Curious Christian

3 responses to “Thomas Merton on the Unknown”

1. 

   john arthur

   2011-02-23

   Hi Matt,
   Thanks for this quote from Merton. I have not read any of his works but this shows me that Ken Silva is too harsh in his comments when he calls him a “deceased heretic”. He seems to me to have been a humble Christian.
   Shalom,
   John Arthur

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2. 

   Andrew Park

   2011-02-25

   Dr Martin Luther King Jr had proposed a retreat with Merton for 1967, the year they both died.
   They both “shared the notion that those on the bottom [socially] were the only ones with the power to heal the whole – not through armed rebellion but through their power to forgive. Those in power had to find contrition of heart to accept their forgiveness. Those who profit from injustice must recognise their collusion with sin and do penance. And by opening themselves to a relationship they have long denied, the powerful find moral direc tion – perhaps for the very first time” (from Inchausti, Robert. 2005. Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries And Other Christians In Disguise. Brazos, Grand Rapids, p. 108).
   Merton was a Catholic liberation theologian, religious social critic, monk, poet (he identified with the beatniks), publicly opposed the Vietnam War, writer. He argued that the modern spiritual crisis (of the 50’s and 60’s in particular) was due to a crisis of authenticy.

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3. 

   Andrew Park

   2011-02-25

   For Merton the way back to an authentic spirituality required the “shedding of all false identifications foisted upon us by our ambitions, friends, family, politicians, advertisers, and religious ideologues” through a return to spiritual disciplines “aimed at purity of heart”. This involved “unconditional and [total] humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of oursleves and our situation as willed by Him”. It also meant renouncing “all deluded images of ourselves, [and] all exaggerated estimates of our own capacity in order to obey God’s will as it comes to us in the diffificult demands of life in its exacting truth. PURITY OF HEART is then correlative to a new spiritual identity – the “self as recognised in the context of realities willed by God. Purity of heart is the enlightened awareness of the new man, as opposed to the complex and perhaps rather disreputable fantasies of the “old man” (Inchauti, ibid, p.98-99).
   Merton advocated the spiritual disciplines of “prayer, silence, solitude, and recollection”, as an antidotes to modernity and false communal mythologies and self-interest, false identifications spiritually (ibid).
   He talked about the “simple message of the Gospel”, and criticised the tendency of people to jump on to the latest religious, political, social bandwagons – both Believers and Unbelievers alike. And he said about this “on this level, the division between [both] ceases to be crystal clear…Everybody is an Unbeliever more or less” (ibid. p.97).
   I think he was a modern day prophet, and social truth teller with an important message for society in his day and for our’s. The fact Dr MLK held him in great regard is a probable indication that his work needs to be studied more carefully and reflected about, particularly in regard to his writings about spiritual disciplines, confrontations with hyper-idividualism and hyper-reality mythologies (which plague postmodernity today), his writings about ethics.

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