place which extends to us the same love and reverence we have leamed in the silence to extend to others. Creation may not be predictable or even always safe and accommodating, but we need not be afraid. The silence of creation is not the silence of danger, but the silence of welcome.

Silence and solitude are the ground out of which a genuine environmentalism can grow. They are our teachers in the difficult discipline of respect for that which is other than ourselves. They are our guides to reverence, devotion and dignity. Activists who desire to teach others to Live more harmoniously with the world do well to heed Merton's warning that, "ifpreaching is not born of silence, it is a waste of the" (SJon, 266). if we are just adding more empty words to the clutter and noise of ouf culture, we wil1 never point a way beyond the destructiveness of selfish love. We must begin in silence. We must allow space to be created within ourselves in order that we might welcome God, receive God's gifi of love and be able to give the respect and devotion that is due to al1 of Goci's creation. The disciplines of solitude and silence lie at the hem of al1 meaningful action on behalf of God's creation.

Page 65 V. A Place to Grow

The righteous shall inherit the land, and live in it forever. (Psalm 37:29) And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here. (Wendel1 Berry, "The Wild Geese")

In her poem "Yes! No!" poet Mary Oliver writes, '"To pay attention, this is our endlessl and proper work."' if solitude and silence are the fertile ground in which love can grow, paying attention is the evidence that this love has taken root and is bearing hitin my life. The things 1 pay attention to are the things which are important to me. When 1 value someone 1 notice that person's needs and desires; 1 am aware of the person's likes and dislikes. By paying attention to another being and becoming sensitive to the intricacies of that being's nature, 1 demonstrate respect and reverence for another order of creation. As Sally McFague has stated pointedly, "How Christians should love nature is by obeying a simple but very difficult axiom: puy attention to if."*

For Merton, the failure to pay attention demonstrates a failure of faith in Our lives: "The irreligious mind is simply the unreal mind, the zombie, abstracted mind, that does not see the things that grow in the earth and feel glad about îhem, but only knows prices and figures and statistics" (TTW, 346). The "irreligious" rnind does not notice the world in which it dwells. The "zombie" mind cannot see the delicate purple crocus, early barbinger of spring because the crocus cannot be bought or sold. It has no cash value and is therefore worth nothing. To be so caught up with "prices and figures and statistics" that we faiI to "see the things that grow in the earth," is to be trapped in unreality. How many of us live distracted lives? We stumble through the world, anaesthetized by over- stimulation, insensitive to our surroundings, unconscious of our place on this earth.

1 Mary Oliver, "Yes! No!" White Pine (New Yotk: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1994), 8. 'Sallie McFague, Super, Natural Christians: How we should love nature (Minneapolis: Fottress Press, 1997), 27.

Page 66 Merton had an extraordinary ability to pay attention to creation. He was alert to the smallest changes and nuances in his surroundings. He walked with his eyes open in the world. As a result, he stumbled constantly upon the iittle surprises that the naturd world has to offer to the aiert observer.

Fresh green of the valley. Lovely yellow tuiips surprised me outside the hermitage. 1thought the rabbits had eaten them ail but the rain brought them out. A pure and lovely yellow, putmerthan îhat of buttercups. (TTW, 3 17)

Raymond Bailey observes of Thomas Merton that, "One of the lessons he leamed fiom the contemplative life was that growth in Christ meant finding Him in new and unexpected places."

In 1966 Thomas Merton becarne fascinated with photography. With the help of Eugene Meatyard, Shirley Burden, and John Howard Griffui, Merton became an accomplished black and white photographer. Merton's carefbl attention to detail is clear in each of his crisp black and white photographs. He saw the things most of us might pass by, too preoccupied with the important busyness of our lives.

Merton once photographed two tiny daffodils peering out hmbehind three weathered spokes of an old wagon wheel. The flowers are almost obscured by the grass; but Merton found them and capturai their delicate filigreed blooms in the centre of his picture. in another picture, a leafiess twig lies cradled in the curve of an old log. It is nothing more than a small bare lifeless branch, but the outline of that twig sketches a fuie oriental design on the sand. Merton photographed a forested valley with hills befiind, growing lighter and lighter as they recede into the distant white peaks of snowy mountains siihouetted against the distant horizon. Most of us rnight have walked past this scene a thousand tirnes without noticing the gentle form of rolling hills set in stark contrast to the sharp mountain peaks behiid. Merton paid attention. Because he paid attention he saw art everywhere he went. He saw art because he knew the Artist. Like his writing, Merton's photography honoured the Creator in whom his work was always centred.

3 Bailey, Thomas Merton On Mysticism, 120.

Page 67 ln his introduction to the book, Geography of Hofiness, an exquisite collection of Merton's black and white photographs, Deba Patnaik writes that, "Seeing for Thomas Merton is a suigular faculty and fûnction." ' Lookhg at Merton's photographs Patnaik argues, "One notices how his photographs allow the objects their own autonomy and fidelity." The things Merton captures on film are allowed the dignity of their being. He does not manipulate them or attempt to use them for some purpose other than allowing their beauty and dignity to be seen. He is engaged in "a process of understanding the essence of objects." in a lovely entry in his journal on July 2,1964, Merton acknowledges the connection between his way of seeing the world and the practice of Zen.

Meadowlark Sitting quietly on a fence post in the dawn Sun, his gold vest - bright in the light of the east, his black bib tidy, tuming his head this way, that way. This is a Zen quietness without comment. Yesterday a very mal!, chic, black and white butterfly on the whitewashed wall of the house. (DWL 123)

Merton wote that, "my one job as monk is to live the hennit life in simple direct contact with nature" (DWL,229). To pay attention is to be in "contact with nature." Merton was connected, open, receptive, and alive to the subtle nuances, slight changes and delicate shadings of the world around him. ifyou have ever heard an experienced watercolour artist describe what she sees in the single bloom of a flower, you will know what it means to pay attention. She sees subtleties of colour and shading that you had never imagined could be perceived in just one blossom. As you watch the artist translate her observations into paint, you see the careful, respectfid, patient observation that the artist has brought to her task of copying God's handiwork on to paper.

FIashy, ciramatic "nature" films, on the other hand, can give a false view of out relationship to nature and may hhder our ability to pay attention. Nature films may lead us to believe that the beauty of the natural world can be purchased cheaply. When we get

'Thomas Merton, Geography of Holiness, ed. Deba Prasad Pamaïk (New York The Pilgrim Press, t980). ix Ibid. x. Ibid. xi.

Page 68 the impression that nature is always dramatic and startlingly beautifil, we may lose our ability to notice the ordinary lovely yeiiow tulips which have suddenly appeared outside out door.

The photographer John Howard Grifi in the prologue to his book, Follow the Ecstasy, points out that Merton's ability to pay attention to things in the world around him created in Merton's Lie a unique sense of tirne.

In that day's photographing and talking 1 became aware of a quality that was to charactecize al1 our subsequent meetings - an unblemished happiness with the moment, a concentration on the moment, as though there were no yesterday or tomorrow. It was like the experience of music, each moment felicitous, enough in itself. ' The photographer's art helped teach Merton the discipline of what Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck calls "practicing this very moment." Beck describes this practice: "We have to pay attention to this very moment, the totality of what is happening right now." ' Like ii carnera, Merton opened himself to the moment and absorbed the world mund him. He took everything in and paid carehl attention to the details of his world.

An altered sense of time is essential to paying attention. It takes time and care to observe the beauty of God's creative activity in the ordinary places of our lives. The revelations of the naturai world nomally corne slowly and subtly. Nature's subtle beauties do not easily yield themselves to the rush and noise that are characteristic of so much of life in the modem industrialised Western world. The hidden magnificence of nature is not accompanied by a rousing symphonie musical score to instnict the observer exactly where to pay attention and how to feel about the scene before him.

The unnatural editing of creation which film makes possible can give the false impression that the natural world surrenders its treasures quickly and in spellbinding abundance. in reality, the cameraman has been crouched for hours in order to catch just the right Light, at just the right moment. These patient hours of watching are then edited dom into the

'John Howard Griffm,Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Yems of Thomas Merton (New York: Orbis Books, L993), 3. 'Charlotte Joko Beck Everydny Zen: Love & Work (SanFrancisco: Harper, 1989), 10,

Page 69 sixty minutes that appear in the documentary suggesting that a brisk walk out in the world will surrender to the casual observer al1 the wealth and glory that the created world has to offer. The ûuth is that, in order to expaieme the reality of the natwal world, we must be willing to stay still and quiet in one place for a long time. Paying attention requires patience and gentleness. We have to be willing to experience nature on nature's schedule. We cannot impose ou-own demanding timetable. ifwe rush on too soon in search of the next stimulating experience we wiU miss most of the richness that the place we have been has to offer. Creation offers its treasures to those who are willing to stay in one place long enough to receive them on creation's tems.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk. Trappists are the strictest order of Cistercian monks who are the strictest order of Benedictines. Trappists are hown officially as The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Cistercian life is built around three vows: obedience, conversion of manners, and stability. Thomas Merton struggled throughout the twenty-seven years of his monastic life with al1 of the Cistercian vows. His "conversion of manners" which included not only poverty, common ownership of goods, and simple life but also chastity, was sorely tested for at least a year in 1966 when he stmggled through his relationship with the young nurse "M." His vow of obedience, which states explicitly "obedience to the Abbot and lawful superiors" (ES, 492), was a constant battle for Merton who spent twenty years of his monastic life in a clash of wills and personality with his Abbot, Dom James Fox.

But Merton's greatest challenge was the vow of "stability within the monastery of profession" (ES, 492). Merton was a naturally lively, energetic, restless person. He had an inquisitive mind which thrived on the stimulation and excitement of new ideas. The early years of Merton's life were characterized by tremendous instability. Merton's mother died when he was only six years old. For the ten yem following his mother's death until his father died in 193 1, Merton iived in New York, Bermuda, then again in New York, France, and finally England where he remained until 1934 when he returned to the United States. He never settled anywhere permanently until December 10, 1941 when he entend the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Louimille, Kentucky. Here he stayed, almost without interruption, until his final fatal trip to Asia.

Page 70 The jomals of Merton's monastic years are filled with a never-endhg debate inside his head: should 1 stay? should 1 go? is this the place where God is calling me to exercise my vocation? is there somewhere else that I might feel more at home, more at peace, more myself? Page after page of his jomals reveai Merton scheming to leave Gethsemani, then relenting and accepting that this is the place God has provided for his spintual nourishment and ministry. Merton's friend Edward Rice said that in the fiîües, "Many novices left sooner or later, and leaving was a constant temptation for Merton himself, much as he tried to pretend it was not."

In the end, the vow of stability won out and it may have been in large part the extemal limitations of his monastic life which enabled Merton's restless spirit to be as focused and productive as it was. Rice says, "He had aiways been accustomed to ninning dong the edge of the precipice, to living marginally." 'O It is easy to imagine that, without the stability of monastic discipline, Merton's energetic nature might have carried hirn over the edge of that precipice. It seems unlikely that, had Merton been allowed to come and go as he pleased, he would have settled to any one thing for long, or been as extraordinarily prolific and creative as he was.

The confinement of the monastery allowed Merton to develop the calm and stability which made it possible for him to sink deeply into the natural world surroundhg the cloistered walls of Gethsemani. The words of writer John Daniel could have been written for Thomas Merton: "I've lived a life of moving on, chasing possibility fiom place to place. Now I'm ready for greater travels. I'm ready to journey in to home."" Although he struggled throughout his life with a restless wandering spirit, Merton did leam what it rneans to "journey in to home." He immersed hirnself deeply in the place of Gethsemani. He learned the land. He knew the flowers, the birds and the wildlife of his place. ironically, it rnay only be our willingness to accept a narrower focus which wiH make it possible for any of us to gain a deeper and ncher perspective in life.

Edward Rice, The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and Hard L@ of Thomas kfenon (New Yo*: Image Books, 1972), 105. 'O ibid. 181. 11 John Daniel, "Tuming of Seasons," The Earth at Our Doontep, ed. Annie Stine (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 45.

Page 71 It has traditionally been held that we broaden our horizons by travelling widely. Perhaps we are discovering that it is possible to deepen ouawareness by staying put. It rnay only be as we accept the confines of our place that we can discover the depth and richness of He. Merton's extraordinary literary output can be partly attributed to the "greater travels" of his innet life and of his encounter with the naturai world which the fixed, relatively confined circumstances of his externai situation made possible.

At his best Merton knew that Gethsemani was the place where he truly experienced God's presence in creation. On May 30,1961 Merton wrote in his journal a famous paragraph which he later reproduced in rnuch the same words in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

It is essential to experience al1 the times and moods of this place. No one will know orbe able to Say how essentiai. Ahost the first and most important element of a truly spirituai life. (TTW, 244)

A "truly spiritual life" is discovered by knowing ail that there is to know about "this place." By going deeply into the reaiity of one place we go deeply into the reality of God. In Conjectures of a Guiliy Bystander this statement is preceded by a prayer in which Merton pays, "To study truth here and leam here to saer for tnith. The Light itself, and the contentment and the Spirit, these are enough. Amen3*(CGB, 161). T'hm is "ûuth" to be discovered where we are. We have al1 that we need where we are. if we are willing to see, there is enough light and Spirit here to give us the contentment to settle in this place and know it in al1 of its richness.

For most of us most of the thehere does not seem to be enough. Somewhere else is always better. We cannot nd ourselves of the uneasy feeling that, in order to lem and grow, we must travel great distances. We long to leave where we are, pull up whatever mots we may have been privileged to put dowu, and go somewhere else so that we may gain the wisdom and knowledge that we fear we will miss if we stay put. We have

Page 72 forgotten that "spirituality must be defined in such a way as not to exclude the palpable context of one's lived experience of the holy." ''

There was a tirne when people believed that the way to lem and grow was to grow in theù knowledge of theù own place. Wisdom it was beüeved was fonned more by familiarity than by novelty. People grew in understanding by knowing the stories, the customs and the geography of the place where they lived. We must regain the awareness, that "the place where we live teus us who we are - how we relate to other people, to the larger wodd around us, even io God." l3

Today, we seldom know the history of our place. We are unlikely to stay long enough in one place to become familiar with the forces that have shaped our landscape. Ofien we don? even know the neighbours who live within sight of our own fiont door. The number of "For Sale" signs that dot the fiont lawns of every city and town in North Arnerica remind us of the instability of our communities. We are too busy chasing the excitement and distraction of something new, or of "improving our situation," to stay still for long. The accumulation of new experiences rnay be entertainhg and may help to pass the time in an enjoyable way, but will moving fiom one stimulation to another without reflection help to build depth and wisdom into OUI. lives? Can we grow deeply into life when we have never settled long enough in any one community to really care about the people, the landscape or the natural environment of that place?

Our culture has institutionalized displacement. We have not learned to listen sensitively to the place or the culture in which we live. There may not be many of us who know our place as well as Merton.

Coming home - cool evening, grey sky, dark hills. 1 felt again, once more, a renewal of the first intuition, the awareness of belonging where these rocky hills are, that 1 belong to this parcel of land with pine tree and woods and fields, and that this is my place. (TTW, 244)

'' Belden C- Lane, LandFcapes of the Socred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirïtuaiity (New York: Pauiist Press, 1988), 6- '' Belden C. Lam, The Soiace of Fierce Landrcapes: Erploring Deren and Mountain Spinttrality (New York: Mord University Press, 1998), 9.

Page 73 A plant that is constantly uprooted and transplanted dlsoon become seriously sick and probably die. A gardener who does not take seriously the given elements of her garden's environment will be seriously hampered in nurhiring health and life in her plants. ïfwe cannot say that we "belong" where we are, how can we Say that we tmly know God as God desires to be known in and through ''this parcel of land"?

In his provocative book, God Is Red, Vine Deloria, Jr., argues that al1 religion is rooted in a particular place. He suggests that the religion of one place cannot successfully be transplanted to another location and that we cannot understand or tmly enter into the religion of a particular place unless we know and belong to that place. Deloria may overstate his thesis to some degree. But we do well to heed his waming that "a fundamental element of religion is an intimate relationship with the land on which the religion is practiced should be a major premise of future theological concem." l4

We need to work towards a greater comection between our expression of that which we believe is universal in our faith with that which is local, particular and unique to our place. Surely, we should anticipate that leadership, liturgy and community life will look different in different places. The church has been guilty too O fien of a kind of cultural imperialism imposing the values of one culture upon another in the narne of the universal tmth of the Gospel. There is no doubt that there are universal values and tmths represented by the Good News of Jesus Christ. But we must apply these values and tniths in ways that are sensitive to the particularity of place, or else the medium of our message will destroy the content of the News we hope to share. We must always be careful that we are not imposing a particular culture on our community in the name of offering the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

After six years at Gethsemani, Merton wrote:

Yesterday, walking home hmthe lake, was wondertiil. You do not get a clear perspective of Cistercian life if you do not see your abbey lÏom the fields on the way home fiom work. (ES, 46)

" Vine DeIoria, Jr., God is Red: A Native View of Relrgion (Golden, Colorado: Fulcnun Publishing, I994), 289.

Page 74 It is a curious thought that, in order for a twentieth century Trappist monk Living near Louisville, Kentucky to tmly understand his Cistercian monasticism, founded at the end of the eleventh century, in Burgundy, France, he might need to view his abbey fiom the rolling fm lands on the Kentucky hills. But Merton knew the importance of place. He knew that to some extent where we are shapes who we are. And, so, if we are to truly understand our heritage, we must understand the way our heritage fiom the past works where we are in the present. To avoid imposing an alien culture on the place where we live, we must begin by trying to be as sensitive to the uniqueness of that place as we are to the uniqueness of our Christian message.

