Comments on: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

By: Redneck Catholic

Redneck Catholic — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:55:29 +0000

I think, for me, the key to understanding Merton is the passage–I forget what book it was in–where he said that he thought he needed to stop writing books for publication, and his spiritual director agreed, but his superiors didn’t.

The money he brought to Gesthemani was considerable.

Yet I think that writing was in the end harmful to him.

In a lot of ways, I see in Fr. M. Louis a microcosm of the church in the period of the 40s-60s, and a manifestation of the malaise that found it’s expression in the 70s,80s and 90s.

By: Bill White

Bill White — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:01:42 +0000

Merton helped bring me, along with 10000 others, into the Church with his Seven Story Mountain. Anymore, though, his prose drives me up the wall with its absolutes – everything, nothing, always, never – it’s nearly as annoying as Scott Hahn’s @#$!@# puns.

By: shoofoolatte

shoofoolatte — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:11:15 +0000

I guess there are different smokes for different folks. I have been reading Merton for over 40 years, and I never tire of him. He leads me deeper into my faith and invites me to greater intimacy with God. More than any other spiritual writer, I consider Merton to be my guide, and I trust him totally not to lead me down a false road.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:54:46 +0000

Please, people. If Merton doesn’t do it for you, fine. But to fault the man, or to undermine the importance of his life or his teaching, by claiming that you don’t care for his accidental death — how very absurd. Let’s hope none of us meets a sudden demise, lest someone foolishly claim that it isn’t classy — or saintly! — enough.

By: Brian Sullivan

Brian Sullivan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:35:39 +0000

and then never offers a single poetic line in answer to that question, even though any faithful, whether seminarian or laity could offer a dozen replies. Maybe she “left” to serve God? To proclaim Jesus in her apparitions? To demonstrate perfect obedience? To be the invisible Ark that contains the New Covenant?

Isn’t Merton’s answer in this poem is that she left to go to visit Elizabeth? Sometimes we expect poems to give us the profound answer when it’s all about red wheelbarrows and white chickens.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15537

Brian

By: Mary Jane

Mary Jane — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:43:43 +0000

I remember being greatly taken with Merton, then gradually less so. He was a product of his times. Maybe he had some good things to say. But the endless traveling and writing, being lionized and then sailing off onto the dangerous waters of eastern philosophy – was that all so good? And the unprepared death? And to what extent did his abbey see him, perhaps unconsciously, as a marketing tool? Perhaps he should have disappeared into community life as Fr. Louis? Who knows?

But that was the time. I think what will last is the autobiography.

By: MMajor Fan

MMajor Fan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:40:57 +0000

My problem with Merton is just as you said: “The goal of my life is not to know myself perfectly. It is to serve and love as Jesus did” and this Marian poem illustrates the problem with him perfectly.

He raises the question of:
Why do you fly from the drowned shores of Galilee,

From the sands and the lavender water?

Why do you leave the ordinary world, Virgin of Nazareth…

I mean, he starts with such a great question, with such great poetic affectation, and then says nothing about the faith. Yes, he did hold himself back from the faith.

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:06:25 +0000

Merton brings me to that scriptural story about the one who said he wouldn’t serve, but who in the end did, and the one who said he would serve, but who in the end did not.

It wasn’t until I read his “official biography” that I had to weigh what he actually did, how he treated others in his life who appeared to be closest to him and who seemed to have great sympathy for him and were faithful friends. He didn’t treat them very…well…honestly or with equal measure of maturity. I think that was due to his constant battle with impulsiveness and the pleasure or release that it gave him….always finding a way around rules and the people who stood for them. In that, yes, the culture of the time aided him in its rationale. It wasn’t the greatest culture for stability – and that vow was then a difficult one to obtain. He also probably learned uncertainty within his own “dysfunctional” upbringing and his need to survive in unpredictable surroundings disguised as stable. Like so many, he could see such untamed personal needs within himself – usually after some great public failing and “being caught” – and then become rather depressed over it. And that is what drew and draws so many – the usual “being human”. That is also what drew him into his ever unsatisfied need for more solitude….or at least his idea of what it had to be for him. And like so many of those times of turmoil I think he believed he found some kind of answer just by siding with the questioners of the culture and not those too sacrificed to it by, well, just circumstances. Why the honesty in the title “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”.

In the end I think his own need to prove his ability to “love” was limited to more a proof that he could become overly emotionally caught up – like “those others” – with never any honest intention of realistic commitment to that one other! Sometimes I blame more those in authority over him, to guide him, because he really needed their guidance. But, rather, they too, in such times, were willing to let the blind lead the blind!

But then, what an amazing seeming prophecy of 9/11!!

By: Fr. Steve

Fr. Steve — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:10:55 +0000

Thomas Merton very well embodies the Catholic culture and spirituality of his time and place– with all its wonders and ambiguities. His emphasis on his own self and experiences cannot simply be attributed to egoism, but it is a representation of the cultural discourse of the era. Some folks will recognize in his writings their own movement through the pre-concliar and post-conciliar period, with all its attendant dialectices and dissonance. I think that it is the current discomfort with the post-conciliar legacy that makes some in the current Catholic ethos uncomfortable with his continued influence and contribution. However, others see in him, their own struggle for attentiveness, receptivity and the death to self that is required for all those who risk the depths of authentic prayer. He may never prove to be worthy of canonization, but many will likely continue to find in his writings a fellow sojourner and spiritual friend, who like themselves, is simultaneously gifted by divine grace, and yet still a sinner in need of mercy.

By: Joan H.

Joan H. — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 07:44:41 +0000

The goal of my life is not to know myself perfectly. It is to serve and love as Jesus did.

I know we’re supposed to talk about Merton here, but I had to say Thank You to Amy for these two sentences. Most of my life has been struggle of one sort of another, but almost all of my own making. Only in the past four years or so have I been able to leave all that, but until I read those two sentences, I didn’t realize what had happened, what had changed in me, or even that I had changed.

Everything is clear in perspective now. Thank you, again.