RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. The Story of a Vocation. Edited by Patrick Hart.

The Journals of Thomas Merton #1

by Thomas Merton

When Thomas Merton died accidentally in Bangkok in 1968, the beloved Trappist monk's will specified that his personal diaries not be published for 25 years -- presumably because they contained his uncensored thoughts and feelings. Now, a quarter of a century has passed since Merton's death, and the journals are the last major piece of writing to appear by the 20th century's most important spiritual writer.

The first of seven volumes, Run to the Mountain offers an intimate glimpse at the inner life of a young, pre-monastic Merton. Here readers will witness the insatiably curious graduate student in New York's Greenwich Village give way to the tentative spiritual seeker and brilliant writer. Merton playfully lists everything from his favorite lines of poetry and songs to the things he most loves and hates.

Thomas Merton was an inveterate diarist; his journals offer a complete and candid look at the rich transformations of his adult life. As Brother Patrick Hart, general editor of the series notes, "Perhaps his best writing can be found in the journals, where he was expressing what was deepest in his heart with no thought of censorship. With their publication we will have as complete a picture of Thomas Merton as we can hope to have."

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

Hardcover

First published July 1, 1995

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

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do I live for books like this? The 1st volume (of 7!) of Merton's published journals covers the period - mostly in New York - following his conversion right up to his entry into the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) and the monastery at Gethsemani in Kentucky. This is roughly from the 1939 to late 1941, and the global destruction and possible apocalypse signaled by the World War plays much in Merton's thinking, conversion, and vocation. There is a madness loosed upon the world, a full spectrum of satanic evil from Hitler's war machine and the holocaust to the awful pablum of Madison Avenue advertising vulgarity and the destitution and humiliation of the poor under modern capitalism. Merton sees - and is horrified - by it all. His search is very much a search for a firm ground, for a faith and practice that can burn through all this suffering and alienating shit to a transcendent peace. His social insights, obversations - the great chapters on his trip to Cuba - are sharp. He is also a disciplined and sympathetic reader. The journals are packed with lists and ratings of books and long reviews. He's humorous too - as in the lists of things like "20 places the world could do without" or somesuch. His search for deep knowledge and account of our psycho-social insanity leads to intensifying Catholic religious life - attending Mass(es) every day, honoring the Feasts, fasting, etc. All to disabuse himself of pride, to wear away his "self" and discover and live for a deeper ground and truth. His practice and faith become total - then it's a choice of either giving up everything (possessions, writing, everything) to live at the service of the most destitute at Friendship House in Harlem, or commit completely to a life of strict monastic discipline and contemplation with the Trappists. He cries out, literally, for the later, and becomes a monk.

[Sophfronia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

My journey with Merton began with reading "The Seven Storey Mountain" but that book, though I enjoyed it thoroughly, left me with the feeling something was missing. Then I learned SSM did undergo a certain level of editing/censorship by his superiors that possibly changed the tenor of the book. Eventually I learned about Merton's journals, extensive journals, covering most of his lifetime and published, as stipulated by his will, many years after his death. The journals take up seven volumes. This book is the first.

Reading it definitely gives me the mostly unvarnished Merton I sought. I say "mostly" because he sometimes edited himself, tearing out pages after he wrote them. It was fascinating to observe him in his formative 20s. His brash reviews of the art he saw at the World's Fair in Queens and the books he'd read showed a brilliant mind at work, often with a youthful impatience. But the youthful Merton could also be tedious and melodramatic, especially toward the end of this journal which stops right before he enters the Trappist monastery Gethsemane.

I won't blame Merton for this--in fact it endears him to me more because he proves to be no different than other brash, confused young men. I loved his account of his travel to Cuba, of the saints he becomes enamored with, and his struggle to figure out how exactly he's meant to serve God. His drawings were pretty funny too! This volume is a great beginning and makes me look forward to reading the remaining 6.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Merton wrote the clearest, most sincere, important works of Christian spirituality of the 20th century. This is the first of his lengthy series of journals (of which dozens are published.) This is definitely early Merton: opinionated in literature, conflicted about his future, and deep in study of Catholic theology and saints. Intelligent and honest analysis of the world that, though it was written at the onset of WWII, doesn't feel outdated because Merton's focus is on the underlying causes in the world, rather than the events themselves.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea of why this title was selected for these early journal entries of Merton, written when he was a young man in his mid-20’s, but they seem appropriate. Merton was struggling, as he would struggle his entire life, to find his true vocation in life, one that would fully engage him and make him into a spiritually good man. The “mountain” suggests the goal toward which he was striving, appropriate as mountains have always suggested a high place of spirituality, going back to Moses encountering the Lord on a high mountain. A “run” has many meanings, one connotation is that of an escape or retreat, another of a back and forth activity.