The idea that place is important should not be surprising to Christians. We believe in a God who chose to be revealed historically at a particular time, in a particular place, in the life of a particular person. Christian faith is fundamentaily incarnational. incarnation means that we must take seriously the physical nature of our human condition. As Merton reminds us:

The word was made flesh. incarnation! He took a human body and sou1 to Himself so that the word dwelt among us as a man. The word did not assume flesh as a disguise, as a mere garrnent which could be cast off and thrown away. He became a man. Jesus, a man, is God. His body is the body of God, His flesh is so full of the light and power of God that it is completely and totally divine. WJ, 34) Merton made his point as forcefully as possible. incmation is about real "jhh." Jesus "did not assume flesh as a disguise," he "took a human body and soui." Christian faith does not devalue, or marginalize the physical humanity of ksus: "Thete is no question whatever of the slightest division in the unity of Christ, and no hint that the humanity of Christ might somehow get in the way of His divinity" (MJ 127,128). Incarnation demands that we take seriously the physicai reality of the world in which we live.

Merton had corne to believe that the good God had begun with creation was perfected through the incarnation. Gocl's love, which had not only initiated creation and destined Christ's entry into historical tirne, was further expressecl when that entry was realized in Jesus of Nazareth. Creation, coming forth ffom

Page 75 God, is transfigured in Christ. 15 For Merton, incarnation extends to creation an extraordinary and indelible dignity which those who follow the Incarnate One do weU to honour.

Christianity is not a disembodied fdth. Christianity is rooted and grounded in human history and in a parîicular geographical place. Jesus did not drop dom out of heaven Iike an alien being beamed here Erom outer space. He was boni of a human mother, in a place that can be named and visited even to tbis day. He never traveled far bmhis piace of birth and, by his presence, he honoured and valued the place where he lived and the whole of creation. incarnation lies at the heart of respect for creation, reminding us always that God cared about particular people in a particular place. Therefore, we too must learn to find God in the places where we live, with the people whom God has given us to Iive alongside. Those who cannot find peace and contentment where they are, are unlikely to find peace and contentment elsewhm. We do not change the inner condition of our hearts by changing the extemal conditions of our surroundings.

We must learn to see that rhis is my place; these are my people. It is in this place and among these people that 1have been assigned to learn the lessons of life. If I am going to find God, 1 will only find God here where 1 am.

we must begin by leaming how to see and respect the visible creation which mirrors the glory and the perfections of the invisible God. Visible creation is held in being by the word. But the word Hiself has entered into material creation to be its crown and glory. (MJ, 35) The place where we are is the place in which God has chosen to be revealed. The place where we are is the vehicle, the avenue of God's self-revelation. God is incarnate in our surroundings; the more we are able to embrace the givenness of those surroundings, the more we are able to embrace God: '1 must see and embrace God in the whole world" (SS, 200).

in order to "see and embrace God in the whole world," I must be willing to see and embrace God where 1am. 1must renounce the restless urge to be aiways rushhg off

'' Dennis Patrick O'Hara, "Portents ofMerton ap Eco-Theologian," 106.

Page 76 somewhere else. There is nowhere else 1need to go. There is no place better than right here, right now, to know and experience the presence of God in ail of the fullness with which God is manifest in creation. As 1am willing to see what is here and know this place in its tiillness, 1will see and know God. in the last of his joumals, written in a syntax which had become increasingly fragmented and cryptic, Merton pointed to the importance of simply being willing to see what is here: "The point: noi seeing something etc. than what is. Seeing it in its isness - and not interpreting it or dressing it up with 'mind"' (OSM, 27). To truly see, 1 need to be willing to allow my place to present itself to me as it is, not as 1 might want it to be, or even as 1 might have determined it should be. 1can only see and know a place really deeply when I have made a deep commitment to that place. Author Ken Wright compares this kind of commitment to the commitment of marriage: "1 have made the same oath of loyalty, fidelity, and obligation to this landscape that 1 made to Sarah: 1 will stay with you, leam about you, accept you for who you are." '' Healthy marriages do not emerge out of the desire of one person to change the other. A healthy marriage is founded upon the willingness of each person to honour the other in their "isness," their distinctive created nature. We will only know a place truly when we are willing to be "macried" to that place. No place will surrender the depths of its riches to the casual infidelity of passing visitations.

The rnaniage analogy is a powerful one in this context. It suggests the possibility that when human beings enter into relationship with the created world, we have two living beings entering into some kind of reciprocal covenant relationship with one another. This is an insight with which, as we shall see, Merton was particularly sympathetic. He had a profound understanding tbat al1 aspects of creation were, in their particular way, living, sensible beings. Each dimension of creation has its own unique and speciai way of being and of interacting with the rest of creation. Creation is active and living, affected by my presence and having an impact upon my life. Creation is not an object which 1 cmabuse or ignore. Creation deserves the kind of respect and honour that we hope for in the

'' Ken Wright, "MamÉd, With Mountains," The Eurth At Our Doorstep, ed. Amie Stine (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 101.

Page 77 sacred bond of maniage. Unfortunately, as in marriage, there is always the potential for either of the partuers in the relationship to inflict serious damage upon the other. in relationship to creation, as in marriage, we inflict damage upon oupartuer when we are unfaithiid. Unfaiffilness happens when we become distracted and wander fiom the stable path of fidelity to the other. Distraction is the enemy of faiffilness in marriage and of deep, attentive cornmitment to landscape. When we are constantly chasing after the stimulation of something new, we become disengageci fiom our hue selves and unable to remain rooted in one place, or connecteci to one person. Our minds resist settling into this particular place as we chase endlessly after the illusion which suggests that some other place will be better. We remain captive to the lie that it will be easier somewhere else to find God, to experience peace, to be at home.

The cares and preoccupations of life draw us away from ourselves. As long as we give ourselves to these things, our minds are not at home. They are drawn out of their own reality into the illusion to which they tend. They let go of the actuality which they have and which they are, in order to follow a flock of possibilities ... The present is our right place, and we cm lay hands on whatever it offers us. (NMI, 259) We need to decide to be where we are, So much of our restless wandering is driven by the determination to put having above being. We move in order to "better" ourselves; packing up and relocating on the other side of the country is "a good career move."

Archbishop Jean Jadot, in a touching reflection on his last encounter with Thomas Merton in Bangkok just before Merton's death, lists the lessons that were crystaliized for him in this encounter. The fust of these "strong convictions" Jadot took away fiom his conversation with Merton was that

there is the need to stress 'being' rather than 'having.' 'Being' in this context means to become a Little more each day a human person, a creature of God. 'Having' refers to the possession of material goods, cultural wealth, the self- righteous attitude toward *es manifested by the Pharisees of the gospels. 17

" Archbishop Jean Jadot, "Preface," The Message of Thomas Merton, Cistercian Sîudies Senes W2, ed Brother Patrick Hart (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1981), xiii, xiv.

Page 78 As long as we cling to the illusion that there is a better place for us than our present place, we will never know where we are. And, if we keep moving, in an attempt to discover the place that can make us feel at home, we wiU never develop the tools that can allow us to be ûuly at home anywhere.

Over and over again 1 have to make mal1 decisions here and there, in regard to one or other. Distractions and obsessions are resolved in this way. What the resolution amounts to, in the end: letting go of the imaginary and the absent and returning to the present, the real, what is in front of my nose. Each time 1 do this 1 am more present, more alone, more detached, more clear, better able to pray. Failure to do it means confusions, weakness, hesitation, feu - and al1 the way through to anguish and nightmares. (LL, 26) When we move, there is a good chance we are taking ourselves out of a situation in which we might have learned a deep lesson of life which can only be leamed by those who are willing to continue, to use a phrase fiom Eugene Petersen, exercising "a long obedience in the same direction."

Writer Alan Duming, in his book This Place On Earth: Home And the Practice of Permanence, describes hiruself as a young globe-trotting researcher, monitoring the social and ecological health of the world. Gradually as his passport accumulated a vast rainbow of international stamps in his travels for the good of the globe, Durning came to realize that he himself did not belong anywhere. Harassed and ftantic as he chased atter the good cause ofworld justice and environmental well-being, Durning came to experience his own life as empty and rootless. His crisis came to a head during a visit to a remote tribe in the hills of the Philippines. He was conftonted by an elderly woman who asked him simply, "What is your homeland like?" Durning was forced to admit tbat he did not know his homeland. In fact, he was not at al1 sure that he even had a "homeland." There was no place where he could really say he beionged. Duming writes, "'in America,' i haüy admitted, 'we have careers, not places."' ''

Kit wasn't so sa4 it could be almost humorous: the fienetic cnisading environmentalist racing around the world in the cause of global health, a cell phone, briefcase, and

Aian ïhein Duniuig, This Place On Eurth: Home And The Ractice of Permanence (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1996), 4.

Page 79 overnight bag the only consistent attachments in his Me, unable to see the reality of any one place because of the burden of saving the whoIe world. An environmental movement which becomes so intensely fucused upon its cause, risks losing its heart. ifwe allow our valuabIe crusades ta disconnect us hmthe place where we are located, we may well have lost the meaning of the cause for which we stniggle. We will certainly cut ourselves off fiom one of the primary sources which God uses to bring sustenance and hope into our lives.

The cise in locally based environmental activism in North Arnerica suggests îhat the environmental movement has been discovering that renewal lies pactly in rediscovering the local. The Orion publication Afield carries a regular feature titled "Commwiity Portraits," in which the magazine portrays two or three individuals who are making a différence with small local initiatives on behalf of the environment in their own particular part of the country. As 1 begin to see my connection to this place, I realize my responsibility for this place. When 1 start to be concemeci about where the vegetables I eat corne hmand where the solvents 1 dispose of go to, I begin to live responsibly where 1 am. The more aware 1 am of the impact my choices have, the more 1 will be challenged to live responsibly and carefùlly in this place. As 1exercise my responsibility for the place where i am presently Iocated, my awareness ofbeionging and responsibility will grow. The more I leam about the srnaIl local place of my immediate environment, the more 1 become aware that ultimately, "the universe is my home and I am nothing if not part of it" @WL, 2 12).

The beginning of taking responsibility for creation is a genuine experience of belonging. Belonging anywhere begins with belonging here. 1must experience the reality of this place. 1must lem to allow this place to make itselfreal to me. I must become able to recognize in the ordinariness of this place and of this moment, the extraordinary nature of al1 reality which 1 am called to join in honouring in ail of its particularity and uniqueness.

The grip the present has on me. That is the one thing that has grown most noticeably in the spiritual life - norhùig else has. The rest dims as it should. 1am getting oIder. The reality of now - the unreaüty of ail the rest. The uzueality of ideas and explanations and formuias. 1am. The unreaiity of al1 the rest. The pigs shnek. Butterflies dance together - or danced together a moment ago - against the

Page 80 blue sky at the end of the woodshed. The buzz saw stands outside there, half covered with dirty and tattered canvas. The trees are fiesh and green in the sun (more min yesterday). Small clouds inexpressibly beautifil and dent and eloqrent, over the silent woodlands. What a celebration of light, quietness, and glory! This is my feast, sitting here in the straw! (SS, 214,215)

1 wonder how often we pause to record our swroundings with such meticulous care and sensitive attention. It is a chailenging experience to read Merton's extraordinary essay "Day of a ~tran~er."'~Having breathed creation into the very core of his being he pours it out onto paper. This essay could serve as a profound mode1 of a truly engaged human being encountering the particularity of the world in which he is residing.

How many of us know our place this well? Do we know which will be the first delicate blooms of spring each year? Can we name them as they appear? Do we instinctively know North, South, East, and West wherever we are in our familiar surroundings? Can we name the birds that chatter at the feeder in our back garden? Do we know the distinctive sound of their voices as they sing God's praises each spring? Do we know which varieties of flora and fauna are indigenous to our area and which were imported and may be destructive to delicate native plant life? Can we trace the origins of our dnnking water, and tell where our refuse water and sewage are disposed of? Can we name the constellations in the heavens and recognize the changes of the seasons as they are reflected in the placement of stars and planets?

We need to be able to answer such questions if we are going to know where we are. These questions help us to discover and acknowledge the impact we are having on this world. Following a God who we believe became incarnate in human history in a particular place commits us to asking these questions. Incarnation commits us to living tülly in the physical reality of our particular location. incarnation teaches us to pay attention. And, paying attention, we give evidence of our love and care for this place we are privileged to share with the test of creation.

l9 Cunningham, Lawrenece S., ed. Thomas Merton: Spiritual Marrer. (New York: Pautist Ptess, 1992), 214-222,

Page 8 2 VI, The Sacrament of Creation

The heavens are telling the gloty of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Ever since the creation of the world his etemal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

(Romans 1:20) Thomas Merton experienced a sense of union with many different parts of the naturai world.

Two [crows] sat high in an oak beyond my gate as 1 walked on the brow of the hi11 at sunrise saying the Little Hours. They listened without protest to my singing of the antiphons. We are part of a menage, a liturgy, a fellowship of sorts. (OSM,56) His use of the word "menage" is particularly interesting. "Menage" refers to the idea of "household." The first definition in The Webster's Dictionary for "menage" is "the occupants of a house, collectively; a household." The word "menage" relates closely to the word "ecology," a word not yet commonly used in Merton's day. The word "ecology" comes fiom the Greek oikos, meaning "house." Ecology is literally the "study of houses." A house is a dwelling place, a home, a residence. When we study ecology we are studying the dwelling place of al1 living species, their family home. We are collectively a household with al1 the rest of creation.

in the "household" of creation, Merton experienced himself as being "part of a menage, a litwgy, a fellowship of sorts" with crows. He was engaged in an intricate reciprocal dance with creation, a "liturgy" in which the division between his being and the other aspects of nature began to dissolve. The lines blurred; he found himself merging with the created world. He entered into an intimate fellowship with the rest of nature which at times seerns startling in its intensity.

This moming where 1was saying Prime under the pine ûees in front of the hermitage, I saw a wounded deer limping along in the field, one leg incapacitated. I was temily saci at this and began weeping looking at the deer standing still

Page 82 looking at me questioningly for a long tirne, a minute or so. The deer bounded off without any sign of trouble. @WL, 3 15,3 16) 1s Merton suggesting that somehow the prayer of his tears healed the wounded deer? Did he believe that the deer understood his compassion? We cannot answer these questions. We can't know for sure what Merton was thinking about this curious incident. Perhaps if we could ask him what he intended in wnting of this episode, he would not be able to tell us himself. What we can see in these words is the deep sense of connection Merton achieved with the natural world. Merton had a profound sense of kinship with other aspects of creation. He felt bonded to this deer in an intimate relationship. Merton knew that he and the deer were fellow dwellers coexisting in the family home of creation.

The most striking quality in this scene is the intensity of Merton's compassion for this wounded deer. Merton enteced into the pain he perceived in this animal's life. His compassion enabled Merton to encounter the distinct mystery of another being. Merton was acutely aware that the motives which drive most of the world are profoundly opposed to the development of compassion: "the job of king a success in a competitive society leaves one no time for compassion" (DQ, 200). The drive towards "success in a competitive society" inevitably cuts us off fiom the other. Compassion leads us to surrender our separateness and realize the union of beings in al1 of creation. Compassion is the doonvay into a true encounter with the naturai world.

Eight days before his triigic death by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Merton had a profound spiritual experience in Eront of the gigantic stone Buddha figures of Polonnaruwa, in Sri Lanka. It was Monday, December 2,1968 when Merton visited the Buddha figures. Not many people were present at the sacred site on this day. Even the vicar general who was accompanying Merton kept his distance fiom the "paganism" of these figures. So Merton was "able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed." Reflecting upon this experience Merton Iater wrote that as he stood "looking at these figures 1was suddenly, almost forcîbly, jericed clean out of the habituai, haif-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding hmthe rocks themselves, became evident and obvious" (OSM,323).

Page 83 Reflecting upon his experience three days later Merton wtote:

The thing about al1 this is thai there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery." Al1 problems are resolved and evecything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, al1 matter, a11 life, is charged with dharmakaya [the essence of al1 beings] evecything is emptiness and everything is compassion. 1 don't know when in my Lie 1 have ever bad such a sense of beauty and spirituai validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. (OSM, 323) The surface appearance of Life was momentarily pulled back for Merton. He saw beneath al1 the superficial ciifferences that normally separate individual human beings fiom one another and al1 of humanity fiom the rest ofcreation. in that moment of revelation 'Merton recognized the comrnon essence of al1 beings. He saw what he had ofien expecienced in his encounters with the natural world, that the boundaries which seem to separate the different aspects of creation hmone another are much less substantial than we normally think.

This experience of the profound interconnectedness of al1 creation is for Christians rooted in the experience of the oneness of God and the union of human beings with this God who is One. John Higgins explains that "Merton's whole theology of prayer, which is grounded in his own personal experience of searching for God, has but one function and that is to bring man into an awareness of his personal union with God in Christ" ' Higgins concludes that Merton "knew that he would one day achieve a true oneness with the God-man, Christ - a oneness that would unite him most closely with al1 other men in Christ."

Merton saw this union among human beings pretiguted in the church.

