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Sunday, December 07, 2008

Famed monk Thomas Merton lived what he wrote

This article highlights a prime-time TV program dedicated to Thomas Merton to be aired on Dec 19th. It looks like a worthwhile program, but you'll have to look for it in your time-zone.

By RAY WADDLE • December 6, 2008

America's most famous monk lived up the road in Kentucky at Gethsemani monastery, writing books and wrestling with his own questions and impulses, until his sudden death 40 years ago next week.

People read him today because he lived what he wrote about, seeking to renounce futile self-centeredness in order to discover the freedom of living with God. As one commentator put it, he thrilled at the life of prayer the way others thrill at Notre Dame football.

A fine new documentary, Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton (prime-time debut on Channel 8 is 7 p.m. Dec. 19), gives insight into a remarkable man's conversion to God and solitude, and his struggle against fame. (The helpful companion book, $39.95, includes the DVD.)

Convinced that secular success is a sham, he entered the monastery's disciplines. He entered, also, out of self-disgust, after a destructive college year in England (rumors were he fathered a child) and a bohemian embrace of New York City. At Gethsemani, he surrendered to something new, the peace of God, which emboldened him to speak against forces of modern war and modern despair.

He lived often as a hermit at the monastery but corresponded with popes, poets, laypeople and children. He believed contemplation was not just for monks but available to anyone in the turbulent world.

He dreamed of peace

Fearless belief in God gave him confidence that he had something to learn from Asian spirituality. He attended a conference of Christian and Buddhist monks in Thailand when, on Dec. 10, 1968, he was electrocuted by a faulty electric fan in his hotel room. He was 53.

The 21st century has yet to live up to this 20th-century risk-taker and his dreams of reconciliation and peacemaking. But let's not make a cult of Merton. Instead, seek his books, like New Seeds of Contemplation, where he says, "If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed — but hate these things in yourself, not in another.''

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