"Back and forth”, another way of describing Merton’s struggle. He was a talented young man at the time, living in New York City during Wold Wa II, writing and teaching. His feelings about the war were ambivalent, as he considered that in this war against Hitler, Hitler’s own tactics, of cruelty and destruction would have to be used to defeat him, meaing a descent into evil.

But that was just one of Merton’s struggles. Much of modern life he found intolerable with its confusions and contradictions. He commented that he was surrounded by noise, a “terrible howling” which partially explains the attraction of the silence of a cloistered monastery. On the other hand, he obviously was a talented writer and a successful teacher, so he could have pursued an academic career, or another alternative: about giving of himself in a house of mercy that aimed to people in New York’s desperately poor Harlem.

Merton’s journals are often evocative, belying one remark that he made that questioned the value of “writing down this stuff.” Some of it may be of little consequence, but mostly he is particularly insightful, as when he writes that the “cross is everywhere, but resurrection is secret.” It is easy to find faults with the modern world, much to nail a person to a cross of despair, but there is tremendous good in the world as well.

He felt this intensely when he was a Havana church hearing children singing praises to God. He had a sudden feeling of “joy, the same kind of gladness that every body who has ever loved anybody or anything has felt. There is nothing esoteric about such things, they happen to everybody. These movements of God’s grace stir in everybody . . . But we tend to destroy their effects and bury them under our own sins and selfishness and pride.”

His entrance into a Trappist monastery is a final result of the seeking after truth and goodness. In the monastery, he thought he had found a way to make his life meaningful, to better overcome the selfishness and pride that he would succumb to if he were in the world. In the end his life would be an affirmation of his own praises to God.

Did he succeed? That question is not answered in this early journal. Merton realizes that the seeking of truth is a lifelong process and and he has moments of doubt, asking, “Why do I ask myself questions all the time?” Answers, and more questions are sure to follow in the six journals that follow after this one, sand written in the monastery.

[Bill Tress · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what I was looking for when I selected this book, yet, what ever it was I didn't find it! As the title indicates, it was a journal of the day to day events in Merton's life and speaking frankly I found it boring. Maybe I was seeking wisdom or inspiration but it just was not there for me.

[Joseph J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I own four of the volumes in this series. 'Never paid too much attention to this one, as it seemed a rough outline for Seven Story Mountain, one of the most profound books I ever read. Visited this one again recently and mined much new information. However young Tom is quite the New York intellectual artistic an literary snob as World War II erupts in Europe. HIs judgements are scathing and at times catty; declaring Picasso the genius of our time, he looks down his nose at the riff raff at the 1939 Worlds Fair exhibition. American artist Charles Sheeler, the Daniel Chester French "Abraham Lincoln" in the Memorial, Whistler's "Peacock Room"-and for that matter the most of the now departed Corcoran Gallery of Art suffer his condescension and dismissal. For that matter so do a bevy or literary figures, artists and architectural styles. He also displays racial stereotypes common to his time. THIS IS A GOOD READ, but this is not the Merton of the 1960's. Indeed the air of superiority as he surveys contemporary culture is a precursor of the extreme piety of the following journal. With Tom at this stage of his mountain climb, everything was black or white, hot or cold.

[Joey Dye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read. It never clicked with me until reading these journal entries that Merton's vocation developed in the shadow of WW2. This first volume ends two days before Pearl Harbor.

Throughout this journal, you can feel Merton's dissatisfaction with teaching and writing grow along with his sense of being called to give up everything for God.

There were many very poignant reflections on the superficiality and corruption of modern society--particularly a society at war with itself and the rest of the world.

[David Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author keeps a journal and that is the book in the years 1939 to 1941 and most of his time is spent in NYC. He is young man searching for a future and he ponders everything. He also writes down everything: dislikes, sympathies, best books, poems he enjoys, saints who he really likes.
He is on a spiritual quest and does he find what he is looking for. Does he decide to be a Monk or not?
As a reader, you really get the picture of what the world is like as the War is warming up in Europe and you also get into the intimacy of one person's brain

[Paul Birch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best read after Seven Storey Mountain and New Seeds Of Contempation. If you want to know more about Thomas and the struggle of vocation. Lovely writting, very few bits you have to skim over. The Cuban writting is wonderful, all the time you can tell there is a parallel struggle going on just under the surface, and boy does it surface. The struggle that is in all of us to find true meaning and the path to vocation.