#en the Fathers of the Church commented on the words of Genesis, that man was made in the 'image of God', they understood that ali mankind was intended to be as it were 'one man' so perfectly united in charity, as to reflect, on earth, the unity of the three divine persons in the one nature which is love itseif. This unity, destroyed by selfishness and sin, was restored, objectively speaking by lesus Christ, the 'new Adam.' Once Christ had risen hmthe dead, once He had sent the spirit of love and unity into the hem of His disciples, it became possible

1 John J. Higgins, S J., Thornus Merton On Prayer (New York: Doubleday & Co., hc., 1973), 135. Riid 156.

Page 84 again for the unity of divine love to be clearly manifested in the mystical body of those who are one as Christ and His Father are one, in the bond of the spirit of peace. (MJ, 64,65) This vision of unian in Christ's "mystical body" extended for Merton even beyond the humcommunity to embrace the community of al1 creation. Merton recognizes that "'1' am no longer my individual and limited self, still less a disembodied soul, but that my 'identity' is to be sought not in that separution from al1 that is, but in oneness (indeed, 'convergence'?) with al1 that is" (MZM, 18).

The various different aspects of creation which we so often experience as distinct fiom ourselves are in reality deeply co~ectedto us. Or, to use Merton's terminology in the quotation above, every aspect of creation is drawn into "convergence" with every other aspect of the created order.

in the afiernoon, lots of pretty little warblers were playing and diving for insects in the low pine branches over rny head, so close 1could almost touch them. I was awed at their loveliness, their quick flight, their hissings and chirpings, the yellow spot on the back revealed in flight, etc. Sense of total kinship with them as if they and 1 were of the sarne nature, and as if that nature were nothing but love. And what else but love keeps us dl together in being? @WL, 162) The created world is an intricately interrelated web of being. Al1 parts of creation are connected. We are "al1 together in being." We are accustomed to thinking in terms of the global commun@ of human beings. We are les in the habit of contemplating the comrnunity of al1 creation. We do not tend to think of owselves as being joined by "bship" with the rest of nature. For most of us it is difficuit to see the "pretty liale warblers" as befonging to the same family as human beings. For Merton the fellowship of all creation was a constant reality which he experienced at the centre of his awareness of me.

This understanding of the interconnectedness of ail being is stressed by Buddhism and is an essential insight for living a healthy life in the world. We need to know that, when we make decisions about our lives, we do not make our decisions in isolation. Every choice we make affects other aspects of the world. It is sometimes said that we are only six degrees away hmbeing connected to every okhuman being on this earîh. The same

Page 85 thing could be said about our relationships with the non-hman dimensions of creation. When 1chop down a tree on my pmperty in order to improve the view hmmy living mom window, 1destroy the process of photosynthesis which that tree has faithfiilly canied on throughout its life and deprive the atmosphere of some of the oxygen which is essential for al1 life foms on earth. Every decision we make about our own lives reaches out to an intricate web of interconnectedness in an ever-widening sphere of influence.

When 1 choose to use more water than is necessary to keep my Iawn perfectly green throughout the dry months of summer, 1 lower the water levels in the reservoirs which provide my home with a seemingly endless water supply. When the levels of the reservoirs &op, they drain more water from the watershed and ultimately reduce the water levels in feeder streams. When the water levels in feeder streams drop, it is more difficult for salmon to spawn and the salmon population is reduced. When the salmon population is reduced, there are fewer fish for the eagles to feed off and the eagle population is depleted. When we pump millions of gallons of waters ont0 our lawns, we are probably not thinking about the fact that we may be conûîbuting to the reduction of the eagle population.

Thomas Merton was aware of the disasirous impact of human beings on the ecosystem long before this was a generally shared awareness. On April 1 1, 1963 he wrote in his journal:

The other day there was a beautifid whistling of titmice - and now one of them lay dead on the grass under the house, which may well have been some fault of mine, as we dumped some calcium chloride on a couple of anthills - not as a poison but as something to move thern elsewhere. What a miserable bundle of foolish idiots we are! We kill everything around us even when we think we love and respect nature and life. This sudden power to deal death dlaround us simply by the way we live, and in total "innocence" and ignorance, is by far the most disturbing symptom of our time. 1hope 1 at last can leam, but in the light of Holy Week 1 see, again, dl my own interna1 contradictions - not dl! Hardly! But the fact that 1 am full of them. And that we al1 are. A phenomenal number of species of animals and birds bave become extinct in the last fifty years - due of course to man's irruption into ecology. There was a covey of quail around here in early fall. Now 1don? hear a single whistle, or hear a wing kat. (TTW, 3 11,3 12)

Page 86 Merton's awareness of the devastating impact of human beings on creation was greatly enhanced by his reading of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. ûn January 12, 1963, Merton wrote to Carson saying, "1 want to tell you htof al1 that 1compliment you on the fuie, exact, and persuasive book you have written, and secondly that it is perhaps much more timeiy even than you or 1 realize" (WtF, 70). He went on in this letter to state in the strongest possible terms the gravity with wbich he viewed the destructive influence he perceived humans to be having in creation: "The awful irresponsibility with which we scom the smallest values is part of the sarne portentous irresponsibility with which we dare to use our titanic power in a way that threatens not only civilization but life itself' w,70).

Today Merton's awareness of our responsibility to the rest of the created world may not seem so startling. But this was hardly a generally shared perception in 1963. For many people in the sixties nature was at best merely a resource to be mined for human benefit. The created world existed to serve human needs. if forests got in the way of human "progress" they should be clear-cut. ifbugs attacked our crops they should be destroyed with massive doses of aerial sprayed pesticide. Carson's book was a startling warning to a human population that seemed blind to its own destructive impact. Although Merton in his hermitage might have been ready for Carson's message, the rest of the world was not inclined to listen. In the sixties Carson's book was at best ignored and at worst vilified by scientists and politicians. In a speech to the National Women's Press Club in the fa11 of 1962, Carson summed up the reception her book received.

My text this aftemoon is taken fiom the Globe Times of Bethlehem, Pennsyivania, a news item in the issue of October 12. Merdescnbing in detail the adverse reactions to Silent Spring of the fmbureaus in two Pennsylvania codes, the reporter continued: ''No one in either county fann office who was taiked to today had read the book, but al1 disapproved of it heartily."

Merton had both read and heartily approved of Carson's Writing. Kis appreciation for Carson and het insights was well ahead of its tirne. Merton did not arrive at these insights because he was engaged in scientSc research, or even because he was surromdeci by an

Rachel Carson, "An Enduring Voice: Unpublished Wcitings by Rachel Carson," Orion 17 no. 4 (Autumn t998). 62.

Page 87 acadernic community conversant with Carson's understanding. Merton understood intuitively the tniths Carson made explicit in Silent Spring because he had paid attention to the nature around hh. He was immersed in the reality of creation; he was connected to the world of non-human beings. So, üke a good parent watching carefùlly over his children, Merton was aware when the fmily of creation was in danger and he was able to draw tnie and prophetic conclusions about the causes of this danger from his observations.

In some ways rnany things have not changed since the sixties. We are still not entirely ready to hear Rachel Carson warning us to be careful about the way we live on this earth. Or, even if we are willing to listen, we are not ready to change. Change will only come when we are able to recognize our kinship with the rest of creation. We will begin to want change when we know that the "pests" we kill in some sense belong to our farnily. This earth is their "home" as much as it is our "home." We must find ways to cooperate with the other inhabitants of this "home," and live together in mutually supportive relationships.

Merton was drïven to take a strong stand on human irresponsibility in relation to the rest of creation because he was determined in al1 things to avoid illusion and to live in reality. In his book of essays The Nav Man, published in 1961, Merton had written, "We must work with a sense of responsibility towards living and growing things and towards the men we live with ... our work ought to be a dialogue with reality, and therefore a conversation with Goâ" (NM, 56). Our work with "living and growing things" is a dialogue with God because, when we interact with "Iiving and growing things," we are interacting 6th reality. And al1 reaiity shares a common being: "The fulfillment we fud in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reaiity that is hmGod and belongs to God and reflets God" (NSC,26). To live in 'kaiity" is to recognize our comrnon origin with aii other created beings.

In The Ascent to Tmth Merton descnied the process by which we come to an inner appreciation for the common nature of al1 reality. He wrote of "a single luminous intuition" in which ''ihe king and goodness which are shared by aii particular things are

Page 88 prasped." Tbis "luminous intuition" makes it possible for us to "discover al1 things in one widifferentiated transcendental reality, which is king itself" (AT, 197). ifwe are to know the wodd as it really is, we must experience this "luminaus intuition" ourselves.

Merton describes one such "single luminous intuition" on Febniary 27,1950.

The land is fint in simplicity and strength, Everything foreteils the coming of the holy spirit. 1had never before spoken klyor so intimately with woods, hills, bu&, water and sky On tbis great day, however, they understood their position and they remained mute in the presence of the Beloved. Only His light was obvious and cloquent. My bmther and sister, the Iight and the water. The sturnp and the stone. The tables of rock. The blue, nakd sky. (RTM, 412)

This is not an intellechial experience. One cannot reasonably be argued into recognition of We ligtit and the water. The sturnp and the stone. The tables of rock. The blue, naked sky," as "My brother and sister." This intuition can only corne as a gifi, in which I suddenly recognize that al1 created beings are "an extension of my own being," (DWL, 2 13) because 1, dong with al1 created things, am an extension of God's king in tirne and space. We are, in the limitai sense of our created natures, incarnations of God's perfect uncreated being.

Merton's understanding of creation is profoundly rooted in the incarnation oFCtirist. In The New Man Merton wrote, "The whole character of the creation was deterrnined by the fact that God was to become man and dwell in the midst of His own creation" (NM, 96, 97). The incarnation demonstrates for us the central nature of al1 created existence.

Creation is created and sustained in Him and by Him. And when He enters into it, He will simply make clear the fact that He is already, and has always been, the centre and the Life and the meaning of a universe that exists only by His wiU. 97) in desccibing the monastic vocation, Meam says that the monk "has the incarnational privilege and duty of having his feet on God's ground and his han& in the hiüüi dirt" (CWA, 202). For Maton the incamation of Cbrist gives meaning to both creation and vocation.

Page 89 Christ is "the centre and the lifk and the rneaning" of the universe: "the Incarnation is not a mere matter of history but a present reality, and the most important reality of ail. For it is the one reaiity that gives significance to everything" (LF, 64). Christ is the source and the destiny of creation. For Merton any recognition of the glory of creation is an implicit recognition of the presence of Jesus Christ within creation. Jesus is the poetry of creation. He is the sum total of al1 that is tme, al1 that is beautifid, praiseworthy and good in the world. The incarnate presence of Christ within creation bestows enonnous dignity upon al1 orders of creation. As James Nash writes:

The Incarnation confers dignity not only on humankind, but on everything and everyone, past and present, with which humankind is united in interdependence - corporeality, materiality, indeed, the whole of the earthly and heavenly. It sanctifies the biophysical world, making ail things and kinds meaningful and worthy and valuable in the divine scheme. 4 The fact that Christ is the centre of the created universe is the reason why, as Merton says in his poem "Natural History," "we can leam such ways to God fiom creeping things/ And sanctity fiom a black and russet wocm!" (CP, 184). There is nothing too ordinary, nothing too mundane or unimportant to be a vehicle of the self-revelation of the Creator. Merton believed in and experienced what Raymond Bailey calls, "the ubiquitous presence of God in ail creation."

For Merton, the incarnation demonstrates in human history the tmth of Psalm 139.

KI ascend to heaven, you are there; if 1make my bed in Shed, you are thete. if 1 take the wings of the moming and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and pur right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:8-10) Al1 of life is permeated with God. There is nowhere we can go to escape fiom the pervasive presence of God's reality. At the centre of the message of Christian faith is the reality that God is present. As Evelyn Underhill has beautifiilly expressed it in her classic book Mysticism, for mystics ''the quest of the Absolute is no longer a journey, but a realization of something which is impkit in the self and in the universe: an opening of

'James A. Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological IntegRty and Chrktian Respodility (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 199 l), 109. Bailey, Tirornas Merion On Mystictmt, 155.

Page 90 the eyes of the sou1 upon the Reality in which it is bathed. For them earth is Literally 'crammed with heaven"' (empbis added).

Our awareness of God's presence, however, is not to be confuseci with the understanding of creation referred to as pantheism. Underhiii cautions, "Unless safeguarded by limiting dopas, the theory of Immanence, taken alone, is notoriously apt to degenerate into pantheism." 'For the pantheist, creation contains al2 of God. For ihe pantheist, the Creator does not transcend creation. In a sense pantheism makes God the captive of creation. There is no room in the pantheist cosmology for the banscendence of God. God can only be conceived as immanent within the forces and processes of creation.

Merton maintained a balance between îhe immanence and the transcendence of God which kept him fiom dissolving the tension into a simple pantheism.

By His immanence He lives and acts in îhe intimate metaphysical depths of everything that exists. He is "everywhere." By His transcendence He is so far above al1 being, that no human and limited concept can contain and exhaust His Being, or even signify it except by anahgy. (SL, 2)

God both acts within creation and dwells in the "depths of everything that exists." But God is also "far above al1 being." When we look at creation we see God, not al1 of God, but a true and real reflection of the reality of God: "Though ontoIogically the being of the wodd is as nothing compared with the infinite God, yet it is willed and held in king by His love and is thus infinitely precious in His sight. For thus it becomes, itself, a revelation of as inhite love" (MZM,142).

The balance between immanence and transcendence Merton so carefully preserved is maintained by a sacramental view of creation, A sacrament is more than merely a sign. A sacrament, while not containhg or exhausting that reaiity which it signifies, does actuaîiy share in the nature of the greater existence towards which it has îhe abiiity to Lead us. God is truly pcesent in creation: 'Visible creation is held in king by îhe word. But the word Himselfhas entered into matecial creaiion to be its mwn and its giory"

~velynUnderbill, h4ysticUm: A Sm+ In the Nahue And Development ifMan 's Spiritual Consciousness (New York: E.P. üutton & Co., k.,191 l), 99. Ibid.

Page 9 1 (MJ, 35). Therefore, creation can be tBrly said to participate in the nature and being of God. Creation is a sacramental presentation of Creator. As Victor Kramer has written, what Merton "teaches us is that the sacramentaiity of our world is always there to be obsewed and honoured in its immediacy." ' The encounter with creation is an encounter with "the word Himself' who has "entered into menal creation."

James Nash describes this sacramental relatioaship between Creator and creation, saying that

nature is sacred by association, as the bearer of the sacred. We are standing perpetually an holy ground, because God is present not only in the buming bush but in the nutturing soi1 and atmosphere, indeed, sharing the joys and agonies of al1 creatures. The sacramental presence of the Spirit endows al1 of creation with a sacred value and dignity. 'J This is not, however, to suggest that ttiere is no distinction between that non-human dimension of creation which is endowed with the Spirit, and the human creation in whom the Spirit of God is said to uniquely dwell. There are differences between the various aspects of God's creation, Human and non-human dimensions of creation are different fiom one another. Within the non-human world itself there is an extraordinary diversity of life. Although human beings share a great deat in common with one another, even among us, the Creator has created tremendous differences. Diversity is the glory of creation. The depths of our communion with nature does not in any way diminish the rich diversity of our uniqueness.

Merton had a subtle understanding of the human condition. He was concemed always to maintain the integrity, autonomy and fieedom of the individuai human being. But, at the same tirne, he wanted to guard against the diminishment of human values which he saw where "individualism" was exalted abve human comrnunity.

Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanicd units, but of persons. To be a person Unplies responsiiility and Greedorn, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrîty, a sense of one's

Victor A. Kramer, "The Paradox of Writing as a Step Toward Contemplation," The Message of Thomas Merton, ed. Brother Paûick Hart, 39. James A. Nash, Loving Nature, 115.

Page 92 own reality and of one's ability to give himseif to society - or to refuse that gift. (TiS, x) Merton saw two problms with the cult of the individual, both of which fuellexi the degradation of creation and the break dom of human community. First individualism is the driving force behind materialisin: "The shallow '1' of individuatism can be possessed, developed, cultivated, pandered to, satisfied: it is the center of al1 our strivings for gain and for satisfaction, whether material or spirituai" (DQ, 207). it is the drive to satisQ these strivings which desûoys creation and lies at the heart of the breakdown of human community.

The second problem with individualism is that it tends to ignore the reality of human community. It is difficult for individualism to acknowledge our mutual interdependence, our need for one another and our responsibility to the wider commwiity of al1 creation. On the other hand, the problem with collectivism is that it denies the extraordinary dignity of the individual and iurns the person into an object, a number or a mechanical unit. Coilectivism cannot embrace the freeâom and spontaneity inherent in the human condition. When we stress the community over the individual we risk resorting to coercion and ihe abuse of power to impose confonnity on the other. We treat each other as objects and no social change which objectifies the other and resorts to coercion will ever achîeve the depth and the permanence necessary for true ûansformation.

Merton consistently taught that we should üanscend al1 subject/object distinctions. For Merton, the incarnation of Christ has forever discounted a dualistic undersiandhg of God's creation. In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Merton challengeci the dualistic emr asking, "Now that God has become Incarnate, why do we go to such lengths, al1 the time, to 'disincarnate' Him again, to unweave the garment of flesh and reduce Him once again to spirit?'(CGB, 2 13)

in Contemplation In A World ofAction, Merton wams that duaiism kads inevitabIy to a profoundly disordered rdationship between human beings and creation.

