Mind Moves:In 1967, Suzanne, a 16 year-old high-school student from California, wrote to a Trappist monk living in a hermitage in Kentucky, to ask him for a contribution to her school magazine. She offered to educate him about pop music in return. The monk's name was Thomas Merton and his reply to her set off a lively 18-month correspondence where they discussed song lyrics, war, jazz, Zen and the meaning of life.
They never met and their correspondence was terminated by Merton's untimely, accidental death - he was aged 53 and was electrocuted by an electric fan as he stepped from a shower while attending a conference in Bangkok. In most of her letters Suzanne signed herself "The Nut" or "Disaster" and addressed him regularly as her "Hippie hermit".
In his last letter to her on the occasion of her graduation from school, Merton wrote: "Go forth into the wide world and help it, if possible, make some kind of sense, or anyway less nonsense."
Sitting in the Thomas Merton Centre in Louisville, Kentucky, I'm privileged to travel back in time and be part of this extended conversation as I read their original letters to one another. These letters have been carefully archived along with 50,000 items of Merton's, including 1,350 photos he took, 900 pieces of his artwork, more than 2,000 letters he wrote and a vast library of his books, poetry and journals.
I have always found Merton a compelling individual. He wrote about spirituality in a way that made it sound deeply relevant and interesting. He deplored war and even though living in a cloistered hermitage, he was a profound inspiration and support for those in the front line of peace making. And although he was Catholic, and a true expert on mysticism with that tradition, he was wide open to the wisdom of the East.
He introduced Japanese Zen, Hinduism and Rumi's poetry to his Catholic novices in the mid-60s. His lectures were as amusing as they were inspiring. He teased his students for the many ways they took themselves too seriously, he made them laugh and no doubt cry.
But, above all, he kept coming back to his core message that the most important thing in life is to discover what it is that brings you alive, what it is that "turns your heart on", and to build your life around a fidelity to whatever that is.
Merton's passion was his search to become "fully human" and "authentic". The practice of contemplation and the discipline of monastic life grounded his hyperactive mind. They created a silent space where he could listen, make contact "with things as they are" and realise his connection with all living things.
The goal of contemplation is to deepen one's capacity for relationship. But, as Merton wrote, "we are not capable of union with one another on the deepest level until the inner self in each one of us is sufficiently awakened to confront the inner spirit of the other".
I think I was drawn to Merton because he was such a flawed and paradoxical human being. This was a guy whom you felt you could talk to and whom you knew would listen with respect and true compassion. He had extraordinary spiritual insights and he found meaning in dark corners of human experience where many fear to tread.
But he also made a lot of mistakes along the way. His behaviour reminds us that human development can be an uneven business. Even though we may grow up psychologically in certain aspects of our life, our emotional development can become very arrested in areas where we have been traumatised.
His mother died suddenly when he was six years old, his father 10 years later and his only brother was killed in the second World War. At 16 he found himself without family, without a country, with no sense of identity or self-confidence. At 27 years of age he entered monastic life, but not before he had done some things about which he felt profound regret.
In his early writings he is clearly angry and perfectionistic, reflecting perhaps his felt need to atone for past mistakes. With time, however, his attitude towards himself and others softened and he related with great respect and appreciation with people who lived beyond his monastic walls.
Merton's message to each of us who don't choose to live in a monastery is that we need to take time to recollect ourselves, to turn inward, and connect with our own inner centre of spiritual activity that remains hidden as long as we immerse ourselves in the external business of life. "Without silence and recollection, man loses contact with the real sources of energy, clarity and peace."
We may find this periodically by "retreating" in one form or another for a period of reflection. Or we may find it in the small hours of the morning when the silence allows us to experience our world in a fresh way. The true contemplative for Merton is not detached or uninterested in the world. He (or she) is "more interested, more concerned, but he is not easily distracted by superficiality that many people mistake for reality".
Merton may never make sainthood and his fans would rather he didn't. Because if that happened, the brutal self-honesty that marks his writings could become sanitised to a degree that denied the very authenticity he tried to embody.
A good place to start if you haven't already discovered Thomas Merton is New Seeds of Contemplation.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health. Contact: tbates@irish-times.ie
