Found By Merton

Have you ever picked up a book, started reading and known that this book was for THIS time? That is how I feel about Thomas Merton's, "New Seeds of Contemplation".  I had given up on Merton after attempting his autobiography twice in Korea and never really getting past half way.  I never ventured onto his other stuff.  This book "New Seeds" crossed and re-crossed the Pacific ocean waiting to be read for such a time as this.  It is almost like Merton found me.  ; ) 

I'm so intrigued by how relevant Merton is for our time because in his own way he deals with issues of faith, being human, humility, community and his own changing culture.  When I picked up the book to read I thought he'd be talking about the contemplative life in the sense of "prayer" and "separation from the world".  Instead I've found that he is speaking about LIFE in all its wrestling, struggling and living.  

I wrestle with what it means to faithful to both Christ and his calling on my life in this post-modern, post-Christian, post-whatever context.    I struggle with the developed world's demands to be busy and productive as if we have to prove we are "some-bodies". We are really becoming "some-things". I don't always know what choices to make in the world of technology. I just know that "being connected" isn't making me connected in the way my humanity longs for.  Yet in Merton's book he describes LIFE within all the dissonance.  Even in the wrestling, struggling and choice making the One we call God breathes life into each one of us, giving us new life and making us more truly human than we were before.  

Line after line I underline.  Here are just a few "seeds" to ponder. 

Merton on Solitude

"the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.  And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing." (80)

Merton on Tradition/Revolution (and for me the description of a "post-modern" people)

"For the revolutions of men change nothing.  The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk of dynamism sounds foolish.

Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.

It demands a fundamental act of renunciation that accepts the necessity of starting out on the way to God under the guidance of other men.  This acceptance can be paid for only by sacrifice, and ultimately only a gift of God can teach us the difference between the dry outer crust of formality which the Church sometimes acquires from the human natures that compose it, and the living inner current of Divine Life which is the only real Catholic tradition." (144-145)

Merton on Faith

"True faith is never merely a source of spiritual comfort.  It may indeed bring peace, but before it does so it must involve us in struggle.  A "faith" that avoids this struggle is really a temptation against true faith." (106)

Merton on Integrity

" In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide.  The two turn out to be practically the same thing. ....  "humility consists in being precisely the person you actually are before God, and since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe.   But this individuality will not necessarily assert itself on the surface of everyday life.  It will not be a mater of mere appearances, or opinions, or tastes, or ways of doing things.  It is something deep in the soul." (99)