THE THOMAS MERTON SOCIETY OF CANADA

New in November 2008: please go to IN THE FOOTSTEPS: THOMAS MERTON IN ASIA, 1968 for an article about my 2000-2001 trip to Asia, retracing Merton's last journey, and written to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of his death there on December 10, 1968.

"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" (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1966).

I first encountered Thomas Merton when I was about 15, and browsing in the then very new Dunbar Library in Vancouver. I ran across a book with an interesting binding—of burlap--called Seeds of Contemplation. I read a page or two, and thought to myself, “I don’t understand this—it’s deep; but some day I will.” About 25 years later I did my PhD dissertation on that book and four other related texts.

My next meeting with Merton occurred about three in the morning on the graveyard shift at the pulp mill in Port Alberni in the summer of 1958. I was working in the pulp lab, and the conventional wisdom among the summer students was that since the supervisors never came by the graveyard shift, we might as well read. The supervisor came in, saw me reading, frowned at me, then scribbled a few lines in the log (supervisors and the supervised did not communicate by speech in the mill, only in writing!), to the effect that one more such offence and I would be on the next ferry to Vancouver. I was reading The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton’s first major work of autobiography; and the incident fixed the moment very clearly in my memory.

The Abbey of St-Michel de Cuxa, near Prades, Merton's birthplace

Then came a visit to a Catholic bookstore in Spokane in the spring of 1972, when I was just about to start my graduate work in Toronto. I ran across Ed Rice’s fairly crazy little book, The Man in the Sycamore Tree. Ah yes, Thomas Merton, I thought: whatever happened to him? The book told me, sort of, but what it really did for me was give me a glimpse of Merton as the architect of a renewed Christian spirituality for the 20th century and beyond; hence my decision to do my dissertation on him, a decision I have never regretted.

What then is Merton’s contribution to such a renewal? One part of the answer has to do with content, the other with process or method. His subjects of concern were and are great ones: war/peace/nonviolence, the encounter in transforming depth of the great religious traditions, and the renewal of the hyper-rational and technologized life of the West through what he calls contemplation, a word to which he gives a larger meaning than earlier writers in the Christian tradition.

In terms of process or method, he gives a personal or autobiographical dimension to virtually everything he writes—not simply his journals and letters, but his works of discursive spirituality as well. He shares his soul with the reader, his hesitations, his affirmations, his contradictions, his frustrations. The consistent reader sees how he grows and matures, how the later Merton is light-years advanced beyond the earlier, rigid Merton. He stands now, I believe, on the boundary between Christianity and other traditions, and the boundary between Christianity’s past and its future.

Gilgamesh, legendary Mesopotamian king, carved on a capital in the cloister of the Abbey of St-Michel de Cuxa

Eventually, enough people began to read Merton that a society was formed to promote the study of his works and his concerns: the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS), with its headquarters at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky (www.merton.org), of which I was president for the years 2007-09. Later, what began as a BC chapter of the ITMS became an affiliate, the Thomas Merton Society of Canada. You can find out what we are doing, and how to join, at our website (www.merton.ca).

The moving and guiding spirit in the TMSC from the time of its foundation has been Judith Hardcastle, who now serves as program director. Judith’s energy and imagination are sources of wonder to all who know her; and a quick look at the Program Guide on the TMSC website will provide very convincing evidence of this.

Under her leadership, and that of the team she has gathered, we are expanding from our Vancouver base into other Canadian centres, not to develop a personality cult around Merton—he would find this laughable--but, inspired by his insights, to try to bring to our own times and situations something of the depth and integrity which he brought to his. In the last couple of years, we held two series of conferences in urban centres, the first series called “Climate of Fear, Commitment to Peace,” the second series called “Finding Hope in a Time of Despair.” At present, we are encouraging the formation of reading groups in any location where a critical mass of folk interested in Merton wish to organize them. We are also planning a pilgrimage to Cuba—further info at www.mertonincuba.ca--and check out the TMSC website for further information.

THE LOUISVILLE EPIPHANY

"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. ...There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun" (Conjectures).

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		Thomas Merton Square was officially so named by the City of Louisville, Kentucky, on March 18, 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of the epiphany which Merton experienced on this spot in 1958. Those present and joining in the dedication included representatives from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha'i traditions, as well as the Muhammad Ali Center and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.