silence shall be my answer

All things change and die and disappear.

Questions arrive, assume their actuality, and disappear.

In this hour I shall cease to ask them 

and silence shall be my answer.

The world that Your love created,

that the heat has distorted,

that my mind is always misinterpreting,

shall cease to interfere with our voices.

~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

.

The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message
 that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty
 because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words 
that will transform his darkness into light.  He does not even anticipate
 a special kind of transformation.  He does not demand light instead of darkness.
  He waits in silence, and, when he is "answered," it is not so much by a word
 that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably
 revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

from The Climate of Monastic Prayer

(one of last books he prepared for publication)

sketch by the author

I, myself am distraction

.

Suppose that my “poverty” be a hunger for spiritual riches: 

suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, 

I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience 

— what then?

Then everything becomes a distraction. 

All created things interfere with my quest for some special experience. 

I must shut them out, or they will tear me apart.

What is worst — I, myself am distraction. 

But, unhappiest of all — if my prayer is centered in myself, 

if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, 

my prayer will be my greatest potential distraction.

Full of my own curiosity, 

I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and 

torn myself away from myself and God.

I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: 

everything I touch turns into distraction.

~ Thomas Merton

from Thoughts In Solitude

sketch by the author

detached from results

.

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. 
In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being 
we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. 


We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, 
from effects that are beyond our control 
and be content with the good will and the work 
that are the quiet expression of our interior life. 


We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, 
to work without expecting immediate reward, 
to love without instantaneous satisfaction, 
and to exist without any special recognition.

~ Thomas Merton

from  No Man is an Island

hidden

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me 
by my own estimate of what I am. 

My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. 

And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion 
from the illusions of other men. 

We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it is because 

I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. 

Perhaps I have never asked myself
 whether I really wanted to become 

what everybody else seems to want to become. 

Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire
 what everyone seems to admire, 

I would really begin to live after all.

I would be liberated from the painful duty
 of saying what I really do not think 

and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth
 and the integrity of my own soul.

~ Thomas Merton

 from No Man is an Island

art by Van Gogh

hidden beneath Van Gogh's Patch of Grass
a portrait is revealed

touch of life

.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, 
a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious Unity
 and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. 
 There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence
 that is a fount of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness 
and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, 
welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility.  
This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator's
 Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, 
speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

In the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all life, the touch of Spirit.

Thus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia clamitat in plateis) 
and she cries out particularly to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.

Who is more little, who is more poor than the helpless man
 who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and without defense?
 Who is more trusting than he who must entrust himself each night to sleep?
  What is the reward of his trust?  Gentleness comes to him
 when he is most helpless and awakens him, refreshed, 
beginning to be made whole.  Love takes him by the hand, 
and opens to him the doors of another life, another day.

(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself in sickness,
 planned for himself, guarded himself, loved himself alone and watched
 over his own life all night, is killed at last by exhaustion. 
 For him there is no newness.  Everything is stale and old.)

When the helpless one awakens strong at the voice of mercy,
 it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin, (his own flesh, 
his own sister), as if Nature made wise by God's Art and Incarnation
 were to stand over him and invite him with unutterable sweetness
 to be awake and to live.  This is what it means
 to recognize Hagia Sophia.

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

born in Tao

Fishes are born in water

Man is born in Tao.

If fishes, born in water,

Seek the deep shadow

Of pond and pool,

All their needs

Are satisfied.

If man, born in Tao,

Sinks into the deep shadow

Of non-action

To forget aggression and concern,

He lacks nothing 

His life is secure.

