I read the Seven Storey Mountain when I was 17.Then the Sign of Jonas. Later two of the biographies devoted to his life, and parts of some of his later journals, including all of the Asian Journal [or whatever the name of it was.]
What I took from this was the following:
Merton was a complex human being…conflicted, really.
I think this conflict demonstrated itself in his need
for a monastic family that would not leave him, [an insight of one of his biographers] i.e., the additional vow of “stability”
taken by Trappists. Is the word “stability”? I can’t recall.
his sense of personal guilt, his genuine rejoicing in
having found, as a fairly young man, a way of life
[Trappists] that met both his spiritual and psychological
needs at age 26?].
Additionally, he needed the kind of solitude that
a man of thought needs, which his hermitage
finally allowed him.
My own assessment is that Merton confused his
need for solitude for intellectual reasons with
spiritual solitude.
It also seems to me that he was, concurrently,
an activist, a writer, a person who enjoyed being
with people, particularly as he aged, a man who wanted to
reach out with his later writings, to share what
he was experiencing.
I’ve spent 25 years reading Eastern thought. I
think I have some insight into where Merton was
in his spiritual journey. I, for one, am sorry that
his life was cut short.
It is my guess, and it’s only a guess, that if he
had lived a longer life, we might have seen a
Merton transformed…a man who might have
synthesized what he saw from the Eastern perspective,
with the faith he embraced as a young man.
One final thought: It never struck me that Merton
was, by nature, a man given to what Westerners
would call “logic”. He never seemed to draw out
the logical inferences from much of what he
put forth. But then, that’s just my take on his writings.
As to his human failings, God alone knows, and
God sees a whole life, the early circumstances of
that life, the pressures that may build from early
experiences, and weighs these with a Father’s love,
and if called for, forgiveness.
To put it in the vernacular: Merton was a singularity.
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