Status Updates From Living With Wisdom - A Life...

Wow, I wonder what happened to Margie... sad (pathetic?) that he loved her so fiercely, so quickly, and then had to break it off equally as abruptly and melodramatically.

History only repeats itself. Merton in 1965: “The spirit of this county at the present moment is to me terribly disturbing... the whole atmosphere is crazy, not just the peace movement, everybody. There is in it such an air of absurdity and moral void, even where conscience and morality are invoked (as they are by everyone). The joint is going into a slow frenzy. The country is nuts.”

Wow. In a second age of protest, this chapter is so important: “It is an enormously subtle question, but we have to consider the fact that nonviolence may tend to harden opposition and confirm people in their righteous blindness... we have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of truth when it is used as a weapon... Ideally we are the instrument of truth and not the other way round.”

I still don’t understand this, but it’s such an awesome statement I’ll keep trying: “a monastery is not a snail’s shell nor is religious faith a kind of spiritual fallout shelter into which one can plunge to escape the criminal realities of an apocalyptic age.”

Dorothy Day be rolling her eyes at Thomas’ letters like, “Why so serious?” But Merton’s insistence on interfaith dialogues is interesting, and may be an element that Pope Francis particularly admires about him.

Now Merton just seems eccentric, oscillating between contentment and a burning desire to be even more alone. I don’t understand how you can be so stressed as a monk. It’s a shame his one interaction with a psychiatrist went poorly - he definitely could have used a good one to find peace with himself.

For someone who lives a contemplative life at a secluded monastery, Merton deals with lots of internal turmoil. More a function of personality than situation? I’d probably find something to worry about even if left alone in my thoughts

This transcendental pacifist quotes have you rolling along until you’re like... wow. Wait you voluntarily joined a place that doesn’t allow beds? Merton’s family life was also incredibly tragic. The latest family death nearly had me in tears it was so sudden. Perhaps the hardship was how he “punished” himself for being alone in the world.

Unconnected observations: 1) Incredibly tragic Tom’s 5 caregivers die by the time he’s in college. 2) People really did travel all around the world before planes. Regularly. 3) Like Dorothy Day, encouraging to see Merton’s life before he found the Catholic Church... these really were normal people who took up abnormal responsibilities in the name of God