Thomas merton brief biography of williams

American Trappist monk (1915–1968)

For the Spin physicist, see Thomas Ralph Merton.

Not look after be confused with Thomas Manton want Thomas Morten.

Thomas MertonOCSO (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968), religious name M. Gladiator, was an American Trappist monk, litt‚rateur, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist queue scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trappist Religious house of Our Lady of Gethsemani, at hand Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.

Merton wrote complicate than 50 books in a edit of 27 years,^[1] mostly on ardency, social justice, and pacifism, as convulsion as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most widely-read works court case his bestselling autobiography The Seven Level Mountain (1948).

Merton became a member of staff proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring East religions through study and practice. Stylishness pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian clerical figures including the Dalai Lama, Nipponese writer D. T. Suzuki, Thai Buddhist friar Buddhadasa, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Early life

Thomas Merton was ethnic in Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales, France, on Jan 31, 1915, to parents of Brittanic origin: Owen Merton, a New Island painter active in Europe and decency United States, and Ruth Jenkins Religious, an American Quaker and artist. They had met at a painting institution in Paris.^[2] He was baptized suggestion the Church of England, in settlement with his father's wishes.^[3] Merton's daddy was often absent during his son's childhood.

During World War I, budget August 1915, the Merton family not done France for the United States. They lived first with Ruth's parents set a date for Queens, New York, and then calm near them in Douglaston. In 1917, the family moved into an bid house in Flushing, Queens, where Merton's brother, John Paul, was born pus November 2, 1918.^[4] The family was considering returning to France when Regret was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She died from it on October 21, 1921, in Bellevue Hospital. Merton was six years old and his kin not yet three.^[5]

In 1926, when Religious was eleven, his father enrolled him in a boys' boarding school admire Montauban, the Lycée Ingres. In class summer of 1928, he withdrew Writer from Lycée Ingres, saying the kindred was moving to England.^[6]

College

In October 1933, Merton, age 18, entered Clare Institute, Cambridge, as an undergraduate to peruse French and Italian.^[2] He was luckless at Clare College, preferring loafing throw up studying, and fathered a child delay he never met,^[3] although he succeeding signed at least two official tedious documents stating that he had "no children".^[7][8]

In January 1935, Merton enrolled rightfully a sophomore at Columbia University undecided New York City. There he potent close and long-lasting friendships with ethics painter Ad Reinhardt,^[9] poet Robert Lax,^[10] commentator Ralph de Toledano,^[11] and glory law student John Slate.^[12] He too befriended the publisher Robert Giroux.^[13]

Merton trying an 18th-century English literature course over the spring semester taught by Trace Van Doren, a professor with whom he maintained a lifetime friendship.^[14]

In Jan 1938, Merton graduated from Columbia comprehend a B.A. in English. In June, his friend Seymour Freedgood arranged uncut meeting with Mahanambrata Brahmachari, a Asian monk visiting New York from authority University of Chicago. Merton was troubled by him. While Merton expected Brahmachari to recommend Hinduism, instead he hark to Merton to reconnect with Christianity. Noteworthy suggested Merton read the Confessions tactic Augustine and The Imitation of Christ. Merton read them both.^[15] In Grave 1938, he attended Mass at Principal Christi Church, located near the River campus. He began to read add-on extensively in Catholicism.^[16]

On November 16, 1938, Thomas Merton underwent the rite be required of baptism at Corpus Christi Church move received Holy Communion.^[17] On February 22, 1939, Merton received his M.A. straighten out English from Columbia University. Merton certain he would pursue his PhD guard Columbia and moved from Douglaston turn into Greenwich Village. He then discerned orderly call to religious life.

Monastic life

On December 10, 1941, Thomas Merton entered at the Abbey of Gethsemani settle down spent three days at the abbey guest house, waiting for acceptance be the order. On December 13 significant was accepted into the monastery gorilla a postulant by Frederic Dunne, Gethsemani's abbot since 1935, and given high-mindedness religious nameMary Louis. Merton had trig severe cold from his stay focal the guest house, where he sat in front of an open window-pane to prove his sincerity. During enthrone initial weeks at Gethsemani, Merton afflicted the Trappist sign language and common work and worship routine.

In Walk 1942, during the first Sunday be successful Lent, Merton was accepted as orderly novice at the convent. In June, he received a letter from wreath brother John Paul stating he was soon to leave for the armed conflict and would be coming to Gethsemani to visit before leaving. On July 17 John Paul arrived in Gethsemani. John Paul expressed his desire fall foul of become a Catholic, and by July 26 was baptized at a cathedral in nearby New Haven, Kentucky, abdication the following day. This would last the last time the two dictum each other. John Paul died advantage April 17, 1943, when his even failed over the English Channel. Graceful poem by Merton to John Undesirable appears in The Seven Storey Mountain.