[John Majors · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like reading collections of letters and journals, so I found Merton's thoughts (rambling at many times) engaging. Not for everyone though. I was also drawn to him because of our recent move to Louisville, near where he served as a Trappist monk for much of his life.

[Katie C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love reading merton !!!

[Shelly Dennison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not always an easy read because of the journal format - very much working through stuff on paper. Mix of literary stuff, travel and spirituality which gave plenty to think about but sometimes left me a little baffled. Some odd switches of thought too but this is just a reflection on how humans think. Very rewarding story of a search for a vocation.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting enough but I somewhat cringe at the sheer amount of masochism and self loathing Merton puts in himself, into his decisions, and his doctrinaire approach to spiritual things. Not being Catholic and free of what seems to be an almost universal tendency within Catholic believers to hold themselves and the rest of humanity guilty- for something!- I'm also put off by his admission he only really "feels safe when in a church." My how sad. As if all God's great handiwork outside that little building - the mountains, stars, and galaxies- count for nothing at all. I never felt anything inside a church but boxed in, and never necessarily, awed. His reliance on prayers to saints strikes me- as an unrepentant pantheist of a generally Protestant nature - as silly. If there's but one God and you're all so holy enough to do so yourself, best to go straight to the big guy himselfand ask him, since "asking is half the battle." Where he is admirable however, despite all that, is his quest for a real humility in his personal life. Like most Christian monks of all eras and ages, he seeks to imitate Christ in charity and in selfless giving to those that are disadvantaged and turning away from glories and self-aggrandizations and many of the things people take into account when discussing "famous writers." This is a portion of his life when he was facing- as many did, in an era when conscientious objection was a very very risky approach to take in any case-an involuntary life in the military and the coming World War or voluntarily hiding out in monastic life. But unfortunately the book ends just before Dec.7, 1941, and we never get to know which way the road took him, necessarily. That you must do by going to Wikipedia, I suppose! Or slog through some successive volume, which by now after nearly 500 pages I feel much like running for the hills from myself.

[Dawn Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up while my husband and I were on retreat at a Trappist monastery. I blazed through it. I'd never read Merton, and I wanted to stop to contemplate his insights, but he gave me something I seemed to be starving for, so I gobbled it up. I was greedy and obsessive. Vol. 1 covers the years 1939-1941, just before he became a monk. The final entry is dated two days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He writes about the war in Europe from the perspective of a draft-age man living through it day-to-day, reacting to the headlines, speculating about Roosevelt’s intentions. This immediacy will be irresistible for anyone who loves history. As a grad student living in Greenwich Village, Merton taught at Columbia University. He was a poet and novelist (unpublished at the time), so this volume includes candid responses to rejection letters from New York publishers. The New Yorker magazine rejected one of his poems because it was “a parody of Emily Dickinson,” and since New Yorker readers didn’t read Dickinson, they wouldn’t understand the connection. Merton protests in a journal entry. “I never read a line of Emily Dickinson.” Writers, take heart … you’re in excellent company. I was struck by Merton’s absolute visceral knowledge of God’s love … as well as the deep insights he had even in his twenties. His writing caused me to have a couple of epiphanies about my own life and faith. At 500 pages, it’s an enormous book, (and only the first of seven volumes) but down to earth, funny, inspiring. I found it transformative. I’m going to jump right in to Volume 2.

[Carolyn Hoffman]

Reason for reading: I hope to eventually read all of Merton's published journals. I'm starting with Volume 1 as that seems the best place to start. Plus, I hope to learn more about how he moved into his vocation.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still early into the book but I'm enjoying it so far. It gives one a real flavor of what a young Thomas Merton was like in his premonastic days when he was struggling with decisions and ideas. His love for God is evident and his enthusiasm towards pursuing Him more fully is inspiring.

[Rob the Obscure · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a fan of Merton, this series of his posthumously published journals is essential. It contains stunning information.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Merton! Gifted writer. Writes about everything and nothing. Is filled with contradictions amd that makes him such a great writer.