.. . a spintuality which despises nature and conte- the human person is basicaiiy divisive and Manichaean. It implies a strongly dualistic concept of God and His creation in which creation seems to be opposed to the goodness of God

Page 93 and completely alien to God; indeed creation seems in this light ta be cursed by God rather than blessed and redeemed. Thus instead of using the goods of nature which God has given us, we tend to fear and despise them. We reject them and trample on them with contempt." (CWA, 93)

The other is not an object distinct fiom ourselves that we are fiee to "trample on" "with contempt." There are only subjects capable of acting within the limits and confines of their differently created natures: 'me mot of personality is to be sought in the 'me Self which is manifested in the basic unification of consciousness in which subject and object are one" (ZBA, 69).

In 1967 Merton read the seventeenth century Japanese pet Matsuo Basho's little book The Narrow Road To The Deep North And Other Travel Sketches. Merton called it "one of the most beautifhl books 1 have ever read" (OSM,18). Basho writes of the foundational Zen insight that al1 creation is one: "ail who have achieved real excellence in any art, possess one thing in cornmon, that is, a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature." 'O There is a foundational unity of being at the core of ail creation. Human beings are not subjects set over against the objects of nature. Al1 dimensions of creation share a dimension of subjectivity in their created being.

But, while affirming the fiindamental unity of al1 existence, Merton also held that al1 dimensions of creation maintain the distinctiveness of their own identity. Al1 aspects of creation have the dignity and the uniqueness of their created nature. So, although there is a commonaiity to al1 creation, each aspect of creation bas its own uniqueness, its own special function in the created order, its own role to play in the unfolding drarna of the Creator's plan. The role of human beings in creation must not be exaggerated in its importance, but nor must it be diminished. Each dimension of creation must be allowed the fteedom to explore and fulfiii its own destiny in the service of the rest of the creation comrnunity.

'O Matsuo Basho The Narrow Road To The Deep North And Other Travel Sketches, trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa (London: Penguin Books, l966), 71.

Page 94 The unique human role in creation has been well expressed by the Passionist pciest, Thomas Berry. In his 1991 book Befnending the Earrh, Beny descnbed the human task saying :

The human is that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself and its numinous ongin in its own, unique mode of conscious self-awareness... It is not that we think on the universe; the universe, rather, thinks itseK in us and through us. 11 in Mystics and Zen Masters, published in 1967, Merton prefiguted Berry's insight when he wrote:

The pure consciousness (as also the apophatic mystical intuition) does not look ut things, and does not ignore them, annibilate them, negate them. It accepts them fully, in complete oneness with them. It looks "out of them," as though fulfilling the role of consciousness not for itself only but for them also. (MZM,245) in human beings, creation comes to consciousness. The human is that dimension of creation which has been given "consciousness not for itself only," but for al1 dimensions of creation. Merton defines the human "self' as that place in which the universe cornes to awareness: "The self is merely a locus in which the dance of the universe is aware of itself' (OSM,234). in his journal writing, Merton gives a glimpse into his own expecience of the universe coming to consciousness within himself.

The moming got more and more bcilliant and 1could feel the brilliancy of it getting into my own blood. Living so close to the cold, you feel the spring. And this is man's mission! The earth cannotfeel al1 this. We must. But living away fiom the earth and the trees we fail them. We are absent fiom the wedding feast. (LL, 19) In Merton, the momingfeels. That which would be otherwise unreflective and unaware, comes to consciousness as Merton allows the boundacies which might separate him fiom creation to dissolve. By being present to the reality of the moment, creation enters his being and he filshis mission of bringing creation to consciousness. When we allow

" Thomas Berry, CP with Thomas Clarke, SJ, B@-éirdhg de Earth: A Theology of Reconciliation Befween Humans and the Earth (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991), 21.

Page 95 ourselves to be cut off fiom creation, we let down those aspects of creation which can only come to consciousness in us.

God created human consciousness in order that human beings, drawn into a mystical bond with al1 of creation, might be moved to offer worship to the Creator. Coming to consciousness, human beings alone have îhe opportunity to choose to consciously acknowledge God.

Sunrise - an event that calls forth solernn music in the very depths of one's being, as if one's whole king had to attune itself to the cosmos, and praise God for a new day, praise Ri in the name of al1 the beings that ever wmor ever will be - as though now upon me fdls the responsibility of seeing what al1 my ancestors have seen, and ackmwledging it, and praising God so that whether or not they praised God then, themselves, they now do so in me. (SS, 292)

Our unique role and function as conscious beings is to follow our consciousness and allow it to lead us to the place where praise wells up inside our hearts and is offered to God. In order to fulfill this role we must remain conscious. We must avoid the nurnbing influences of so much of the world and remain open to the glory of the moment present in the wonder of God's world. We must remain conscious of the inherent value of al1 foms of created life, even those which we may instinctively be inclined to despise or to ignore.

There is a close connection between the human ability to worship and the human ability to grant value and reverence to other forms of life. in its origins the word "worship" derives from the same root as the word "worthiness," and means "the granting ofworth." When we worship we acknowledge the worth, the value, the worthiness of that which we worship. Christian theology demands emphatically that we not worship anything visibk. We do not worship creation, that is, we do not assign ultimate significance or value to any material thîng. Although Christians honour creation we do not worship creation. Chnstians are sacramentalists, encomtering God in creation, not materialists, mistahg that which is created for the Creator.

Merton knew that the materialistic spint of contemporary Western civilization stood in direct opposition to the development of rdvalues. In his Little book Spintual Direction and Meditation Merton warned tbat "the intellectuai and moral flabbiness of a

Page 96 materialistic society has robbed man's nature of its spirituai energy and tone" (SDM,68). Human beings were created to worship. We will always worsbip something. But when we worship something less than God, we make ourselves something less than the dignified creation God intends us to be. When we allow our consciousness to direct our hearts to God in worship, we are able to value al1 of creation in an appropriate way, without idolizing that creation, but also without reducing creation to the status of object for our use and manipulation. When we accept our unique function as conscious beings in this universe, we will experience al1 of creation as a sacrament of God's presence, We will how outselves to be called to reverence and worship the Creator; and those who worship the Creator will live responsibly in relationship to the Creator's work.

Page 97 W.Healing in Creation

Ask the animais, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among al1 these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? in bis hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

(Job 12:7-10)

The old road through woods is Like a vein of my slow blood. To walk it with reflection is like being cured of a malady. 1 need nothing more than this Amble through checkered light. (Paul Zimrner, "Crossing to Sunlight")

In Luke's Gospel Jesus is recorded as having sumrned up his mission by saying, "the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19: 10). in the Christian tradition Jesus' mission of salvation has ofien been understood primarily in terms of spiritual rescue. This rescue is anticipated to save fiom an eternity of suffering al1 those who choose to place their faith in Christ. According to the Greek English Lexicon of Arndt and Gingrich, the Greek word sosai translated in Luke 19: 10 as "save" includes the idea of "saving or preserving from etemal death." But the meaning of this word is not exhausted by the narrow definition of escape fiom "etemal death." "Sosui" includes the ideas of "rescue from natucal dangers and afflictions," "bringing out safely from a situation hught with mortal danger," and "saving or fieeing from disease." ' To be saved in this sense is potentiaily to be rescued from danger, brought to a place of safety and healed of disease.

In the same way the word "lost" carries greater meaning than is merely implied by etemal separation from God. A smaü child in a Iarge shopping mall becomes separated fiom his mother. He is lost. He does not know whmto tuni for safety or direction. He is

' William F. Arndt & F. Wilbur Gmgtich, A Greak-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 952)

Page 98 disoriented and terrifieci by his situation. He is hzen in one spot, not knowing which way to tum, unable to make any decision, powerless to solve his problem by himselfi He needs to be "saved," that is, found, returned to his place of belonging by a power pater than his own resowces. The child who is lost is not concemed with some distant tùture world. The lost child needs an answer now. The lost child longs for the familiar cornforthg presence of his mother at this moment, in this place. Final restoration in the fullness of tirne is not enough for the lost child in the present. in Luke 15, the 'prodigai son" is the paradigrnatic lost peson. He is a picture of fallen humanity, cut off fiom human community, living in a disocdered relationship to the world and to the rest of creation. He experiences his surroundings as hostile, unfamiliar and disjointed. His life is ernpty and alien; it does not sustain or nwture a deep inner richness. He is cut off hmhome. William Shannon outlines Merton's understanding of the fall:

The fa11 describeci in Genesis was a fa11 fiom the unity of the contemplative vision into a condition of multiplicity and distraction and exteriority. Alienated from his inrnost spiritual self, the human person was enslaved by an inexorable concem for the exterior, the transient, the illusory, the trivial. No longer able to recognize his own identity in God, he fond himself utterly exiled not only from God but also fiom his own tme self. His temptation in this state was 'to seek God and happiness outside himself.' Thus, his search for God became a flight fiom God and tiom his inmost self - a flight that inevitably took him fùrther and further fiom reality. This state or estrangement in realms of weality is what is meant by Original Sin. 2

Fallen hurnanity needs to fmd a way to reconnect with reality: "Only by restoring the broken co~ectionscan we be healed. Connection is health.'" The prodigal son is not primady concerned with a bright hereafler, but rather with an integrated, more human life in the present.

For Thomas Merton, salvation means more than rescue hma future etemity of alienation fiom God; to be saved is also to be rescued hmourpresent state of alienation here and now within this world. To be saved is to tind a new way to live. Salvation is an

Wïam Shannon, Thomas Merton's Dark Prrrh, 84. Wendel1 Berry, RecoIIected 6says 1965-1980 (New York Noth Point Press, 1995), 323.

Page 99 experience in the present of living closer to home. To be saved is to corne back to rnyself, to the discovery of my life as it was intended by God to be. Raymond Bailey says that, for Merton

salvation is the discovery of who you are. Man is one with God in Christ and is revealed as bearer of the incarnate Word with al1 the worth, dignity, fieedom, and responsibility that that implies. 4 Merton knew that human beings are concerned with their lives in the present before they are concemed with some uncertain distant hture. Merton knew that our hearts long to discover more integrated ways of living on this earth. As a spiritual guide, Merton offered guidance for Living a more genuine, integrated life in the present. As William Shannon describes it, for Merton salvation

is the return to the paradisal state. It is the recovery of the original unity that characterized the human condition as God intended and intends us to be. It is the overcoming of al1 that alienates us fiom God, from out own true selves, and from our fellow hurnan beings. 5 To be saved is to have the layers of my false self stripped back and my true self revealed: "Our task aller the faIl is to return to paradise, to recover our lost identity. We have to retum to the Father; that is to say, to 'that infinite abyss of pure reality' in which alone our own reality is grounded." In salvation, 1 discover the original image of God at the centre of my being.

Jesus saves us, not just nom an etemity of lostness, but also fiom the lostness of our present condition. To be saved is to be restored to a sense of being at home, to rediscover my bearings. When 1 am saved 1 am brought fiom fragmentation, broke~ess and disconnection to a place of greater unity and wholeness. The fiagmented parts of my being are reconnected. As Bede Griffiths has written, "Redemption - at-one-ment - is the ceturu to unity." ' In this reconnection 1discover a sense of meaning and direction

'Raymond Bailey, Thomas Merton On Mystich, 123. WiWam Shannon, Thomas Merton's Dark Path, 4. Ibid., 85. 'Bede Gnffiths, Remto the Center, 30.

Page 100 where previously 1knew only disorientation and confusion. 1 begin to be able to live a more fuily and genuinely human life in the world.

Man, made in the image of God, was made for perfect union with Him. Having lost the capacity for union by Adam's sin, he had recovered it in Christ. Through Christ man retums to the original perfection intended for human nature by God. The Christian life is therefore a retum to 'paradise,' a partial restoration of the joy and peace of Adam's contemplative life in Eden. In saving man, the passion of Christ has also healed his body and al1 its faculties, and indeed the sanctitjing power of the Cross has poured itself out upon the whole world, and man is once again able to hdGod in himself and in everything else. (SL, 169) The cross of Christ enables human beings to live in a more authentic relationship to al1 of creation and to the whole human community. When we have entered into the saving relationship with the world that is made possible by God through Jesus, we will live more fully as the authentic human beings God intends us to be. Thomas Merton's life was dorninated by this stniggie to "work out (his) own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2: 121, that is, to live as a more real human being.

What do 1 fear most? Forgetting and ignorance of the inmost truth of my being. To forget who 1 am, to be lost in what 1 am not, to fail my own inner tnith, to get carried away in what is not hue to me, what is outside me, what imposes itself on me hmthe outside. (LL, 332) In the edyyears of his monastic vocation, Merton appears to have viewed the "orld" primarily as a reality to be escaped in the attempt to live in communion with God. In ne Ascenf To Tmth published in 1951, Merton wrote: "The one thing that remains is for Christians to af3hn their Christianity by that hl1 and unequivocal rejection of the world which their Baptismal vocation demands of them" (AT, 3). "World" was that wicked reality which must be fled by those desiring to be saved fiom its evil influence in order to be assured of an etemity spent in the presence of God. The "world" encompassed the geography of lostness and sin. It was the place hmwhich one needed to be rescued. In order to escape the worid and fuid etemai salvation, Merton fled behind the walIs of the abbey into the heavenly kingdom of the cloistered monastic life. It did not take Merton Iong, however, to reaiize that the world he had fled followed him into his monastic retreat, He soon discovered that he needed more than merely assurance of eternal

Page 101 salvation. Merton quickly began to realize that he needed to be rescued in the present hmthe world he carried within.

Merton mon recognized that the 'korld" is nota piace but tather a state of king.

Where am 1going to look for the world htof aU if not in myself? As long as I assume that the world is something I discover by hmhg on the radio or laoking out the window 1am deceived hmthe start. (CWA, 100)

The word "world" represents a specific set of values, beliefs and convictions about life. The commitments which represent the world live inside the buman heart. As the kingdom of God is a spiritual reality, so the kingdom of the world is equally a dimension of the human spirit with al1 of its own qualities and characteristics: "The world is, by its very essence, struggie, conflict, division, dissension" (MJ, 63). The world is that condition in which we expenence ourselves as being lost. Merton learned that it was equally possible to be dominateci by the world behind monastic walls as it was living in the wild exciting streets of New York City. hcreasingly, Merton came to view the world as primarily a matter of inner life and only secondarily of extmal behaviour. To be saved, therefore, was to experience an inner transformation of being.

When we are "saved," we do not change our geographical location. To be "saved" fiorn "ththe world" is to embrace a new set of values, beliefs and convictions distinct hmthose embodied in the ideologies and philosophies of "the world." Those who are saved live by a new set of values wherever their physical circumstances may dictate they spend their days, Our inner transformation results naturally and spontaneously in changed extemal behaviour; but the change always begins with the i~ertraasformation of values and commitments. Merton outlines the values that direct those who have turned away hm the world.

The monastic life today stands over against the world with a mission to afbn not oaly the message of salvation but also those most basic human values which the world most desperately needs ta regain: personal integrity, inner peace, authenticity, identity, inner depth, spirituai joy, the capacity to love, the capacity to enjoy God's creation and give thanks. (CWA, 100)

------Page 102 For the Christian these new values are embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. We corne to share these values, not by stmggling to attah them in our lives, but by embodying the person in whom they are found. Thus, for the Christian, salvation is found in Jesus.

In his essay "Christian Humanism" in Love and Living, Merton used the image of a knot to describe the person in need of salvation. To be lost is to be hotted, tied up, entangled in the values, pressures and fragmentation of the world. When we are lost we are bound; we are not fiee. To be saved is to become fiee, to become Christ-like.

The Christian call to freedom is a call to be, as Christ himself, an untied hot, It is in this sense that the message of Christmas is eschatological: it is the revelation and celebration of the new age in which we live, in which our humanity has been restored to us untrammelled and disentangkd, in Christ. Wiv, 225) To be "disentangled" in Christ is to have the orientation and values of our lives straightened out. When we are saved we discover a new ability to live more freely, to live differently in the present. Those whu are being saved find that their lives are no longer dominated by the values and pressures of the world. Our extemal lives begin to take the new shape of our inner transformation.

The message of the Christian Gospel shares common ground with the environmental movement. Christians and environmentalists understand that at the root of environmental destruction lie many of the values and cornrnitments that "the world" holds. The devastation human beings create in nature is a sign of disordered, "worldly" values. It is impossible, therefore, to change our crooked unhealthy patterns of relating to the created world without straightening out ow hwnan system of values.

In Luke's Gospel the writer speaks of the coming of Christ in terms of the words of the prophecy of Isaiah: "'Every vailey shall be filled, and every mountain and hiil shall be made low, and the crooked shd be made straight, and the mugh ways made smooth; and al1 flesh shall see the salvation of God"' (Luke 3:5,6). Jesus is the means whereby that which was crooked is made straight. He has the capacity to take that which is violent and disordered and to make it "smooth.~' In Christ the lostness, the brokenness, the "hell" of the world has ken redeemed: "Christ descended into heu to show that He willed to be lost with the lost, in a certain sense, emptied so that they might be filled and saved, in the

Page 103 realization that now their lostness was not theirs but His" (LL, 324). The way home has been made clear in Christ. The path to restoration is laid before us to waik upn. Jesus is the way to a healthy relationship with ail of creation.

But, how are we to find this path? How are we to discover this "salvation," this homecornhg which Christ makes possible? How are we to lem, and begin to Iive these new values embodied in Jesus? Where are we to 6nd the salvation Jesus is said to bring? Must we flee behind the monastery wall in order to know the healing presence of the Christ who bore the suffering and the lostness of heii in order to make us whole? in his long poem "Cables to the Ace" Merton suggests that we do not have to escape into the monastery in order to find the Christ who brings new life. The poem is full of '?he Fraudulence and cnielty of the modem world." And yet, Maton suggests that Christ comes to us in the midst of the created world. By 1958, Merton could write in his journal, "I must see and embrace God in the whole world" (SS, 200). Despite the ruin and the chaos of our lives, we can find Christ and know his salvation if we look carefully for his light present in the trees who have heard his gentle voice.