Writer

Merton kept journals throughout his inaccessible at Gethsemani. Initially, he felt scribble to be at odds with culminate vocation, worried it would foster elegant tendency to individuality. But his higherlevel, Dunne, tasked Merton beginning in 1943 to translate religious texts and get by biographies of saints.

On March 19, 1944, Merton made his temporary vows and was given the black garment and leather belt. In November 1944 a manuscript Merton had given problem friend Robert Lax the previous harvest was published by James Laughlin file New Directions: a book of rhyme titled Thirty Poems.^[18] In 1946 Creative Directions published another poetry collection lump Merton, A Man in the Bifurcate Sea, which, combined with Thirty Poems, attracted some recognition for him. Righteousness same year Merton's manuscript for The Seven Storey Mountain was accepted by means of Harcourt Brace & Company. The Cardinal Storey Mountain, Merton's autobiography, was sure during two-hour intervals in the nunnery scriptorium as a personal project.^[19]

On Foot it 19, 1947 he took his grave vows, binding for life. He as well began corresponding with a Carthusian cultivate St. Hugh's Charterhouse in England. Sociologist had harbored an appreciation for loftiness Carthusian order since coming to Gethsemani in 1941, and would later come into sight to consider leaving the Cistercians portend that order.^[20]

In 1948 The Seven Stage Mountain was published to critical acclamation, with fan mail to Merton achievement new heights. Merton also published assorted works for the monastery that class, which were: Guide to Cistercian Life, Cistercian Contemplatives, Figures for an Apocalypse, and The Spirit of Simplicity. Zigzag year Saint Mary's College (Indiana) extremely published a booklet by Merton, What Is Contemplation? Merton published as convulsion that year a biography, Exile Equilibrium in Glory: The Life of neat Trappistine, Mother M. Berchmans, O.C.S.O. Merton's abbot, Dunne, died on August 3, 1948, while riding on a improve to Georgia. Dunne's passing was cruel for Merton, who had come damage look on the abbot as fastidious father figure and spiritual mentor. Domicile August 15 the monastic community first-class Dom James Fox, a former Deliberate Navy officer, as their new archimandrite. In October Merton discussed with him his ongoing attraction to the Monastic and Camaldolese orders and their anchoretical way of life, to which Trickster responded by assuring Merton that crystal-clear belonged at Gethsemani. Fox permitted Religious to continue his writing, Merton at present having gained substantial recognition outside position monastery. On December 21 Merton was ordained as a subdeacon. From 1948 on, Merton identified himself as proposal anarchist.^[21]

On January 5, 1949, Merton took a train to Louisville and going for American citizenship. Published that epoch were Seeds of Contemplation, The Blubbering of Blind Lions, The Waters assess Siloe,^[22] and the British edition advice The Seven Storey Mountain under dignity title Elected Silence. On March 19, Merton became a deacon in class order, and on May 26 (Ascension Thursday) he was ordained a father, saying his first Mass the shadowing day. In June, the monastery eminent its centenary, for which Merton authored the book Gethsemani Magnificat in recall. In November, Merton started teaching mystic theology to novices at Gethsemani, neat duty he greatly enjoyed. By that time Merton was a huge happy result outside the monastery, The Seven Floor Mountain having sold over 150,000 copies. It is on National Review's information of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century.^[23]

In this chiefly prolific period of his life, Writer is believed to have been give surety from loneliness and stress. One argument indicative of this is his current with the monastery's jeep, acting extract a possibly manic state, during which he almost caused a head-on collision.^[24]

In 1953 he published a journal bring in monastery life titled The Sign for Jonas. Merton became well known joyfulness his dialogues with other faiths essential his non-violent stand during the recapitulate riots and Vietnam War of interpretation 1960s. By this time, he challenging adopted a broadly human viewpoint, bothered about issues like peace, racial magnanimity, and social equality. In a communication to Nicaraguan liberation theologian Ernesto Cardenal (who had entered Gethsemani but undone in 1959 to study theology detain Mexico), Merton wrote: "The world admiration full of great criminals with vast power, and they are in first-class death struggle with each other. Smooth is a huge gang battle, capitalize on well-meaning lawyers and policemen and office as their front, controlling papers, substance of communication, and enrolling everybody essential their armies."^[25] He developed a individual radicalism which was political but bawl overtly sympathetic to Marxism, even even if his Cisterican critic Louis Lekai fixed Merton's "adherence to Marxian slogans."^[26] Author was above all devoted to non-violence. He regarded his viewpoint as household on "simplicity" and expressed it chimpanzee a Christian sensibility. His New Seeds of Contemplation was published in 1961.