~ Lao Tzu

translated by Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

no need

At least a flash of sanity: the momentary realization that there is no need
 to come to certain conclusions about persons, events, conflicts, trends, 
even trends toward evil and disaster, as if from day to day and even
 from moment to moment I had to know and declare (at least to myself):
 This is so and so, this is good, this is bad; we are heading for a “new era” 
or we are heading for destruction. What do such judgments mean?
 Little or nothing. Things are as they are, in an immense whole of which
 I am a part, and which I cannot pretend to grasp. To say I grasp it
 is immediately to put myself in a false position, as if I were “outside” it.
 Whereas to be in it is to seek truth in my own life and action, 
by moving where movement is possible and keeping still when 
movement is unnecessary, realizing that things will continue
 to define themselves ... - and will be more clear to me if I am silent
 and attentive,... rather than constantly formulating statements
 in this age which is smothered in language, in meaningless and inconclusive
 debate, and in which, in the last analysis, 
nobody listens to anything except what 
agrees with his own prejudices.



~ Thomas Merton

from Learning to Love

sketch by the author

humility

When humility delivers a man 

from attachment to his own words 

and his own reputation, 

he discovers that true joy is only possible 

when we have completely forgotten ourselves,

and it is only when we pay no more attention to our life 

and our own reputation and our own excellence 

that we are at last completely free to serve God for His sake alone.

~ Thomas Merton

window

St. John of the Cross compares man to a window through which the light of God is shining.  

If the windowpane is clean of every stain, it is completely transparent, 

we do not see it at all: it is "empty" and nothing is seen but the light.

But if a man bears in himself the stains of spiritual egotism and 

preoccupation with his illusory and exterior self, 

even in "good things," 

the the windowpane itself is clearly seen by reason of the stains that are on it.

 

Hence if a man can be rid of the stains and dust produced within him 

by his fixation upon what is good and bad in reference to himself,

 he will be transformed in God and will be "one with God."  

~ Thomas Merton

from Zen and the Birds of Appetite

plague of intolerance

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
 of large segments of the population which for some reason or other
 cannot face the responsibility of being persons and standing
 on their own feet. But give these persons a movement to join, 
a cause to defend, and they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, 
intoxicated as they are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious
 sense of transcending their own limitations. The member of a mass movement, 
afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as an individual,
 cannot face the task of discovering within himself the spiritual power 
and integrity which can be called forth only by love. Instead of this, 
he seeks a movement that will protect his weakness with a wall of anonymity
 and justify his acts by the sanction of collective glory and power.
 All the better if this is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier 
and less subtle than love. It does not have to respect reality as love does.
It does not have to take account of individual cases. Its solutions are simple
 and easy. It makes its decisions by a simple glance at a face, a colored skin,
 a uniform. It identifies an enemy by an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech,
 an appeal to concepts that are difficult to understand. 
He is something unfamiliar. This is not "ours." 
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

Here is the great temptation of the modern age, this universal infection 
of fanaticism, this plague of intolerance, prejudice and hate
which flows from the crippled nature of man who is afraid of love
 and does not dare to be a person. It is against this temptation most of all
 that the Christian must labor with inexhaustible patience and love,
in silence, perhaps in repeated failure, seeking tirelessly to restore, 
wherever he can, and first of all in himself, the capacity of love 
and which makes man the living image of God.

~ Thomas Merton,

from Disputed Questions

merton: on war and fear

.

.

The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace! This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading With a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of all the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. This is a nation that claims to be fighting for religious truth along with freedom and other values of the spirit. 

What are we to do?  That task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent and probably at every moment everywhere. We may never succeed in this campaign but whether we succeed or not the duty is evident. It is the great task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends on it. We must at least face this responsibility and do something about it. And the first job of an is to understand the psychological forces at work in ourselves and in society.

At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another. They do not even trust themselves.... They cannot trust anything because they have ceased to know  God.

It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above an our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this that makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves....

As if this were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artificially intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things that are not in themselves wrong. In all these ways, we build up such an obsession with evil, both in ourselves and in others, that we waste all our mental energy trying to account for this evil, to punish it, to exorcise it, or to get rid of it in any way we can.

We drive ourselves mad with our preoccupation and in the end there is no outlet left but violence. We have to destroy something or someone. By that time, we have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomenter of an conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with, there will be no more war....

In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery.

Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies--which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found....

I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together....

We must try to accept ourselves whether individually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil. We have to stand by the modicum of good that is in us without exaggerating it. We have to defend our real rights, because unless we respect our own rights we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the rights of others. We must be able to admit this not only as the result of self-examination, but when it is pointed out unexpectedly, and perhaps not too gently, by somebody else.

These principles that govern personal moral conduct, that make harmony possible in small social units like the family, also apply in the wider areas of the state and in the whole community of nations. It is however quite absurd, in our present situation or in any other, to expect these principles to be universally accepted as the result of moral exhortations. There is very little hope that the world will be run according to them all of a sudden, as a result of some hypothetical change of heart on the part of politicians. It is useless and even laughable to base political thought on the faint hope of a purely contingent and subjective moral illumination in the hearts of the world's leaders. But outside of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only permissible to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necessary to pray for it. We can and must believe not so much that the mysterious light of God can "convert" the ones who are mostly responsible for the world's peace, but at least that they may, in spite of their obstinacy and their prejudices, be guarded against fatal error....

For only love--which means humility--can exorcise the fear that is at the root of all war .

What is the use of postmarking our mail with the exhortation to 'pray for peace' and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles? This, I would think, would certainly be what the New Testament calls 'mocking God' - and mocking Him far more effectively than what the atheists do. The culminating horror of the joke is that we are piling up these weapons to protect ourselves against atheists, who, quite frankly, believe there is no God and are convinced that one has to rely on bombs and missiles since nothing else offers any real security. Is it then, because we have so much trust in the power of God that we are intent upon utterly destroying these people before they can destroy us? Even at the risk of destroying ourselves at the same time?

If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war....

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed--but hate these things in yourself not in another.

.

~ Thomas Merton

excerpt from his 1962 essay: The Root of War is Fear

The "mystery of things"

The "mystery of things" - where is it found?

Where is it, that it does not appear

At least long enough for us to see

It is a mystery?

What does the river, what does the tree

Know about it?

And, I who know no more about it than they,

What do I know about it?

Whenever I look at things and think

What men think about them,

I laugh like a stream

Falling with a cool sound

Over the stones.

For the only hidden meaning things have

Is that they have no hidden meaning.

Stranger than all that is strange,

Than poets' dreams and philosophical ideas

Is this: things are actually

Just what they appear to be

And there is nothing about them to understand.

Yes, here is what my senses learned

All by themselves:

Things do not have meanings: they have existence.

Things are the only hidden meanings of things.

~ Thomas Merton

Poems from The Keeper of the Flocks,11

to find himself in another

No, the great business of our time is this: 

for one man to find himself in another one who is on the other side of the world. 

Only by such contacts can there be peace, 

can the sacredness of life be preserved and developed 

and the image of God manifest itself in the world.

It is as if we met on a deeper level of life 

on which individuals are not separate beings...

it is as if we were known to one another in God.

...

Although we are separated by great distances and even greater barriers 

it gives me pleasure to speak to you as to one whom I feel to be a kindred mind....

...

It is true that a person always remains a person and utterly separate and apart from every other person. 

But it is equally true that each person is destined to reach with others an understanding and a unity which transcend individuality, and Russian tradition describes this with a concept we do not fully possess in the West- "sobornost."

from his letters to Boris Pasternak

~ Thomas Merton
from  A Life in Letters

art by Tony Karp

few are willing

To deliver oneself up,

to hand oneself over,

entrust oneself completely to the silence

of a wide landscape of woods and hills,

or sea and desert; to sit still while

the sun comes up over the land

and fills its silences with light.

...few are willing to belong completely

to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,

to breathe nothing but silence, to feed

on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life

into a living and vigilant silence.

~ Thomas Merton

from Thoughts in Solitude

our group identities

When you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? 

 The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say “yes” to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says “yes” to everyone.

 I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. . If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.

~ Thomas Merton

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

the secret

.

