Learning to Love: The Journals of Thomas Merton [Volume Six 1966-1967]

The Journals of Thomas Merton #6

by Thomas Merton, Christine M. Bochen (Editor)

Depicts the author's struggle with love and his recommittment to the monastic life through a greater understanding of both worldly and spiritual love

Genres: Spirituality, Religion, Biography, Theology, Christianity, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

382 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1997

About the author

Thomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani and in May 1949 he was ordained to priesthood. He was a member of the convent of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.

Reviews

[Greg Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Being a songwriter is like being a nun: You're married to a mystery." - Leonard Cohen.

Conflicted between the path of marrying a woman or continuing his vows in the monastic life, Jesuit priest James Martin made the coments:

"when you enter the religious order, you don’t check your sexuality at the door. You fall in love. And my novice director said, “And if people don’t fall in love with you, something’s wrong because you’re living a loving life, and we’re human beings.” And actually, I was horrified. I thought, “Oh, my gosh, what if I fall in love?” Not that love is a bad thing, but this would be terrible. And I did. I fell in love in a very deep way, and I had to make a decision" (http://www.onbeing.org/program/james-...)

Martin, in many ways is a successor of Thomas Merton. He referencing Merton's seminal work "The Seven Storey Mountain" as the point at which he left a career in corporate finance and entered the Jesuit order. Like Merton, he has stature in the community, a well known name, and one whose flock extends the confines of a tradtiional church home.

"Learning to Love" is a collectd of journal entries from 1966-1967, in which Merton describes his falling in love with a young woman, and honoring his commitment as an man who has abandoned the world. We meet him when he is 25 years in, at 51 years of age, and already a prominent Catholic leader. With earnestness, and provactiveness, his journal entries show a conflict that tests his faith and his biology:

"I have no intention of keeping the M. business entirely out of sight. I have always wanted to be completely open, both about my mistaken and about my effort to make sense out of my life. The affair with M. is an important part of i - and shows my limitations as well as a side of me that is - well, it needsto be known too, for it is part of me. M need for love, my loneliness, my inner division, the struggle in which a solitude is once a problem and a "solution".

It's not so simple as walking away from a love interest. Merton details his distaste for the stiffling head abbott and his joylessness, he confronts his own confuson about what good he is doing in the woods of Kentucky, and seeks spiritual understanding in constraints that deny him a greater happiness. Throughout this book he tests his ways to a relationship with M. Asking God for acceptence to do so, and testing conventional ways to leave the brotherhood in good graces.

One of the joys of the book is Merton's inexhorable seeking of God in all things. We never doubt his faith, as he states: "I have no hestiation in firmly desiring and intending 'to be a Catholic and to hold all my herat to the truth faith of the living God manifested in Christ and in his Church. And no monkeying! Amen. Whatever I seek in other traditions is only the truth of Christ expressed in other terms, reject all that is really contrary to his Truth." (p,358-359). But it is interesting how he loves writing about Bob Dylan vinyl records, seeks the company of Zen Buddhists like Thicht Nhat Hanh for meditation, and offers some sympathy for the university radicals. He cozies up to existential literature like Kafka and Camus, rabidly devours the leading thought thinkers of his day.

Merton maintains a self-awareness in his journals that makes the book universally fascinating. Sometimes it's the subtle aspects of his wooden home, snow falls, spotting wolves and killing giant bugs that give it a "Walden" presence. All of this gives a slowness and visual understanding of his daily world. And there are the more thoughtful centering thoughts about giving space for God, being a vessel who is useful in his writings for a larger American culture, and evocatively writing about the unjust American prescence in Vietnam. And he knew these writings would be found, asking them to not be published until 25 years after his death.

Faith asks us to put a stamp on ambiguity. To have confidence in a a set of cards that are not yet revealed. Whether or not we agree with Merton's decisions, and whether or not he finds the inner peace he looks for, it's the searching of the questions themselves that give meaning to the journey.

[Kay Ess · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am destroyed by too much perfection"

Reading someone's diary is dangerous. I can't say I've ever had a book consume me the way this one has. This has to be one of the most remarkable accounts of the human condition I have ever read. At this stage in his life, Merton was pulled in two directions-- trying to walk to heaven and hell at the same time.

On one hand, he was a hermit who denounced the world. He wanted to stare at trees and grass, feel the sacred oneness, pray, adore his creator, and spread peace and love in every way he possibly could. On the other hand, he was an "important figure" in the Catholic world and he knew it all too well. He saved and organized every word he ever wrote so it could one day be studied by thousands. He was told over and over that his voice mattered, so he devoured every bit of culture he could get his hands on to voice his opinion on the matter.

Then came the big love! Oh, the big love. One day he says this woman is the most beautiful blessing from God. They are wrapped in divine tenderness-- all is perfect. The next day he is in total panic, unrest. He knows they can't go on like they have been. What good could come? It is all a total nightmare. He can't sleep or eat. What a horrible hermit he has become. She never leaves his mind... then he talks to her on the phone and oooh what warmth and joy! Nothing compares with this!

During the two weeks I spent reading this book, I entered a state of schizophrenia. I swear I felt the tension of his soul in my body and carried it around with me. I too couldn't eat or think straight. I fell into a deep state of love that was uniquely of God and not of God. A truly wild human experience.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Besides The Diary of Anne Frank, this is the first journal of another person that I have read.
It was needed in my life at this particular juncture… these two months in time.
I’m grateful to read of his many conflicts and contradictions. He makes me feel less alone in the challenges of loving God, self, and others (both personally and globally) honestly and well.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merton could have destroyed this journal or refused to let it be published. I wonder if he did not long to be an ordinary person instead of a complicated person who battled many demons and also lived a profound life. It's difficult to see the mystic in this journal. He comes across as immature, petulant, and sad. A very human man is revealed. If this was the first of his writings I'd read I'm not sure I'd read more. But then I would be missing out on all the depth and breadth of a very gifted sinner who had so much to say about the spiritual life.

[Jenwhitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled on this book in the library of The Abbey of Gethsemani and was shocked and delighted to open up the journals of Thomas Merton and stumble upon a steamy love affair. My whole silent retreat was sidetracked by me obsessively reading this monastic romance novel. Sadly, the affair only lasted about 100 pages, so it took me a while to get through the whole thing. Well worth it, though. Thomas Merton was fantastically human and also wonderfully interested in the world of ideas. Meeting him through these journals has made me love him forever.

[Michael Barrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having worked my way through the other volumes, I found this one particularly interesting. Merton falls in love with a young nurse, thirty years younger than himself. The whole volume speaks to the often strange and conflicted person Merton was. He openly shares his humanity, his weakeness and his struggle to find his true self.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of the Thomas Merton journals that I haven't deeply enjoyed. In fact, this was actually hard to finish. Being a journal I do not fault Merton for not appealing to my expectations or hopes (no illusions that he wrote to appease me, a reader, nearly half a century later.) Still, this marked a decline in what I was able to take from him, as an autobiographer.

My first gripe with this book, I feel Merton's latent egocentric and arrogant nature went full throttle on this book. It was always subtle before, but here it expands to a heavy degree. Take one scenario where Merton feels he has not garnered the respect he feels he deserves from a peer and therein considers himself to be akin to a "Negro" in the late sixties (really?!) He speaks ill of nearly all the monks at Gethsemani, spurns the rules he acquiesced to, yet plays up the victim status for not having everything his way.

His relationship with M. also started to grate my nerves after... I don't know... the entire year that he speaks of nothing of his boundless love for her. I'm not anti-love, but for a monk living in celibacy for 25 years to suddenly fall into one of the great romances of yore so quickly and intensely... it comes off disingenuous. Infatuation, more like it. Also,

Again, Merton wrote this honestly and probably without total knowledge that it'd be published some day, so I'm not going to slam him for it. But this episode is worthless. There is nothing to take away from this book. Nothing good can come from this book, just a priest who starts boozing and falling for girls half his age. Pretty worthgless even via edification.

[Dovofthegalilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must say in advance that to appreciate this volume [number six] it is critical to read the volumes leading up to this point. Some might call Merton's position one of a mid-life crisis but whatever it is labeled it is a privilege to be able to glean into this man's thoughts. At the writing of this journal Merton has been in a cloistered life for twenty-seven years and it's not been easy and here we find him regretting a good deal of it and wondering what it's all about. In all of the other journals combined we never hear of him doing so much drinking and drunkenness and the affair that he has with the nurse is so sad because he;s genuinely in love and yet the society that he keeps forbids such relationships. turmoil is what you see and you have to wonder how much of it wa from the Vietnam war and other events of the sixties. for a monk, a hermit no less, he was involved far beyond what you would imagine. to be listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and LIKING them is something extraordinary. Here too is the evidence of his strong departure from his catholic roots as we see him delving further into other religions such as Sufism and Zen Buddhism. he was a man who struggled for his place in this world and although he found aspects of it he remained troubled. certainly an excellent volume the best thus far but you have to read the others to understand this one in context pf the man.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Journals by Merton provide a side that is interesting and very human. This volume in particular (and I've only read this volume), with its sexual intrigue, raises questions about the requirement we make of certain religious positions of celibacy and an avowal to remain unmarried. The pull between what it takes (and sometimes takes from you) to be in a close relationship and the state of solitude is also an interesting tension to consider here. I had very personal reactions to Merton's writing--sometimes laughing at him and what seem like his naivete and sometimes feeling very sad for him and rueful about my own reactions since it is less naivete and more being very human. I would like to read more of these, but I tend to find it difficult to be so much in the weeds of people's daily experiences that dairies/journals and even personal letters are sometimes hard to consume without finding myself skimming over vast sections of text, which is what I did in this volume. It is almost 400 pages and this volume only one of seven.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is volume #6 of Thomas Merton's personal journals. I have not read the other 5 volumes, but I certainly feel this volume humanizes Merton and supplies context for his life and the state of the Catholic Church in the first decade after the reforming Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s. This is not an idealized picture of monasteries or monks; of Merton himself or his love affair with "M."; or of the leadership in the Church. It does provide frank insight into how Merton thought about issues and himself. For me it is a welcome revelation about a very public/private human being and about the cast of characters in the late '60s who played their parts in his life and the life of the Catholic Church.

[Beryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Merton's narrative of his journey toward human love interesting but disappointing. Certainly this famed author, revered for the impact he had on so many contemplatives, documented in detailed honesty the tormented "human love," that he eventually gave back to God, choosing to stay in religious life. What I found disappointing was the self-centered portrayal of this journey. He shares little insight that would lead us to understand why he would have been so smitten by a young nurse and left me wondering if it was longing for human connection rather than love -- a strictly a personal reaction to his narrative that might or might not be accurate.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, not least because this is the hardest volume of the journals to get hold of, and hardcover editions are amazingly expensive. Everyone wants to read about the monk who fell in love. Which was interesting, the falling in love, but SOOO predictable. If he hadn't been famous, they probably would have put him out on his ear.
For me, the loveliest part of the story is how falling in love opened his eyes to the world around him, to the humanity and fallibility of the other monks and most of all, a wonderfully growing comprehension of God's love.

[elbren]

Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton) (v. 6) by Thomas Merton (1998)