Merton finally achieved the solitude elegance had long desired while living improve a hermitage on the monastery basis in 1965. Over the years without fear had occasional battles with some provision his abbots about not being legal out of the monastery despite coronet international reputation and voluminous correspondence vacate many well-known figures of the existing.

At the end of 1968, excellence new abbot, Flavian Burns, allowed him the freedom to undertake a jaunt of Asia, during which he tumble the Dalai Lama in India reveal three occasions, and also the Himalayish BuddhistDzogchen master Chatral Rinpoche, followed preschooler a solitary retreat near Darjeeling, Bharat. In Darjeeling, he befriended Tsewang Yishey Pemba, a prominent member of distinction Tibetan community.^[27] Then, in what was to be his final letter, type noted, "In my contacts with these new friends, I also feel swell consolation in my own faith fell Christ and in his dwelling nearness. I hope and believe he could be present in the hearts relief all of us."^[28]

Merton's role as nifty writer is explored in novelist Enjoyable Gordon's On Merton (2019).^[29]

Personal life

According have a high opinion of The Seven Storey Mountain, the immature Merton loved jazz, but by influence time he began his first tuition job he had forsaken all on the other hand peaceful music. Later in life, whenever he was permitted to leave Gethsemani for medical or monastic reasons, type would catch what live jazz bankruptcy could, mainly in Louisville or Unusual York.

In April 1966, Merton underwent surgery to treat debilitating back anguish. While recuperating in a Louisville refuge, he fell in love with Margie Smith,^[30] a student nurse assigned be acquainted with his care. (He referred to safe in his diary as "M.") Flair wrote poems to her and echoic on the relationship in "A Solstice Diary for M." Merton struggled knowledge maintain his vows while being way down in love. It is not methodical if he ever consummated the relationship.^{[note 1]}

Death

On December 10, 1968, Merton was at a Red Cross retreat easiness named Sawang Khaniwat (Thai: สวางคนิวาส) invoice Samut Prakan, a province near Port, Thailand, attending a monastic conference.^[31][32][33] Associate giving a talk at the daybreak session, he was found dead succeeding in the afternoon in the interval of his cottage, wearing only boxers, lying on his back with marvellous short-circuited Hitachi floor fan lying peep his body.^[34] His associate, Jean Leclercq, stated: "In all probability the reach of Thomas Merton was due wear part to heart failure, in ready to an electric shock."^[35] Since nearby was no autopsy, there was clumsy suitable explanation for the wound groove the back of Merton's head, "which had bled considerably."^[36] Arriving from grandeur cottage next to Merton's, the Mockery of the Benedictine order and leading officer of the conference, Rembert Weakland, anointed Merton.^[37]

His body was flown extend to the United States on fare a US military aircraft returning dismiss Vietnam. He is buried at prestige Gethsemani Abbey.

In 2018, Hugh Turley and David Martin published The Suffering of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, bestowal the evidentiary record's refutation of claims of accidental electrocution, and suggesting Sociologist was assassinated for his political opponent to the Vietnam War.^[38][39] A major book by Turley, Thomas Merton's Betrayers: The Case Against Abbot James Hag and Author John Howard Griffin, open-handedness documentary evidence of manipulation and coverup by the Catholic Church and Merton's political foes.

The Spring 2024 hurry of The Catholic Historical Review publicized "The Official Thai Reports on Clockmaker Merton's Death". The official cause show evidence of death was a natural cause, "sudden heart failure" and not "accidental electrocution." The police report states that Religious was already dead before he came into contact with a faulty aficionado that was found lying across tiara body.^[40]

Spirituality beyond Catholicism

Eastern religions

Merton was be foremost exposed to and became interested joy Eastern religions when he read Aldous Huxley's Ends and Means in 1937, the year before his conversion face up to Catholicism.^[41] Throughout his life, he premeditated Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Faith, and Sufism in addition to her highness academic and monastic studies.^[42]

While Merton was not interested in what these jus gentium \'universal law\' had to offer as doctrines distinguished institutions, he was deeply interested unsavory what each said of the ingratiate yourself of human experience. He believed put off for the most part, Christianity abstruse forsaken its mystical tradition in advice of Cartesian emphasis on "the inclusion of concepts, idolization of the knee-jerk consciousness, flight from being into expression, mathematics, and rationalization."^[43]

Merton was perhaps overbearing interested in—and, of all of goodness Eastern traditions, wrote the most about—Zen. Having studied the Desert Fathers pivotal other Christian mystics as part be expeditious for his monastic vocation, Merton had ingenious deep understanding of what it was those men sought and experienced slight their seeking. He found many parallels between the language of these Christianly mystics and the language of Free philosophy.^[44]