Slowly slowly Comes Christ through the garden Speaking to the sacred trees Their branches bear his light Without hm

Slowly slowly Comes Christ through the ruins Seeking the lost disciple (CP, 449)

In the midst of our ruin, in out lostness and confusion, Christ comes, "Slowly slowly" to bring a light that shines in the darkness of the world. Christ comes "Seeking the lost disciple," not in the cities of human wisdom or of human schemes and conîrol; he comes in the garden of God's creation.

George Wimdcock, Thomas Merton Monk and Poer: A CnhCafStudy (Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & Mcïntyre, 1978), 174.

Page 104 Fmm March 3 1,1966, when he met the nurse "M" in hospital and began their clandestine relationship, until the end of June 1967, Merton went through one of the most difficult, contiised, hgmented and painfiil periods of bis Me. He experienced a sense of disintegration and brokenness that he could not previously have imagined.

Before I was in some measure whole and consistent and now 1am not, and the thing for me to do is to recover my previous wholeness. Anyone that thinks that 1 was whole and consistent before simply does not know me. My fa11 into inconsistency was nothing but the revelation of what 1am ... I am now in several disedimg pieces. That and not loneliness is the trouble. 1 am divided. (U, 106) There were moments when Merton felt so utterly crushed by the tormented struggle which raged in his heart that the only relief he could imagine seemed to be death: "As to suicide: I would be delighted to drop dead, but killing myself would be just too much trouble" (LL, 304).

By the summer of 1967 Merton's life seems to have retumed to some measure of order and sanity. His 1st contact with "M" was probably on or around June 21, 1967. As the summer of 1967 progressed Merton was able to look back over the chaotic events and feelings of the previous year and realize that he had survived and come to a place of some healing and peace. On July 5,1967 he wrote in his journal "keeping to the woods was what saved me" (LL, 260). Merton experienced restoration by "keeping to the woods." The disintegrated parts of his being were restored to wholeness by Christ through the simple experience of being out in nature. The fragmentation which inevitably accompanies immersion in the world is reversed by the renewing force of God at work in creation.

Peace in seeing the hills, the blue sky, the afternoon SUU. Just this and nothing more! As soon as 1 move toward anything else, contùsion. @WL, 34)

We receive healing and clarity fiom entering into the beauty and the simplicity of the created world: "1 need very much this silence and this snow. Here alone cm1 fmd my way because here alone the way is right in hntof my face and it is God's way for me" (SS, 295). To enter nature is to reconnect with Reality. There is a stability, a permanence, a groundedness about being out in creation which speaks about the character and the values of the Creator. For Merton to teconnect with the reaüty of the created

Page 105 world was to reconnect with God. He believed that Unmersing himself in the created world was one of the primary disciplines of bis contemplative tife.

How necessary it is for monks to work in fields, in the min, in the sua, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spirituai directors and our novice-masters. They form our contemplation. They instil us with virtue. They make us stable as the land we live in. (SJon, 321) Intimate contact with the natural world restored those virtues which the artificialities of the rest of the world so ofien seemed to std fiom Merton's life. Nature was his guide, his spiritual director, his novice-master, leading him to discover the way to a healthier, more integrated way of living.

Merton's vision of the contemplative life was rooted in the world of wind, rain and sua His spirituality was grounded in fields of mud and clay: "Whether in the city or in the mountains, the monk works for his living and his work is 'worldly,' not churchly: he is (at least ideally) more directly in contact with matter than other religious or clerics" (CWA, 203). Merton's is not an esoteric, "other-worldly" spirituality. His understanding of the human relationship to God was deeply comected to the real world, in the places where we live, in the paths we wak, and the mountains we climb. We are renewed by being in creation, because, in creation our connection with God is renewed. We are immersed in the renewing presence of the Creator by our encounter with the Creator's work.

Merton did not look primarily for renewal for his spirit in the forma1 liturgies of the monastic offices. He did not seek healing in the academic pursuit of theology or even in reading the spirituai elders of lis tradition. Merton looked to creation for nurture and new life: "the woods cultivate me with theu silences" (SecJ, 337). "1 am once again made clean by fiost and morning air, here in the presence of the moon" (ES, 456).

Woods and hiUs change our perspective. Things which had seemed so momentous, even impossible to face, dirninish in the face of forest light, fiesh air, and singing birds: "The Song of my Beloved beside the Stream. The birds descanting in their clerestories. His skies have sanctified my eyes, His woods are clearer than the King's palace" (ES, 412). The encounter with creation gives us a new vision of out tives. Our eyes are "sanctified~"

Page 106 We are granted a new way of seeing. We see outselves and al1 of creation in a new reiationship to the Creator: "The true saint is not one who has become convinced that he himselfis holy, but one who is overwhelmed by the realization that God, and God alone, is holy. He is so awestruck with the reality of the divine holiness that he begins to see it everywhere" (LH, 2 1).

Creation changes our perspective by putting us in our place. The forest path we walk has been here long before we came to walk its uneven winding way. The trees continue to grow when we are no longer able to enjoy their sheltering presence, The chickadee will sing his Song of praise whether or not we are present to hear his delicate notes.

The warblers are coming through now. Very hard to identifL them all, even with field glasses and a bird book. (Have seen at least one that is definiteiy not in the bird book.) Watching one which 1 took to be a Tennessee warbler. A beautiful, neat, prim little thing - seeing this beautiful thing which people do not usually see, looking into this world of buds, which is not concemed with us or with our problems. 1 felt very close to God or felt religious awe anyway. Watching those birds was as food for meditation or as mystical reading. Perhaps better. (ES, 124)

When we are brought face to face with a reality "which is not concerned with us or with out problems," we are given a new perspective on Our lives. Things which have seemed so overwhehing shift somehow in the face of the dyhg and living reality of landscape. Stmggles which had felt so dark and impossible are lightened by the soft sunshine fiItered through the green needles of a pine branch stretched against the sky. Perhaps we are not the centre of the universe. Perhaps those things which have seemed to us to be such mountains, are in fact only tiny passing moments in the ebb and flow of tirne.

Canadian poet Loma Crozier makes this same point in her poem "Wilderness."

It's reaily space that rushes at you in spite of fences, the grid roads laid in graphs across the earth.

A space not as empty as you might imagine, it's a tbgitself minus details you can't separate the whole into any parts. The worst is

Page 107 it doesn't need you. It goes on and on whether the land is broken or not, whether a tom makes its srnail exclamation mark or flattens out. The power of wilderness, the healing quality of nature lies in part in the fact that "it dwsn't need you." Whether we plough, or whether we build great towns, there will always be wilderness, greater and vaster than al1 human vision and ail human scheming. The wild expanse of untamed, uncontrolled nature is just there, uninterested in the heavy burdens and elaborate manipulations of your Iife, unmoved by al1 the sorrow and anguish you perceive in your world. The indifference of creation can be tiightening; but it can atso be a source of awe and renewed vision. So Crozier concludes:

Mat's most like the prairie is the mind of ûod, the huge way he must have of looking into the world. That's why 1 feel small and scared inside myself, and yet at times full of wonder. 'O To encounter nature is to recognize Our own vulnerability. The created world brings us face to face with our limitations, our powerlessness. As much as we may have the capacity to manipulate the forces of nature, in the end, we know that we are dwarfed and powerless in the face of the powers of the natural world. When we stand on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in the face of a raging storm that can toss massive logs ont0 the shore like toothpicks, we experience a renewed awareness of our fiagile human condition. When we stand in the midst of an old growth forest beside a 400 year old Sitka spruce towering 200 feet into the air, we are naturally humbled by the encounter. Humility changes the sense and order of out values. It helps us accept life as it is.

Christian humility is lirst of al1 a matter of supernatural common sense. It teaches us to take ourselves as we are, instead of pretending (as pride would have us imagine) that we are something better than we are. Ifwe really know ourselves we quietly take our proper place in the order designeci by God. @Mi,1 13)

9 Loma Crozier, "The Wildemess," A Marrer of Spiif?: Recovety of the Sacred in Contemporaty Poeny, ed. Susan McCaslin (Victoria, B.C.: Ekstasis Editions Cm& Ltd, 1998), 82. 'O Ibid.

Page 108 To "quietly take our proper place in the order designed by God" is the path to living in a healthy relationship with other human beings and with the rest of the created order. To practice humility in my own life is, thetefore, to bring God's healing to the world. Merton does not retreat to the forest in order selfishly to enjoy the blessings of escape into the beauty of nature. Merton goes to the woods with the deep conviction that, as he finds God's healing in creation, he will share in btinging Goà's salvation to the rest of the world. Withdrawal fiom the world cm be a source of healing for the world.

Such men [hennits], out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bittemess or of resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wildemess, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to others but to heal in thernselves the wounds of the entire world. @Q, 194 ) This may seem a curious vision to the acictivist environrnentalist whose life is given to the endless tasks of guiding the people of the world to live in greater hamony with creation and pressuring politicians to enact more respoasible legislation. But Merton believed that the action of an individual freely choosing to withdraw to the wildemess in order to encounter God, had the capacity to Iiberate spiritual forces in the universe capable of contributing to the resolution of those tensions, anxieties and divisions which create the strife, disharmony, and greed which so deeply wound our world.

Thus creation moves us beyond our constant obsessions with questions and answers. in creation we fmd that the wars over right and wrong, yes and no, lose some of their compelling power.

In the quiet moming air 1hear a woodpecker ddgon a tree. Once again the sun is rising on this misty valley. 1s this right or wrong? The question turns out to be completely stupid. I hear a crow down the valley. A car passing on the road. Good or bad? 1live a life htought to train me not to ask such questions at all. (LL,337) 1 receive a new consciousness in the naturai world, a consciousness that goes deeper and is more reai than al1 the squabbles and tensions thaî fil1 the routine of my life. It does not matter so much out in the forest that 1 be right. 1do not need to get my way when 1am wallcing in the shelter of aged Douglas fi. 1 cm let go of my need to win, to be powerful, influentid, successful. God gives me a new mind as 1rest in God's presence, "allowing

Page 109 nature to retum this virginal, silent, secret, puce, unrelatable consciousness in me" (DWL, 65). So many of the troubling questions just do not matter any longer: "From the silence of the valley 1 cari lemthat certain questions do not need answers of mine" (LL, 171). The noisy clamour of my mind's accustomed clutter is reduced to silence. 1 am silenced by the God who confiants me and demands

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, 1will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when 1laid the foudation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. (Job 38:2-4)

1 have no answer to the wind in the trees. 1 have no reply to the God who challenges the customary pettiness of my life with the grandeur of creation. 1am free of needing to prove anything or rationally explain the meanings of my life. 1 discover that "Our life does not consist in magic answers to impossible questions, but in the acceptance of ordinary realities which are, for the most part, beyond analysis and therefore do not need to be analyzed" (CGB, 67). Immersed in "the ordinary realities" of things as they are, 1 no longer feel the need to justifi my existence in this world: "Freedom is found under the dark tree that springs up in the centre of the night and of silence, the paradise tree, the axis mztndi, which is also the Cross" @WL, 242).

At the centre of the universe stand a challenge and a question. The challenge demands that 1know my place in relationship to God and the rest of creation. The question asks me to answer the impossible conundnim of my own existence in a world that is broken and suffering. The challenge and the question at the heart of the universe are announced to al1 of creation in the cross of lesus Christ. The cross is not a question 1 am expected to answer, a puzzle put to me in order that 1might find the secret solution. The cross is an announcement of my proper place in relationship to God. The cross puts before me the puzzle of my self and the world. As 1 resign myself to the challenge and the question of the cross, 1 receive God's heaIing through Jesus Christ who comes to me "Slowly slowly... through the garden" and patiently disentangles the knot that is my life. As the knots of my iife begin to lwsen, some of the other knots of the world will untangle. As 1 receive God's salvation in Christ, 1become an instrument of Christ's healing presence for the world. VZII. Hearing God's Word

TRere is a book, who nuis may read, Which heavenly truth imparts, And al1 the lote its scholars need, Pure eyes and Christian hem.

The works of God above, below, Within us and around, Are pages in that book, to show How God himself is round. (John Keble)

A certain philosopher asked St. Anthony: Father, how cm you be so happy when you are deprived of the consolation of books? Anthony replied: My book, O philosopher, is the nature of created things, and any time 1want to read the words of God, the book is before me.

(Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of llie Desert)

Jesus asked the tweive, "Do you dso wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord to whom can we go? You have the wotds of eternal life." (John 6:67,68)

Thomas Merton was not a Bibiical scholar, But he certainly expenenced a powerful living relationship to the word of God as he encountered it in the pages of Scripture. His thinking was informed by the teachings of Scripture. His writings are filled with the spirit of the Bible. And the relationship Merton had to Scripture had an intirnate connection with his experience of the created world as a source of God's revelation.

By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that ail nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cwler blue, the trees a deeper green, Light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the gloryof God and 1feel fïre and music in the earth under my feet. (SJon, 21) To understand how Merton came to experience the power of Scriphue to draw him into a deeper encounter with the real wodd, we need to keep in mind one of the dominant infîuences which gave shape and fonn to his Ne. Almost without exception for the twenty-seven years that Metton was a monk of Gethsemani the shape of every day was

Page 11 1 dictated by the rigorous monastic practice of daily worship. At 2:00 a.m. each day, the monks rose to recite Matins. Matins was said again at 3:00, this tirne with Lauds. At 4:00 a.m. each priest in the community said a private Mass, followed at 5:30 a.m. by Prime, then at 7:45 Tierce, High Mass and Sext. Before theu noon meal the monks gathered again for None, then Vespers in the aftemoon. The liturgical day ended at 6: 10 p.m. with Compline.

Al1 of these services included the recitation or chanting of Psalms and almost al1 of them included the reading of (sometimes lengthy) passages of Scripture. Before most of the world was awake, the monks of Gethsemani had already absorbed more Scripture than the rest of us might read in a week. The monk's life was permeated with the words of the Bible. He inhaled Scripture throughout the day, until it became part of his very being. It is often said that we become what we eat. Merton feasted long and oflen at the table of Scripture. He was nourished throughout his life by the word of God which he encountered in the words of the Bible. Merton lived in the environment of Scripture. in The Sign of Jonas, Merton wrote:

1 have a great, though confused, affection for the writers of the Bible. 1 feel closer to them than to almost any other writers 1 know of. Isaias, Moses, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are al1 part of my life. They are always about me ...They are more a part of my world than most of the people actually living in the world ...1 read their books with joy and with holy fear, cum tremore divino, and their words become a part of me. They are solemn and dreadful and holy men, humbled by the revelation they wrote down. They are my Fathers. They are the 'burnt men' in the last line of The Seven Storey Motrntain. 1 am more and more possessed by their vision of God's Kingdom. (SJon, 224) Merton was possessed by the rhythm, the cadences, the thought processes and the structures of the Biblical writers. They were his farnily, his spiritual Fathers. Theu words filled his being and noUrished his sod. The Bible shaped his iife. The picture Merton gives here is of a deeply intimate and personal relationship between himself and the writers and content of Scripnire.

Certain readers might be troubled in reading Merton to discover that he does not constantly refer to chapter and verse of Scripture in al1 of his writhg. He does not use the Bible as a source of proof texts to boIster his arguments, He does not constantly wave

Page 112 the flag of the Bible before his readers to validate bis own words. He doesn't need to; the spirit of Scripture has so infiltrated Merton's thought processes that they have become virtually indistinguishable hmthe spirit of the writings containeci in the Bible.

The fact that a writer or speaker does not constantiy say in the middle of an essay or an address, "My wife says ..." does not in any way dinilish the inîluence she has inevitably had on everything the speaker has to say. It is often impossible to distinguish exactly where the writer's thinking starts and the idluence of his wife begins. Hours and hours and hours of hearing and reading the Scriptures bad created in Thomas Merton such an intimacy with Scripture, that the spirit of Scripture permeated al1 he thought and everything he wrote. To read Merton is to hear the Bible speak even when the precise words of Scriphue are not actually quoted.

This intimate relationship with Scnpture serves as a mode1 for the relationship we might have with creation. Merton lived and breathed within the environment of the Bible. in the same way, he lived and breathed within the environment of the natural world. He did not have to work at making himself appreciate creation or the words of Scripture. These reaiities daily filled his being. The seasons of the year shaped Merton's consciousness. The sound of the wind blew through his being onto the pages he wrote. The delicately changing colours of fall, the diving flight of a bawk in search of prey, the tangled mass of forest growth behind his cabin, al1 fed Merton and nurtured his awareness of God's presence in the world. At a deep almost unconscious level, the created world permeated Merton's being and filled bis life just as the words of Scripture filled his days.

Most of us will never have the privilege of spending twenty-seven years imbibing large chunks of Scripture eleven or twelve times each day. However, Merton's attitude towards the Bible does point us in a direction tbat can help us develop a deeper, more personal, and more powerfiil relationship to God in and through the Scriptures, and in and through the created world. In 1977 a collection of Merton's essays called The Monastic Joumey was published. This book contains an essay originally published in 1957 cailed "Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituaiity." In this essay Merton spoke of his approach to Scripture.

Page 113 Ifwe are merely speculative students of Scripture, breaking the words of God up into scientific hgments and deaféning our spirit with the noise of human argument - which is too often the noise of the 'flesh' with its spirit of factions and divisions - then we cannot hem the word who speaks to us silently in the words of Cod. (MJ, 50) Merton seems to have shified here hman eariier more dogmatic understanding of Scripture. For Merton the Bible is not to be used as a weapon in îheological battle. The Bible is the place to encounter the One %ho speaks to us silently in the words of God." It is a curious image One %ho speaks," but wbo speaks '70 us silentiy." Merton points to a communication that occurs at a level deeper than language. This is the One who spoke to the prophet Elijah in "a sound of sheer silence" (1 Kings 19: 12). This is the silence that is bigger than we are, This silence draws us in but is tm vast for us to comprehend. We heu this silence in the dark of the night far from the city when we lie on the ground and look up at the vastness of the universe shining al1 around us. This silence reminds us of our smaihess and of a knowing which goes much deeper than al1 our attempts to contain reality within the confines of our humanly invented formulations.

The determination to use Scripture to arrive at a perfect scientific formulation of irrevocable truth makes us deaf to this silence. When we cling to the noise of out words, we close ourselves to the deeper encounter with God which is potentially available to the perception of faith. When I walk out into the forest, I do not need to understand the miraculous process of the carbon cycle or the miracle of photosynthesis in order to appreciate the beauty ofa towering Spruce. The Stream of tmth in the universe runs deeper and stronger than my words cm ever fÙlIy grasp. Merton calls us to enter reality and to allow reality to enter us at a place in our being deeper than the mind.

In a journal entry hmMay 10,L96S Merton discussed his understanding of prophecy. He writes:

al1 the Bible is preaching, announcing tmths and events, not scientificaiiy proving hem, not formaily '>redictuig" them (except in certain cases). Undetstanding of this depends on one's capacity to understand prophecy as witness to a centrai truth, rather than as linear prediction. ifyou say, "Because God nrst said this would happen, then made it bappen, and because I can prove this hmScripture, 1 am convinceci," you niay have the whole thing backwards, and you may start

Page 114 either falsifjhg Scripture or emptying it in order to pmve what you need to prove. On the other hand: "This is what happeneci, and it is what God everywhere pointed to, it is the central event and al1 others gain their true rneaning when this is seen," then you have an access to the Scriptures in Face and contemplation - without the need to prove anything, which does not rnean that pmfs may not have their place. But the place is not central, just as reasoning is not central, but understanding, seeing. @WL, 247) We do not read the Bible prirnarily to find proof of one position over any other. While recognizing the inevitability of bias and perspective, we try, as much as possible, to lay aside our own agendas when we approach the Scriptures. if1 corne to the Bible with my arguments firmly in place, and try to find support for my position, I will inevitably twist the Scriptures to suit my own ends. The rationalistic, linear Western approach to knowledge may not serve us particularly well in reading the Bible, any more than it helps us enter into a deep and nurturing relationship with creation. Merton points to a deeper place where we find, not arguments or logic "but understanding, seeing." This kind of knowledge may only be available when, to some extent, we are able to stop thinking and merely absorb Scripture in the way Merton would have absorbed it through the routine disciplhe of his daily monastic office.

Merton is not opposed to reason. He does not want to do away with theology or rational thinking entirely. in New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton wrote, "Faith is tirst of al1 an intellectual assent. It perfècts the mind, it does not destroy it" (NSC, 127). Merton, does however, want us to recognize that there are certain limitations inherent in the human rational processes we so often seem to venerate. As Shannon argues, Merton understood that '%hile reason through its affirmations and denials can speak to us of God as His reality is imagined in creatures, it cannot by itself make contact with God as He is in HimselE" ' Contact with God is realized in a realm that reason cannot touch. Merton challenges us to encounter tnith at a deeper and more intuitive tevel. Reason and the intellect are inevitably caught in the dialectic of true and faIse, right and wrong, yes and no. These polarities represent a bhd deywhen it comes to tdyknowing:

the fact remains that 1cannot stay sane living on a level of "yes" and "no," and of opinion and of "correct thinking" and "right and wrong." This is simply absurd,

' William Shannon, Thomas Merton 's Dark Path, 63.

Page 115 My life makes sense only when oriented to a totaily diBetent level of consciousness: not an escape into false interiority, not a dilemma between interior and exterior, but the level of 'ho-mind" which gives some sense to "mind" if anything cm. @WL, 49) Merton understood instinctively the wisdom of Evelyn Underhili's argument that

The mind which tbinks it knows Reality because it bas made a diagram of Reality, is merely the dupe of its own categories. The intellect is a specialized aspect of the self, a form of consciousness: but specialized for very different purposes than those of metaphysical speculation. 2 With the exception perhaps of his earliest writings, Merton never attempted to make "a diagram of Reality." His wtiting ranges in an mlymanner over the geogaphy of his inner experience and wanders through the landscape of life seeking truth and reality wherever they may be found. in his quest, Merton fiequently demonstrated courage and daring that allowed him to explore new avenues of thought and encounter fiesh formulations of the tmth to which his life was dedicated. in his personal rendering of The Way of Chuang Tm,Merton has the Chinese poet philosopher Say that On the way home He lost his night-colored pearl. He sent out Science to seek his pearl, and got nothing. He sent Analysis to look for his pearl, and got nothing. Then asked Nothingness, and Nothingness had it! (WCT, 74)

To truly encounter reality, the seeker must be willing to surrender familiar categories. He must have the courage to launch out fiom the familiar safe shores of "Science" and "Analysis," to move to a place deeper than intellect. As Underhill says, "When, under the spur of mystic love, the whole personality of man cornes into contact with that Reality, it enters a plane of experience to which none of the categories of the intellect apply."

Evelyn Uaderhïll, Mpsicism: A Stuày In The Nature And Developmenr OfMan's Spirirual Comciousness (New York: E9. Dunon & Co., inc., 191 l), 30. Ibid., 348.

Page 116 A tnie engagement with reality involves 'Vhe whole personality of man." It engages "a plane of experience" deeper than the intellect can ah.In his writing, as in his relationship to creation, Merton always reached for this deeper place. in bis essay on the Russian pet Boris Pasternak, whom Merton admired greatly, Merton draws a connection between the way we read Scripture and the way we view the created world. Merton wrote of Pasternak that "he reads the Scriptures with the avidity and the spintual imagination of Origen and he looks on the world with the illurninated eyes of the Cappadocian Fathers - but without their dogmatic and ascetic preoccupations" (DQ, 16). The Bible can only be read with any real understanding by the person who approaches it with "avidity," and "spiritual imagination." The world can only be properly viewed by the person who adds to these qualities the "illuminated eyes of the Cappadocian Fathers."

Like Merton's literary output, the Biblical canon ranges across a variety of literary styles. And, like Merton's fertile and productive mind, the Bible defies al1 attempts to force its writings into simple systematic categones or to surrender its riches to a plundering of the rational mind. Merton, in his own writing, in his approach to the biblical canon, and in his encounter with the created world is more eclectically sacramental than systematically theological or dogmatically rationalistic.

Merton speaks of the sacramental nature of the Bible in Contemplation in a World of Action, where he cautions his readers

Don? think that every tirne you read the Bible you must always be getting the loftiest possible theological sense! In the Bible, theology is embedded in material images and if you don't see the images you don't get the theological sense completely. The theological sense is not only an intellechial message addressed purely to the mind, a purely speculative meaning. There are meanings in the Bible which are communicated in concrete, living, material imagexy, in material elements, fie, water, etc. One has to be sensible, sensitive, sensitized to the material qualities of these things in order to get the divine message. (emphasis added) (CWA, 360) The language Merton uses here is important. We are to pay attention to "material images." We are to notice tcuth, which is "communicated in concrete, living, material imagery, in material elements." We are to approach the Bible with our senses, noticing

Page 117 %e material qualities of these things." These are the skills which cm deepen our encounter with creation.

We need to see, smell, taste, hear, and touch the world. We need to find our way beyond ail those boundaries which separate us from ûuly engaging in Life. We need to get our hands dirty, to exert ourselves to climb steep paths through the woods, to saerthe discornfort of cold rain soaking down our neck. We cannot enter the real world by watching a movie, readiig a book, or even hearing an inspiring lecture on the complex interrelationships of the eco-system. When we live only in our heads revering the intektual endeavour above al1 other ways of knowing, we limit our ability to grasp ûuth. In the Western world we need to leam that there are more ways of knowing than can be grasped merely by the exertion of that muscle in our heads we cal1 our brain. Some things can only be learned through the feel of the earth on the soles of our feet and the wind in our hair. We need to recapture the kind of intuitive heart-grasp of tnith which Merton points to in his understanding of the Bible. Padovano writes, "The Bible becarne the focal point for his emerging view of the univene. He sought not to explain it but to experience it." Or, as Lawrence Cunningham expresses it, "Merton, fiom his earliest monastic days, attempted to draw on resources to push beyond text to naked meaning"

For Merton, this kind of knowing is sacramental. This deeper knowing pushes "beyond text to naked meaning." The linear rational thought processes of the dogmatic theologian are an inadequate vehicle to make this deeper journey. Reason's approach to the text is often static. The rationalist attempts to fix the tmths of Cod in permanent immutable thought categories. Sacramental knowing, on the other hand, is rich, complex, fluid and open ended. A sacramental approach to knowing encourages the mind to expand beyond the safe cornfortable place of tidy rationalism, allowing the Spirit of God to sink more deeply into the human heart. Sacramental knowing is dive and active. It requires participation, engagement, cornmitment. We cannot know deeply or ûuly without becoming involved.

4 Anthony T. Padovano, The Human Journey, 63. Lawrenece S. Cunningham, "Harvesting New Fruits: Merton's 'Message to Poets," The Merton Annual, 23.

Page 118 In his essay on Pasternak, Merton uses the Russian writer to hint at his own understanding of sacramental reality. He unites, '%heinextricable union of symbolism and communion, in life itself, is what gives Pasternak's vision of îhe world its liturgical and sacramental character (always remembering that his 'titurgy' is entirely nonhieratic and that in him sacrament implies not so much esbblished ritual form as living mystery)" @Q, 17). Sacraments travel in the territory of "union" and "communion." A sacrament partaices of the reality to which it points, a reality it can never contain but towards which it can lead the open willing human heart. Sacrament implies "living mystery." The danger in al1 theology is that we corne to believe that our words have contained God. A contained God is a dead God.

Merton's parenthetical comment tbat Pasternak's '"liturgy' is entirely nonhieratic," is provocative. The revelation of God in creation is profoundly democratic. As the Apostle Paul says, "what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of ihe world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made" (Romans 1: 1 O, 20).

The sacrarnent of creation is the great equalizer among al1 people. The presence of God in creation creates a level playing field in whicfi al1 people are granted equal access to the mystery of transcendence which lies at the source of al1 creation. Because God is evident throughout mation, al1 human beings "are without excuse" (Romans 1:20b). There is no place in a sacramental creation to excuse îhe denial of the Creator on the basis of ignorance.

No special skills are required to be touched by the silent awesome beauty of the sunrise. 1do not have to master diffïcult foreign languages, or remote cultural contexts in order to discem the mysterious presence of a mighty power beyond myself in the stormy Pacifk Ocean waves crashing on the shore. 1do not need a theologian to interpret for me the wonder of reemerging life every spring. We do not need a mediator between ourselves and the wonder of God communicated through creation.

Page 119 if the church has in the pst denied or undemtated the importance of Wsrevelation in creation, it may pady be due to an unconscious desire to maintain control over the flock. Ifeveryone cm have qua1 access to God by sitting on the beach watching the sun sparkie on the waves, what need will there be for churches, clergy, bible studies, potluck suppers? How much has the church been led by fear and insecuity to keep the revelation of God safely locked away behind the church doors, in an attempt to insure that a suitable number of people continue to occupy the pews on Sunday hoping to hear God's word? Devotion in church on Sunday should simply be the culmination of that worship which has taken place throughout the week as we have responded to the presence of God we encounter in our routine lives. Ifwe expect ail our understandings and awareness of God to be mediated to us durhg an hour or two of Sunday worship, we have a stunted view of God and put an urneasonable burden of responsibility upon church and preacher. in fact Sunday worship can be so caught up in language and reason, that it becomes completely divorced from the reai world of the rest of our lives. The words we use in our formal liturgical celebration of God's presence will be stunted and stifled if they do not aise as the culmination of on-going praise to the Creator.

Merton cautions us in Thoughts in Solitude to beware that words may in fact be a banier between human beings and God: "When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us hom the world nor fiom other men, nor hmGod, nor hmourselves because we no longer tmt entirely in language to contain reality" (TiS, 93). Merton does not discard words. There are few people who used as many words as Merton in twenty-seven years. But, Merton remained always conscious of the pmfound limitations of human language. He was always a Little suspicious of the use of language. ironicdly, if we take words too seriously, we nui the risk of robbing the Bible of its power to transform and give new iife. Something more powerful than rational understanding is taking place when we read the words of Scripture or view the graceful flight of an eagle circling ovethead.

Merton made the bold clah that when we allow the Bible to be the Bible it will have transforming power in our lives.

Page 120 The basic clah made by the Bible for the word of God is not so much that it is to be blindly accepted because of God's authority, but that it is recognlied by its transforming and liberatingpower. The "word of God" is recognized in actual experience because it does something to anyone who really "hears" it: it transforms his entire existence. (OB, 44) (Merton's emphasis) As we allow God's word to speak for itself in and through Scripture we will be changed. The Bible bhgs transformation. Like a seed planted deep in the soi1 of our lives, God's word will sprout and grow producing God's fitfrom within. Merton encountered Christ in Scripture in the same way that he encountered Christ in creation and these encounters transfomed his entire being. The purpose of encountenng God is transformation. When we open ourselves to the reality of God's presence we will be changed. This process never stops. The problem with a static approach to the Scriptures is that we come to believe that our relationship with God has become fixed. Having heard definitively fiom God, we no longer need to listen. Certain possibilities have become closed; certain answers are irrefutably established and, therefore, certain questions no longer need to be asked.

Flavian Burns, who was Merton's last abbot, sums up Merton's basic message in a paper tbat appeared in the Cistercian Study Series.

What matters is our being in the state of hearers, listening and attentive to God. Even divine words are notas important in practice as our listening. As it is, the world is Full of God's word, sounding loud and clear in many and diverse ways, but an awhl lot of it is falling on unresponsive ears - and this is not only because of indifference or disbelief or sinfiil desires, but also because al1 too often otherwise good and generous people are too sure that they have already heard God's word and are busy now with trying to do it, or get it done, with the unfortunate consequence that they lose their hearing ability in the process.

The important issue is staying open, remaining engaged in the pmcess. For Merton, hearing was always the central requirement. Staying open and responsive was the prirnary discipline necessary to hearing the gentle whisper of God's ever-present word in the world. Merton viewed the discipline of Bible reading, like al1 spiritual disciplines, as

Flavian Burns, OCSO, 'The Conscioumess of God and Hi hupose in the Life and Writings of Thomas Merton," CrSrerciun Studies #42, ed Brother Patrick Bart (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1981).

Page 12 1 the "means of clearing away the bamers to the experience of the goodness of creation, a means of uncovering what is now considered supernaturai in the natural-" 'This "uncovering" allows us to perceive the presence of God in the world and to hear God's voice whispering in the trees.

The pmcess is not unlike finding a beautifil antique piece of fumiture that someone has foolishly painted over and that must be stripped to recover and refinish its original beauty. It is the work of re-creation in, by, and through Christ. 8 This process of "te-creation" requites the full engagement of the human participant.

When we hear God's word, wherever it occurs, that word always calls us to become involved; we are drawn into a conversation.

Becoming involved in the Bible does not mean simply taking everything it says without the slightest murmur of difficulty. It means at once being willing to argue and fight back, provided that ifwe are clearly wrong we will finally admit it. The Bible prefers honest disagreement to a dishonest submission. One of the basic truths put forward in the Bible as a whole is not merely that God is always right and man is always wrong, but that God and man can face each other in an authentic dialog: one which implies a true reciprocity between persons, each of whom fully respects the other S rights andpeedom. (OB, 44)

For Merton, '?he true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message he wants or expects to hem, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light" (CP, 90). Nature never anives at a settled static place.

Change is the essence of life; it is, for Merton the determining factor in our ability to grow spiritually: "On this readiiess to change depends our whole supematural destiny" (NM, 90). Change is essential to a biblical understanding of Christian faith: "Anyone who has read the Psalms and the New Testament with any attention recognizes that one of the most essential facts about Christianity is that, being a religion of love, it is also at the same thea religion of dynamic change" (LLiv, 140). To refuse to change is to refùse the risky life of Christian faith. To strive to avoid change is to choose to die.

7 Raymond Bailey, Thomas Merton on Mysticism, 78. ' Ibid.

Page 122 Cbaage requires openness to new possibilities; it requires the creative, life-giving death of lethg go of what is, in the hopes of mbracing the new fiture that may be.

The Bible does not attempt to briag us to a iked unchangeable place, It atternpts rather to open us to the unsettling wind of God's Spirit, leading us always on into new possibilities. There is no map laid out that cm predict ahead of tirne ail the eventualities which our lives will encounter. A static word uttered once and for al1 as a series of lifeless edicts cannot satisfy the hurnan need for a living relationship with God in the midst of al1 the cbgeableness and uncertainty of life in the world.

The Bible challenges Our fiiodamental presuppositions about life and about ourselves, always calling us on to deeper insights and new depths of understanding. [t is an unsettling book ifwe allow it to speak in its own voice. It will oflen raise more questions than it answers. As Anthony Padovano says,

[Wlhen Merton came to wcite of the Bible late in his career he saw it as an expression of an approach to life he and the century had corne to adopt as its own. The Bible was seen as a stniggle, a scandal, a system of contradictions. 9

Merton writes, "In the progress toward religious understanding, one does not go fiom amer to answer but hmquestion to question. One's questions are answered, not by clear, definitive answers, but by more pertinent and more crucial questions" [OB, 29'30). We come to the Bible not to 6nd flawless logic, but to encounter the Christ who first challenges us with the question of his identity: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16115). Again and again in the Hebrew Scriptwes people are confronted by God posing this same question: Moses in the burning bush, Elijah in wiad and fire, Job in the whirlwind. God demands, "Who do you say that 1 am?" The question requires cornmitment, a decision of faitû. It requires, in the end, a response that cannot be ultimately validated by perfect logic and flawless reason.

When we allow God's creation to enter our consciousness, more questions are raised than we will ever be able to answer with the limited grasp of reason. We are forced to co-nt out deepest convictions about the ultimate reaiity of iife. Wlat lies at the source

Page 123 of al1 this beauty and wonder? How can we account for the fact that He in al1 of its extraordinarily delicate balance and complexity continues to be so resilient? How do we come to tems with the painful bmtality nature intlicts on some people and the disproportionate mercy and grace with which creation blesses others?

Having wrestled with the question of Christ's identity, we are driven to confront the question of our own identity. Who are we? Where do we fit into the scheme of creation? What is our pmper place in relationship to the birds of the air and the fish of the sea? How can we live properly in relationship to the rest of creation?

To some such questioning may seem ineverent, evidence of a faltering faith. For Merton, on the contrary, the inability to face questions is a sign of immaturity.

A person who has not reaily matured thinks that the mere presence of such questions is a problem, an infidelity. He may choose to question the values of the monastic life, but in doing so he imagines that he is automatically rejecting them, and then the life becomes unbearable because though he cannot apparently accept the monastic life he also feels he cannot commit himself to anything else. (CWA, 79) But questions are not to be avoided as if they were a challenge to faithfblness. Rather, we are to recognize that the God who speaks in the complex often paradoxical voice of Scriptwe and in the subtle tones of creation is big enough to allow us to roam around searching, asking questions, arguing, even fighting against what we believe we have heard. Merton cautions that, "We too ofien forget that Christian faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it becomes a principle of certitude and peace" (CGB, 70). It is the process of "questioning and stniggle" which will lead us to know God: "Growth in experience implies a serious self-doubt and self-questioning in which values previously held seem to bbe completely exploded and no other tangible values come to take their place" (CWA, 129). The arguments, the fights, the questions are the sacramental mediators of God's reality in my life. We might take the Psalmist as our model. His hem bursts with questions for God often inspired by his encounter with creation: "When 1 look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindfùl of them, mortals that you care for them?" (Psaims 24:10,8:3).

Page 124 The writer of the Psalms certainly had no quaims about posing hard questions to the Creator, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so fai. hm helping me, fiom the words of my mg?""Wh profit is there in my death, if 1 go down to the Pit? Wil the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfuiness?" (Psalrns 22:1,30:9). It was in the very process of posing hard demanding questions, that the Psalmist's awareness of God was tenewed. This is why the environmental conversation in which our culture is presently engaged offers such a hitful field for a deeply spiritual discussion. Environmentalists are challenghg us to ask hard questions. They are demanding that we explore our place within the created order and that we accept honestly the often detrimental impact of the human species upon the environment. Whether we recognize it or not, when we ask profound questions about our place in the world we are asking about out relationship ta ultimate reality. We are asking questions about God. And, wherever people are genuinely willing to open themselves to seeking the truth, God will be found: "When you search for me, you will fmd me" (Jeremiah 29:13).

Merton had roamed widely and deeply in the pages of Scripture. He had rambled far and wide in the Kentucky hills around Gethsemani. He had feasted deeply on both of these sources of God's word. Both the book of creation and the writings of the Bible were essentiai elements in the dialogue of Merton's Me. As he wrote, the shape of God's thought in both Scripture and creation flowed nanirally out of Merton's pen ont0 the page. They filled his writing and shaped his thinking, leading him closer and closer to the fiillness of life God had given him in Christ.

Page 125 M. Beyond Distraction

our material riches unfortunately imply a spiritual, cultural, and moral poverty that are perhaps far greater than we cm see. (Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters) Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefdly to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 52) those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall ru.and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

(Isaiah 40:3 1) Thomas Merton believed that boredom is a driving force behind the consumer mentality of our culture.

The modem Amencan is kept in terror of boredom and unfulfillment because he is constantly being reminded of their imminence - in order that he may be induced to do something that will exorcise him for the next haif hour. Then the ternir will rise up again and he will have to buy something else, or turn another switch, or open another bottle, or swallow another pill, or stick himself with a needle in order to keep fiom collapsing. (CWA, 257) Shopping is one of our culture's most enthusiastically embraced distractions. Consurning is one of the dmgs of choice to which we resort in order to escape our feeling that life is an endless unbearable procession of dteary demands and responsibilities. This passion for distraction is one of the fuels that drives the devastating impact we human inhabitants have on our environment.

Merton foresaw the temble influence humans would have upon the earth by our constant demand for accumulation and stimulation: "ifwe strive to be happy by filling al1 the silences of Me with sound, productive by tuming aii life's leisure into work, and real by tuniing ail our king into doing, we will only succeed in producing heu on earth" (NMI, 127). Since Merton wrote these words in the 1950's, the heu we have produced on this earth has developed at a Pace he would have found hard to imagine. And the greater the

Page 126 devastation we produce the more franticaliy we strive to escape hmthe dawning realization of the consequences of our actions.

The United States, the greatest consumer culture on earth, accounts for 5% of the world's population and consumes 40% of the world's resources. Proportionately, Canada is not far behind. We have the easiest, most cornfortable lives of any people ever in history. Yet we spend massive amounts of time, energy and money on inventive ways of escaping the reaiity of our lives. We are restless, wreasy and strangely discontent with our privileged lot in life. We cannot find inner peace, so instead we seek entertainment. in an essay in The Monasric Joumey, Thomas Merton posed the question, "What is it that makes every man struggle with himself?" Mat lies at the root of the unease that seems to be so characteristic of modem Western culture? Why are we so endlessly dissatisfied, so restless, so out of joint with ourselves and with our world? Merton suggests an answer: "lt is the deep, persistent voice of his own discontent with himself. Fallen man cannot abide to live with himself." Merton then goes on to suggest that the world offers a counterfeit imer peace: "Now the apparent peace which the world gives is bought with the price of continua1 distraction" IMJ, 101).

The malls of the nation are filled with those who are crying to escape fiom themselves. Movie theatres burst with clients seeking to find an alternative world fiom the one they have come to find intoletable. Every night thousands of us eat away hmhome, in a Futile attempt to escape fiom the humcùum of routine life into the stimulating fantasy of foreign cuisine and the exotic environment of an endless variety of highly priced eateries.

Jn his book Addiction and Grace, psychiatrist Gerald May argues that contemporary Western culture is characterized by a deep addictive nature. He suggests that "major addiction is the sacred disease of our tirne." Later he suggests: "1 am not being flippant when 1 say that al1 of us suffer fiom addiction."' May understands this prevailing addiction which afnicts out culture as "a deepseated form of idolatry." in fact, May

' Gerald G. May, Addiction & Gmce: Love and Spirftualiiy In The Healing of Addictions (New York: Ha KoUins, 1988), viii, 3. kd., 13.

Page 127 argues, the addict is ultimately yeaming for M. And, May says, Thomas Merton teaches that 'Wtimately, our yearning for God is the most important aspect of our humanity, our most precious treasure; it gives our existence meanhg and direction."

The tragic tnith, tbetefore, about distractions is that, like any other addiction, they cm never satisfy the goal for which they are putsueci. We may tind momentary respite from the dismal routine of our daily lives in the excitement of a new pwchase. But, when we return hmthe mal1 we must still face the reality of demanding children and a difficult iife at home. Each new distraction may offer brief satisfaction but îhey will soon cease to be effective. The latest distraction quickly becomes routine, When our most ment distraction no longer works, we must move on and find greater stimulation in order to avoid the reality of our lives.

Distraction merely drowns out the inner voice, it does not answer any questions, or solve any problems, it merely postpones their solution. And behind the smokescreen of amusements and projects, the inner dissatisfaction marshals al1 its forces for a more terrible assault when the distraction shall have been taken away. At last, the spirit that has fled fiom itself al1 its life, is stnpped of its distractions at death and finds itself façe to face with what can no longer be avoided: there is nothing now to prevent it hmhating itself utterly, and totally, and for ever. (MJ, 101)

We are afraid to face ourselves because we fear that we will hate what we find. We run f?om contemplating the truth of our human condition in the still mirror of reflection because we know that the image we will see reflected back is a broken and imperfect image of what we desire to find in ourselves. So we keep dg.We look for endless ways to hide fiom ourselves. Until finally we are so disconnected Eiom our true selves that there seems to be no way back. The hticrush must go on. Our TV screens grow bigger and the images on the screen become ever clearer as our vision of ourselves grows duller and more remote.

Merton paints a damning picture of contemporary consumer cuIture.

The world we live in assails us on every side with useless appeals to emotion and to sense appetite- Radios, newspapers, movies, television, billboards, neon-signs

Page 128 surround us with a perpetud incitement to pour out our money and our vital energies in futile transitory satisfactions. The more we buy the more they urge us to buy. But the more they advertise the less we get. And yet, the more they advertise the more we buy. Eventudly dl will consist in the noise that is made and there will be no satisfaction left in the world except that of vain hopes and anticipations that can never be tùlfilled. (SM, 69) So sick is the grasping acquisitiveness of our consumer culture that, Merton says, "You are of no use in our affluent society unless you are always just about to grasp what you never have" (CGB,98). An addictive consumer society is ultimately dehumanizing and destructive. As the contemporary and prophetic social critic Wendel1 Berry points out, the basis of consumerism is the idea %at when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly - an idea that has swvived to becorne the basis of our present economy. It is neither natural nor civilized, and even fiom a 'practical' point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid." '

Something must change within us. We mut find the courage to tum fiom the distractions and face our own reality. Merton was driven to the monastery, partly out of a desire to find a kind of freedom he believed was not possible in the world. He fled to the monastery in the hopes of breaking the addictive pattern of the world. Merton recognized, as May suggests, tbat it is important to note that "the spiritual growth process involves far more relinquishment than a~~uisition."~

Merton knew that the market forces driving the world, made it impossible for people to find the space and peace which are essential to enable human beings to maintain a connection with God. He believed that the peace and the quiet necessary to truly know God were impossible for anyone sumunded by the endless temptations to distraction which the world offers. Merton quotes one of the desert Fathers who said: "Just as it is impossible for a man to see his face in troubled water, so too the sou1 unless it be cleansed of alien thoughts, cannot pray to God in contemplationyy(WD, 50,Sl). For Merton, the monastery was to be that place where the troubled waters of his life could be calmed and his mind cleansed. Of course, as we have seen already, shply moving

4 Wendeii Berry, Recollected Essays, û4. Gedd May, Addichon & Gm,105.

Page 129 within the monastery walls could not accomplish Merton's goal. He soon found that the distractions of the world could be as present within the calm monastic environment as in the chaos of the world outside. Something more than a mere change in extemai circumstaaces was necessary.

Increasingly, towards the end of his life Merton becarne clear about a tool which might calm the waters and allow us to encounter more hlly the God who can calm the waters and wean our hearts fiom the world's distractions. On June 23,1968, just five months before his death, Merton wrote: "Reaiize more and more that what reaily matters to me is rneditation - and whatever creative work springs fiom it" (OSM, 132). Three years eariier he had written, "Importance of meditation. God will take care of the rest" (DWL, 302). A change in external circwnstance will not ultimately bring any real change in our lives. Real change cornes as a result of inner change. lnner change is facilitated by a quiet, gentle practice of meditative prayer. in his preface to The Deserr Fathers, M. Basil Pennington warns

We cannot hope to fiee owselves hmthe faise self that the values of this world encourage us to create, to escape the self-alienation that marks ow lives from the womb and is constantly fostered by a worldly society, if we do not at times and even regularly seek periods of quietness. 6

Meditation is the means by which we consciously choose to turn away fiom the distractions of Me. We stop the busyness. We reject the flash and dash of the world's shiny omaments. We intentionally stop the fiantic rush and just sit still. To spend even twenty minutes a day in silent meditation may be the most radical and counter-cultural activity in which we can engage. When we meditate we are communicating to our bodies that ail those things aerwhich we normaily chase do not in fact matter. We are setting a whoie new order to our priorities. We are cancelling the power even of words; we are denying the lie that things, activities, and entertainment cm be an ultimate source of peace, satisfaction and meaning in our lives. When we meditate we remove ourselves for

6 M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., "Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition," The Desert Fathers, translated and introduced by Helen Waddeii (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), xxi.

Page 130 a moment fTom tbe dominant illusions and fintasies of our culture: "lt is in solitude that illusion finaily dissolves" (LLiv, 23). As the fourth century hhbishop of Constantinople, John Cbrysostom, expressed it:

in the world there are many things obscuring the view and disturbhg taste and hearing. That is why it is necessary. ..to run away hmall excitement and take rehge in the desert where tranquillity is total, serenity complete, noise dos not exist, where eyes are fixed on God alone and ears attentive to hearing only the divine words.

There is a direct link between the practice of meditation and our desire and our ability to live responsibly in relationship to the rest of creation. When we meditate we are intentionally lowering the threshold of out need for stimulation and of our tolerance for noise and hyper-activity. The stillness wbich meditation begins to buiid into our Iives makes it more and more difficult for us to participate in the endless violent rush of tbase activities which are destroying the world around us. Meditation diminishes the desire in our hearts to accumulate and own. It reduces our need to exert abusive power over other people and over the rest of the world. Meditation attacks the root of that illusion which suggests that things in the extemal wotld can ultimately provide any lasting satisfaction.

When we set ourselves a regular practice of mediation we are deciding ta develop letting- go muscles in our lives. in meditation we let go of our agendas. We lay dom our great plans and schemes for life. We resign hmthe iiiusion of control and begin to develop the ability to accept and receive life as it cornes. As Thomas King has written, "in contemplation our senses with their images and our mind with its ambitions and judgements are set aside; we are relieved of the whole burden of opinions by which we identify ourselves." '

If we practice regular letting go in mediation it will be casier for us to let go of the desire to purchase another unnecessary and fiîvoious gadget for the house. When we sit for twenty minutes every day and intentionally release the anxieties, fears, and anger which so often drive our üves, it will be easier to let go of the aggressive driver whose

'Quotcd in Oiivier Cleinent, The Roats ofChriPtian Mystich (New York: New City Press, 1993), 199, Thomas M. mg,Metlon Mystic At The Center of Amenca, 50.

Page 13 1 obnoxious road manner would previously have caused ow heiuts to blister with cesentment. Merton reminds us that "by giving up what 1 wanted I ended up by having more than I had thought of wantingy'(SJ, 343).

The practice of meditation opens us ta üfe+ By intentionally opening ourselves each day through quietiy sitting and calming al1 the other clamouring voices of the world, we become more sensitive and more open to the reality of the world around us. We make ourselves more available to true knowledge of W.Merton suggests that meditation has the power to move us beyond knowledge about God to intimate experience of God.

Meditation is for those who are not satisfied with a merely objective and conceptual knowledge about life, about God - about ultimate realities. They want to enter into an intimate contact wiîh tnith itself, with God. They want to experience the deepest realities of life by living them. (SDM,44)

When we chase derthe amusements the world has to offer we are fumbling towards an experience of ''the deepest realities of life." But we are looking in dl the wrong places. We are like a young person who believes that it is possible to sustain healthy nutrition on a diet of chips and soft drinks. The world's amusements cannot feed us with the real food of the spirit.

The flashy distractions the world presents cannot give us "an intimate contact with tnith itself, with God." Contact with God is experienced when we let go of everything else. A hand that is clasped around the Metsof life cannot open itself to the satisfaction of God's gracious presence. At best the amusing distractions the world offers wili numb our spirits, at worst they will deepen our hunger and send us on an endless chase after greater and greater stimulation ieading to a Iife that becomes a kind of living death. For Merton, meditation is the means by which we can wake up hmthis death and begin again to ûuiy live: "Meditation is almost al1 contained in this one idea: the idea of awakening our interior self and attunhg ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to cespond to His grace" (SDM,98). if we are to truly live in a healthy and renewed relationslip with the created world, we must experience this kind of awakening of our inner self. Only the awakened inner self cm know the beauty of creation. The heart that is distracted, and preoccupied mhing

Page 132 fiom one over stimdating event to the next, cannot notice the faint sweet smell of juniper in the fiesh evening air after a spring rain. The consciousness that has been bombarded with the violent images and noise of video cm barely perceive the gentle moming Song of the robin welcoming the dawn of a new day.

Merton implied that there is a direct relationship between our ability to meditate and our co~ectionwith and love for creation: "For me landscape seems to be important for contemplation. 1 have no scniples about loving it" (Dm,65). Creation helps Merton to enter into contemplative prayer. And, contemplative prayer seems to be connected to Merton's love fur the created world. Creation bctions according to a different rhythm than the humanly manufactured world which so preoccupies us and which can be such a barrier to communion with God. When we enter deeply into the created world, the fienetic pattern of our routine lives is calmed; we become centred in a different dimension. It is here, Merton tells us that, "God discovers Himseif in us" (NSC,39).

For Merton, this "place," this "center" where God is encountered takes on the dimensions of an actual geographical location: "This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circurnference is nowhere." But, unlike most countries we might visit, "You do not find it by traveling but by standing still" (NSC,81). Stillness will guide us to this land. In his lovely description of the monastic vocation in Contemplarion in a World of Action, Merton points the way forward for anyone who would like to enter this place at the centre where God abides.

A monk seeks silence and solitude because there his mind and heart can relax and expand and attain to a new perspective: there too he cm hear the Word of God and meditate on it more quietly, without strain, witlwut forcing himself, without being canied away in useless abstract speculations. The monk is by definition a man who lives in seclusion, in solitude, in silence outside of the noise and the confusion of a busy worldly existence. He does this because seclusion provides certain necessary conditions for his life: an interior freedom, silence, liberation hmtrivial concems that arise fiom the overstimulation of the appetites and the imagination. The monk finaliy seeks solitude and silence, let us admit it, because he knows that the real fhit of his vocation is union with God in love and contemplation. An apt saying of the Moslem Sufis cornes to mind here: 'The hen does not Lay eggs in the market place.' (CWA, 247)

Page 133 For the contemporary consumer, escaping the market place wiU probably mean hding regular time to dedicate to solitary meditation in order to break the stranglehold of consumerism on ou.souls. It will also mean occasionaîiy getting out of the city that is dedicated to the market place, and reireating to the natural world where getting and spending are not the predominant order of reality,

The hermit priest Charles Brandt who lives in the temperate rain forest of Vancouver Island sees a strong connection between meditation and our relationship to the created world.

Ifonly we could lemto pay attention and teach others to do the same, 1 thùik we could corne to appreciate the story of the universe. We could lemto commune with nature and the natural world, realizing that the natutal world is a community of subjects to be comuned with, not a collection of objects to be used and exploited. We would be able to be in touch with our own inmost self, and this primarily through meditation - for meditation is simply learning to pay attention. Meditation opens us to the wodd. When we are open to the world, we can notice, we can pay attention. When we truly pay attention, creation itself will teach us what we need to know in order to live more carefuIly and more respecifully on this earth.

Meditation encourages us to find value in things we might once have held to be useless. In his personal version of a poem by Chuang Tm,Merton tells the story of "The Useless Tree."

The ûunk is so distorted, so hl1 of knots, no one can get a straight plank out of it. The branches are so crooked you cannot cut them up in any way that makes sense.

There it stands beside the road. No carpenter will even look at it. (WCT,35)

Having portrayed this useless tree, the poet paints a picture of the wildcat who can leap upon its prey but eventually "Lands in the trap." He compares the wildcat to the yak who is "Great as a thundercloud," but "can't catch mice!" and is therefore ignored. The poet concludes by returning to the 'kuseless tree."

Charles Brandt, Selfand Environment: On Retreat with Charles Brandt (London: Medio Media Ltcl., 1997), 33.

Page 134 So for your big tree. No use? Then plant it in the wasteland In emptiness, walk idly around, rest under its shadow; no axe or bill prepares its end. No one will ever cut it dom. (WCT,36) When we meditate we change our consciousness and learn to value those things the world holds to be useless. We lem to respect the things that are weak, broken, and twisted. We become sensitive to the gentle tender dimensions of life. No fawn lily will ever survive the ravages of the blackberry plant. But, when the blackbemes are cut back and the mots pulled up, the delicate drooping pale cream star of the fawn lily will emerge. A Garry Oak meadow may not have the pragmatic value of a vegetable garden but its place in the order of creation is no less valuable. Its open space of beauty and tranquility in the midst of the chaos of life makes a profound contribution to the well-being of al1 life.

When we meditate, we give ourselves space to breathe again. We root out the foreign growth which so oAen chokes and strangles our lives. Like gardening, meditation teaches respect for the processes of life; it helps us to listen and be sensitive to the condition of the world and of other people as we find them. We leam to pay attention and, as we pay attention, we discover a growing awareness of responsibility for the world. A practice of meditation combined with a genuine encounter with the natural wodd will show us that we belong to this world more intimately than we had previously known.

In The Sign of Jonas Merton speaks of "thcee different levels of depth" at which human beings can choose to live. First there is "the slightly troubled surface of the sea," where we "toss in the wake of other men's ûaEc: passing liners" (SJ, 338). Here is where we conduct the routine of our daily lives. We make our plans; we organize ourselves and we conduct our great campaigns. We cannot escape this level of lüè. But, if we live only on îhis htlevel, we will never be fiee of the restlessness and anxiety which inevitably accompany the turbulence of ordinary living.

Second, is the level of peace and rest. Here we expecience the reality of Jesus' call to "Corne to me, al1 you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and 1will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). The obsessions and presccupations of my daily life fall away. 1

Page 135 am able to lay down those burdens which mutinely grind me dom. My heart ch;my breathing becomes more gentle; I reach the end of al1 my striving, my pushing and my aggression. This is the place where 1am restored and renewed, refieshed to continue living in the chaos of the world. If1 stop here 1will experience great blessing and tremendous benefit. But there is a level beyond this place of simple rest.

It is difficult for words to describe this thkd level of life. Merton says this is the level of life where, "Everything is spirit. Here God is adored" (SJ, 340). On this level we experience the complete oneness of al1 life. It is here we recognize that

the whole world is aware of itself in me, and that '1' am no longer my individual and limited self, still less a disembodied soul, but that my 'identity' is to be sought not in that sepuration fiom al1 that is, but in oneness (indeed, 'convergence'?) with al1 htis. (MZM,18) Differences are resolved; we come to see ourselves as part of the intricate web of existence, related and connected to al1 other beings. Merton writes: "This is the holy cellar of my mortal existence, which opens into the sky" (SJ, 340). Here al1 separation breaks down. Merton is united with the created world and no longer experiences himself as separate fiom creation: "It is a stmnge awakening to find the sky inside you and beneath you and above you and al1 around you so that your spirit is one with the sky, and al1 is positive night" (SJ, 340).

When we begin to be able to live on this "îhird level," we discover the place where ow tension with the world is ultimately resolved. This is the place of environmental peace and harmony. Here we are moved within to cease harming the world around us. We feel the pain of the earth. We experience the darkness and violence our conduct so ofien brings into this world. We begin to be transformed hmthe inside. We are changed people. We no longer need to nui deral1 those things the world holds to be so important. We are no longer caught in the insanity of the rush and turmoil of our acquisitive culture. This is the place where we leam respect and honou. for ail of the created order. Here we find God in ail things and know that al1 things have their being, their existence and their meaning in God. This is the place where we move beyond al1 those distractions which the worid so readily offers. We are set fiee hmthe boredom

Page 136 which drives so much of our fimetic culture. And, set fiee hmboredom, we are able to slow dom, stop and encounter the world in a kshway with a depth and authenticity that lies at the heart of spiritual practice.

In this free encounter with the world, we will come to share Merton's famous experience at Fourîh and Walnut: '9 was suddenly overwhelrned with the reaiization that 1 loved ail those people, that they were mine and 1their, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were stranger. It was like waking fiom a dream of separateness" (CGB, 156). Set fiee fiom the illusions of "the world" we will see our connection to al1 people and the link between al1 people and the physical space which we share. This awareness ofour interconnectedness will lead us to live more deeply in harmony with the vision of God for the integrity of ail creation. Thus that %eedom" for which "Christ has set us fiee" (Gaiatians 5:L) becomes the source of heaiing for al1 creation.

There is a paradox at the heart of al1 Merton's writing. While he wrote often about the extemal circumstances of the world, in the end, al1 his writing directs us to the essential reality of the imer joumey. In his introduction to The Wisdom of the Desert, Merton wrote that "Love demands a complete inner transformation" (WD, 18). if the human race is to discover new ways of being on this planet it will only be as we discover this "complete inner transformation" which is the work of love. The disciplines of silence, solitude, stability, paying attention, poverty, and emptiness towards which Merton directs us, have as their goal the re-creation of the hurnan heart in the image of our Creator. If we are to experience the remarkable 'Yeast of straw" towards which Merton directs us, it will only be as we choose to take up the disciplines of the inner life and follow wherever they may lead. Ail our joumeys are inner joumeys. All our hope lies in the renewal of the hurnan heart and the discovev of God at the centre of our being.

Page 137 Works Of Thomas Merton Cited

The Ascent to Truth. NY: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1951. (AT) Bread ln The Wilderness. NY: New Directions Books, 1953. (BiW) Collected Poems. NY: New Directions Books, 1977. (CP)

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. W. Image, Doubleday, 1966. (CGB) Contemplation in a World of Action. NY: image Books, 1971. (CWA) Dancing in the Water of Lge: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton. Volume S:l963-l965. Robert E. Daggy, ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. @WL) Disputed Questions. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, Publishers, 1953. @Q) Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer. neJournals of Thomas Merion. Volume 2:194 1-1952. Jonathan Montaldo, ed. San Francisco: Harpdollins Publishers, 1996. (ES) Geography offioliness. ed. Deba Prasad Patnaik New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1980. Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. Volume 6:f 966-1967. Christine M. Bochen, ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997. (LL) Lge And Holiness. N'Y:Doubleday, 1995. (originally published, 1963) 0 Love and Living. NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979. (LLiv) me Monastic Joumey, Patrick Hart, ed. NY: image Books, 1978. (MJ) Mysfics and Zen Masters. NY: Del1 Publishing Co., Inc., 1967, (MZM)

The New Man. London: Burns & Oates, 196 1. (NM) Nav Seeds of Contemplation. NY: New Directions, 1961. (NSC)

No Man b An Island. NY: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1955. 0 Opening the Bible. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1970. (OB)

The Other Side of the Mountain: The Endof the Joumey. Volume 7~1967-1968.Paîrick Hart, O.C.S.O., ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998. (OSM)

Page L38 Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation. Volume 1: 1939-1941. Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O., ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995. @TM)

A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Lijë. Volume 3: 1952-1 960. Lawrence S. Cunningham, ed. San Francisco HarperCollins, 1996. (SS)

The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton. NY: DeU Publishing Co., Inc. 1959. (Seci)

The Seven Storey Mountain. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1948. (SSM)

The Sign of Jonas. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1953. (SJon)

The Silent Life. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1957. (SL)

Spiritual Direction and Meditation. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Lihirgical Press, 1960. (SDW A Thomas Merton Reader, rev. ed. Thomas P. McDonell, ed. NY: ImageBooks, 1974. (Reader) Thomas Merton: Spiritual Mater. Cunningham, Lawrenece S., ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.

Thoughts In Solitude. Boston: Shambaia Publications, Inc., 1993. (originally published 1958) (TB) Tuming Toward the World: The Pivotai Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton Volume 4: (9604963. Victor A. Kramer, ed. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. (TTW)

The Way of Chuang Tnr. NY: New Directions, 1965, (WCT)

The Wisdorn of the Desert. NY: New Directions, 196 1. (WD)

Wltness to Freedom: Letters in Times of CrrSk WiUiam H. Shannon, ed. NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994. (WtF)

Zen and the Birds of Appetite. W. New Directions, 1968. (ZBA) Bailey, Raymond. Thomas Merton on Mysticism. New York: Image Books, 1975.

Burns, Flavian, OCSO. "The Consequences of God and His Purpose in the Life and Writings of Thomas Merton." Cistercian Studies Series 42. Ed. Brother Patrick Hart. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 198 1.

Carter, Ken. "Wbat I'm Learning about the Ministry fiom Thomas Merton." Quarterly Rmiew. 17:2 (Summer 1997) pp. 159-167. deWaal, Esther. A Seyen Day Journey With 7'homas Merton. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 1992. - "Thomas Merton: 'the diftèrence between looking and seeing."' Church Times (2 April, 1998).

Forest, Jim. Living With Wisdom: A L$e of Thomas Merfon. New York: Orbis Books, 1991.

Furlong, Monica. Merton: A Biography. New York: Bantarn Books, 1980.

Graham, Terry. "Sufism: the 'Strange Subject' Thomas Merton's Views on Sufism," SuJi 30 (Summer 1996), 3 1-40.

Griffin, John Howard. Follow the Ecstnsy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton. New York: Orbis Books, 1993.

Hart, Paûic k ed. The Message of Thomas Merton Cktercian Studies Series 42. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1981.

Higgins, John J. Thomas Merton On Prnyer. New York: DoubIeday & Co., [nc., 1973.

Higgins, Michael W. Herettc Bld: The Spirihcal Geography of Thomas Merton. Toronto: Stoddart hiblishing Co., 1998.

Kilcome, George A. Jr. The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality, and Social Concerns. CollegviUe, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996, volume 9.

Llavador, Fernando Beltran, "Brother Silence, Sister Word: Merton's Conversion and Conversation in Solitude aud Silence," Speech given at the htgeneral meeting of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Irelaad in Southampton, England, May 19%.

Page 140 McDargh, John. "The Life Of The Self In Christian Spirituaiity And Contemporary Psychoanalysis." Horkons. 11 :2 (Fall1984), 344-360. Mott, Michael. The Seven Mountains Of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton Miffiin Company, 1984. Padovano, Anthony T. The Human Joumey: Thomas Merton, Symbol of a Cenhiry. New York: image Books, 1984. Pennington, M. Basil, O.C.S.O. "Thomas Merton And Byzantine Spirituaiity." The American Benedictine Review 38, no. 3 (September 1987): 261-275.

Rice, Edward. The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and Hard Lfe of Thomas Merton. New York: hage Books, 1972.

Shannon, William. 'Somerhing QfA Rebel ': Thomas Merton, His Lijè and Works. Cincinnati, Ohio: St. Anthony Messager Press, 1997.

- Thomas Merton 's Dark Path: The Inner Experience of u Contemplative. New York: Farra., Süaus, Giroux, 198 1.

Teahan, John F. "A Dark and Empty Way: Thomas Merton and the Apophatic Tradition." The Journal of Religion. 58:l (Jan. 1978): 263-287.

Webster, Robert. "Thomas Merton and the Textuality of the Self: An Experiment in Postmodern Spirituality." TheJournal of ReIigion 78: 1 (Jan. 1998), pp. 387-404.

Woodcock, George. Thomas Merton Monk and Poet: A Critical Slirdy. Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & Mcintyre, 1978.

mer Works

Arndt, William F. & F. Wilbur Gigcich, A Greek-English Laicon of the Neiu Testament Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Austin, Richard Cartwright. Baptized into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987.

Basho, Matsuo. The Nawow Road To The Deep North And Other Trrivel Sketches, tram. Nobuyuki Yuasa. London: Penguin Books, 1966. Beck, Charlotte Joko . Everyday Zen: Love & Work. San Francisco: Harper, 1989.

Page 141 Berry, Thomas, CP. B@ending the Earth: A Theology of ReconciIiation Between Humans and the Earth. Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1992.

- me Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988,

Berry, WendeI1. Recollected Essays 1965-1980. New York: North Point Press, 1995.

Bo& Leonardo. EcaIogv & Liberatiort: A New Puradigm. MaryknoH, New York: Orbis, 1996.

Brandt, Charles A.E. Meditationsfiom the Wilderness. San Francisa HarperCollins, 1997. - Selfand Environment: On Retreat With Charles Brandt. London: Medio Media, 1997.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Land- Overtures To Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977.

Carson, Rachel. "An Enduring Voice: Unpublished Writing by Rachel Carson." Orion 17:4 (Autwnn 1998).

Clement, Ofvier. The Roots of Christian Mysticism. New York: New City Press, 1993.

Daniel, John. The Trnil Home. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

Deloria, Vine Jr. God Is Red: A Native View ofReligion. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1994.

Duming, Alan Thein. This Place On Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1996.

Griffith, Bede. Rettirn to the Center. Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1977.

Hayden, Tom, The Lost Gospel ofthe Earth: A Cal1for Renewing Nature, Spirit and Polirics. SanFranciso: Sierra Club Books, 1996.

Keyes, Ralph. Tbnelock: How Lve Gor Su Hectic and What YOMCan Do About Ir. New York, HarperCollins, 199 1.

Lane, Belden C. Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituaiiiy. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.

- The Solace OfFirce Landscapes: Ejrploring Desert and Mountain Spirituafity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand Couny Almanac And Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University h,1949.

Page 142 Macy, Joanna, and Molly Young Brown. Coming Buck To Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society, 1998.

May, Gerald G. Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality In The Healing of Addictions. New York: HaperCollins, 1988.

McCaslin, Susan, ed. A Matter of Spirit: Recovery of the Sacred in Contemporary Canadiun Poehy. Victoria, B.C.: Ekstasis Editions, 1998.

McDonagh, Sean. To Care For The Earth: a cal1 to a new theology. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear & Company, 1986. McFague, Sallie. The Body of Gud: An Ecological meology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. - nietaphorical theology: Models of Cod in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982. - Super, Natural Christiuns: How we shodd love nature. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. Nash, lames A. Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility Nashville: Abingdon, 199 1.

Oliver, Mary. Blues Pastures. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995. - JWite Pine: Poems and Prose Poems. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994. Stine, Annie, ed. The Earth At Our Doorstep. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996.

UnderhiIl, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study In the Nature And Development of Man 's Spiritual Consciousness. New York: E.P. Dutton, 191 1. Wiikinson, Loren, ed. Earthkeeping In The Nineties. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1991.

Page 143