Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo
The spiritual autobiography of Trappist monk and political
activist, Thomas Merton.
Reviewed by: Joan Prefontaine
About Joan Prefontaine
Compiled from seven volumes of personal journals, this book contains the
best of Merton's writings on his struggle to live an authentic religious
life. Merton's spirituality is not merely personal, but global in its scope,
and we get to savor many aspects of his political and social activism in
these pages, from his civil rights involvement to his friendships with the
Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day, Dan Berrigan, Joan Baez, D. T. Suzuki and other
notables.
At the same time, we get to know another, more solitary Merton, who asked to
be given a hermitage at Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where
he lived, because he desired a life of "peace, silence, purpose, meaning."
(He was granted permission to live full-time in the hermitage in 1965, three
years before his death.) In his hermitage he wrote: "There is no question
for me that my one job as a monk is to love the hermit life in simple direct
contact with nature, primitively, quietly, doing some writing, maintaining
such contacts as are willed by God, and being witness to the value and
goodness of simple things and ways, and loving God in it all." He felt that
by coming to the hermitage he had not left the world but instead had
"returned to the world"-the more natural and inspiring world of God's
creation.
Writing was a spiritual discipline for Merton. It was the process of writing
about his life and its ongoing complexity that mattered to him, not his
literary reputation (which he considered a spiritual hazard most of the
time). Even though Merton's memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain, had made him
famous, he was a monk obsessed with his own poverty of spirit. As the
editors put it, Merton "trusted only his real, conflicted self and its
inadequacies." His honesty forced him to walk a difficult path toward
reconciliation and joy, and that is why his journals are so universally
appealing.
Merton believed that idolatry is the greatest sin, and he saw it as being
prevalent in our society, though "almost completely unrecognized." He wrote:
"Fetishism of power, machines, possessions, medicine, sports, clothes, etc.,
all kept going by greed for money and power. The Bomb is only one accidental
aspect of the cult. Indeed, the Bomb is not the worst. We should be thankful
for it as a sign, a revelation of what all the rest of our civilization
points to: the self-immolation of man to his own greed and his own despair.
Behind it all are the principalities and powers whom man serves in his
idolatry. Christians are as deeply involved in this as everyone else."
Merton ate at the same table as everyone else, and did not set himself
apart. Reading this book, one might well find a place at the table too, and
be sustained by Merton's words.
Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals
Copyright © by Joan Prefontaine, 2003
Reviewed by Joan Prefontaine:
-- The Secret Life of Dust - by Hannah Holmes
-- Lying Awake: - by Mark Salzman
-- The Art & Craft of Playwriting - by Jeffrey Hatcher
-- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - by Stephen King
-- Earth Prayers From Around the World - Edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
-- The Beauty of the Beast - Selected by Jack Prelutsky, Illustrated by Meilo So
-- The Intimate Merton - Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo
-- Plainsong - by Kent Haruf
-- The Stone Diaries
- by Carol Shields
-- City of God - by E. L. Doctorow
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