Since I am

Somebody's dream, 

I have a good life.

Sometimes I go away in my sailboat on a cloud

and take a quiet little trip.

I have a secret

which I have learned how to read inside myself;

if I told it to you, 

it would make you laugh.

My heart is naked

and no one can put clothes on it,

and nothing can be put on

that will not immediately fall off.

My secret is ignorant,

it doesn't sing songs,

no lie,

it has nothing to tell you.

My two eyes 

are maps of the planet -

I see everything

and nothing upsets me.

Just now

I was in China

and saw there a great piece of happiness

that belonged to one man.

And I have been to the center of the earth,

where there is no suffering.

If on your loneliest nights,

I visit other planets

and the most secret stars of all,

besides being no one,

know that I am you

and everybody.

But if I go away

without giving you a name to remember me with,

haw will I find

the right dream to return to?

You won't have to mark down

on your calendar that I am coming back;

don't bother to write me into your notebooks.

I will be around

when you aren't thinking about me,

without hair or a neck,

without a nose and cheeks

no reputation -

there won't be anything.

I am a bird

which God made.

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

song: if you seek...

If you seek a heavenly light

I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,

Raise strange suns for your new mornings,

Opening the windows 

Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal

Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!

Fear not, little beast, little spirit

(Thou word and animal)

I, Solitude, am angel

And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night

The pilgrim moon!

I am the appointed hour,

The "now" that cuts

Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash

Beyond "yes,"  beyond "no,"

The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you 

To golden-haired suns,

Logos and music, blameless joys,

Innocent of questions

And beyond answers:

For I, Solitude, am thine own self:

I, Nothingness, am thy All.

I, Silence, am thy Amen!

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by Edward Hopper

symbols

Traditionally, the value of the symbol is precisely in its apparent uselessness

 as a means of simple communication.  It is ordered toward communion,

 not to communication. Because it is not an efficient mode of communicating

 information, the symbol can achieve a higher purpose, beyond 

cause and effect. Instead of establishing a new contact by a meeting of minds

 in the sharing of news, the symbol tells nothing new:

 it revives our awareness of what we already know,

 and deepens our awareness. What is "new" in the symbol is the ever new

 discovery of a new depth and a new actuality in what is and always has been.

.The function of the symbol is to manifest a union that already exists

 but is not fully realized.  The symbol awakens awareness or restores it.  

Therefore it does not aim at communication but at communion. 

 Communion is the awareness of participation in an ontological reality: 

in the mystery of being, of human love, of redemptive mystery, 

of contemplative truth,

~ Thomas Merton 

from Merton's Palace of Nowhere 

by James Finley

the deep pull of love

When I am not present to myself, 

then I am only aware of that half of me, 

that mode of my being which turns outward to created things. 

And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. 

Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull 

of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God. 

My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. 

My senses, my imagination, my emotions, 

scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth. 

Recollection brings them home. 

It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit, 

and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love 

that reaches down into the mystery of God.

~ Thomas Merton 

from No Man is an Island

sketch by the author

first lesson about man

Man begins in zoology

He is the saddest animal

He drives a big red car

Called anxiety

He dreams at night

Of riding all the elevators

Lost in the halls

He never finds the right door

Man is the saddest animal

A flake-eater in the morning

A milk drinker

He fills his skin with coffee

And loses patience

With the rest of the species

He draws his sin on the wall

On all the ads in all the subways

He draws mustaches on all the women

Because he cannot find his joy

Except in zoology

Whenever he goes to the phone

To call joy

He gets the wrong number

Therefore he likes weapons

He knows all guns

By their right names

He droves a big black Cadillac

Called death

Now he is putting anxiety

Into space

He flies his worries

All around Venus

But it does him no good

In space where for a long time

There was only emptiness 

He drives a big white globe

Called death

Now dear children you have learned

The first lesson about man

Answer your test

"Man is the saddest animal

He begins in zoology

And gets lost

In his own bad news."

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by Picasso