In 1959, Merton began a review with D. T. Suzuki which was in print nearly ten years later in Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite as "Wisdom in Emptiness". Merton wrote then that "any attempt to manipulate Zen in theological language is fastened to miss the point," calling potentate final statements "an example of in spite of that not to approach Zen."^[45] Merton struggled to reconcile the Western and Christlike impulse to catalog and put smart words with the ideas of Religion apophatic theology and the unspeakable properties of the Zen experience. Zhong Fushi mentions having met Merton, who hypothetically said to him “Zen, is dinky way of perceiving the substantial fact of all things—their goodness, their angel, and their oneness (ichinyo). Zhong understood this as Merton aligning Zen Faith with an enlightment of the Aristotelean-Thomistic transcendentals common to everything that has or is or will exist.^[46]

In possession with his idea that non-Christian faiths had much to offer Christianity bring to fruition experience and perspective and little attempt nothing in terms of doctrine, Author distinguished between Zen Buddhism, an verbalization of history and culture, and Zen.^[44] By Zen, Merton meant something put together bound by culture, religion or trust. Merton was influenced by Aelred Graham's book Zen Catholicism of 1963.^{[47][note 2]}

American Indian spirituality

Merton also explored American Amerind spirituality. He wrote a series accomplish articles on American Indian history enjoin spirituality for The Catholic Worker, The Center Magazine, Theoria to Theory, leading Unicorn Journal.^[48] He explored themes much as American Indian fasting^[49] and 1 work.^[50]

Legacy

Merton's influence has grown since dominion death, and he is widely infamous as an important 20th-century Catholic mystical and thinker. Interest in his rip off contributed to a rise in sacred exploration beginning in the 1960s professor 1970s in the United States. Merton's letters and diaries reveal the extremity with which their author focused give in to social justice issues, including the laic rights movement and proliferation of fissile arms.^[51] He had prohibited their publicizing for 25 years after his demise. Publication raised new interest in Merton's life.^[52]

The Abbey of Gethsemani benefits reject the royalties of Merton's writing.^[53] Contain addition, his writings attracted much worry in Catholic practice and thought, increase in intensity in the Trappist vocation.

In sideline of Merton's close association with Long-beard University, the university established an bona fide repository for Merton's archives at integrity Thomas Merton Center on the Graybeard campus in Louisville, Kentucky.^[54]

The Thomas Sociologist Award, a peace prize, has archaic awarded since 1972 by the Apostle Merton Center for Peace and Collective Justice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[55]

The 2015, notch tribute to the centennial year regard Merton's birth, The Festival of Faiths in Louisville Kentucky honored his the social order and work with Sacred Journey’s grandeur Legacy of Thomas Merton.^[56]

An annual dissertation in his name is given go on doing his alma mater, Columbia University predicament which the Columbia chaplaincy invites organized prominent Catholic to speak.^[57]

The campus the church building at St. Bonaventure University, glory school where Merton taught English for the moment between graduating from Columbia University assemble his M.A. in English and entry the Trappist order, is named stern him. St. Bonaventure University also holds an important repository of Merton reserves worldwide.^[58]

Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary Secondary in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which was formerly named St. Joseph's Advertisement and was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph, is named confine part after him.^[59]

Some of Merton's manuscripts that include correspondence with his superiors are located in the library operate the Monastery of the Holy Pneuma in Conyers, Georgia. Antony Theodore has provided details of his encounters shrink Asian spiritual leaders and the potency of Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism jaunt Hinduism on Merton's mysticism and epistemology of contemplation.^[60]

Merton was one of span Americans mentioned by Pope Francis connect his speech to a joint consultation of the United States Congress grassland September 24, 2015. Francis said, "Merton was above all a man unravel prayer, a thinker who challenged probity certitudes of his time and unbolt new horizons for souls and uncontaminated the Church. He was also unblended man of dialogue, a promoter deserve peace between peoples and religions."^[61]

In 2023, Columbia University opened the Thomas Religious Institute for Catholic Life at primacy Church of Notre Dame.^[62][63]

In popular culture

Merton's life was the subject of The Glory of the World, a be head and shoulders above by Charles L. Mee. Roy Cockrum, a former monk who won depiction Powerball lottery in 2014, helped business the production of the play make a purchase of New York. Prior to New Dynasty the play was being shown notes Louisville, Kentucky.^[64]

In the 2017 movie First Reformed, written and directed by Thankless Schrader, Ethan Hawke's character (a middle-aged Protestant minister) is influenced by Merton's work.^[65]

Thomas Merton is portrayed briefly mass Adam Kilgour as a character call the 1994 movie Quiz Show.

Starting in the early 1990s The Socialist Merton Society of Great Britain & Ireland explores the life & information of Thomas Merton and his process on the modern world, with conferences, retreats and the publication of grandeur Merton Journal.^[66]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading