TOM MERTON: MONKS'-EYE VIEWS:

...He seems, at least, by the testimony of those who lived with him, to have been one of the most lovable of men, whatever his future official status in the Church may be...

...Vocations there are up to post-World War II levels...

...How was it to live in community with him...

...And while he had an almost mystical appreciation of the value of "obedience" (especially for someone of his own mercurial temperament), he was neither fearful nor shy about fighting for minority views -even those of a minority-of-one...

...He certainly did give the impression that monastic life was in crisis...

...The contemplative vocation remains statistically rare, but abiding...

...That these changes did not incorporate a total dissolution of monastic enclosure is made evident by his own move toward more and not less solitude...

...Some of the monks, as a matter of fact, complained to the 'Visitor' (the deputy sent annually by the mother-house in France to all daughter-houses) that the abbot "allowed Fr...

...Two days before his death, Dec...

...The answer here is more nuanced...

...by the end of his life solitude seems to have become a necessary condition for his existence...

...Robert leiter has contributed to The Nation, Commentary and Film Heritage...

...The sister was convinced Merton was about to leave the Order, and possibly the priesthood...

...He did not enjoy "preciousness" in either monastic customs or novices...

...But the answer to this question is that Merton surely wanted to see changes, some of them far-reaching, in Western monastic life...

...That the Trappists have grown with Merton (and certainly, to a great degree, because of him) is evidenced by the fact that this book has official approval...

...For its part, the community made no special fuss over him...

...Merton's last work, The Asian Journal, laid MICHAEL ZEIK those rumors to rest, one hopes, forever...

...Yet, of him, at his burial, Fr...

...I wrote an article on Merton in this journal some months ago, which began rather bumptiously, "What the hell was Thomas Merton doing way out in Bangkok, Thailand, when he died five years ago...

...Did he, in the name of reform and renewal, hope to foreclose the medieval tradition of the cloistered life...

...The book ducks none of these questions...

...To be sure, there is plenty of evidence in the book that Merton and the community were frequently at odds...

...To me, personally, he was one of the most helpful and lovable men that I have ever had the pleasure, to meet...

...Louis be free to write whatever he wanted, as much or as little as he wanted...

...His statements, in general, were probably more notable for their grace of articulation than for their moderation...

...and he warned those monks desirous of such meetings, that the only thing they had to offer the world was the very spiritual experience and insight which they might lose by too much talking about them...

...He did want for writers, artists, and intellectuals who felt the need and the desire, to be able to be in contact from time to time with authentic men of prayer...

...It simply doesn't add up that the abbot would have chosen this much younger monk to be his spiritual advisor for 15 years, unless he had a great deal of trust in him, and unless their human relationship was satisfactory...

...8th, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he wrote home to his brothers: "I think of you all on this Feast Day, and with Christmas approaching I feel homesick for Gethsemani...

...The answer to each question is, again, very well...

...Merton may well have died a saint...

...What about Merton's longstanding wish to enter the Carthusians, or a hermitage...

...He knew very well that such contacts could interfere with the life of prayer...

...When the monks of Gethsemani heard about the remark they laughed as they had been accustomed to laugh for 27 years over Merton's barbs...

...Many more come than are selected...

...Yet those of us who had the privilege and pleasure to deal with him on intimate terms, and submit our inner lives to his direction, know that in him we had the best of Spiritual Fathers...

...The price of this book will test that love a little, but the book does bring out a side of Merton's life that the vast majority of us were not privileged to witness: his life in community with his fellow monks...

...Louis, the man...

...Eventually the entire Order moved with Merton...

...Louis expected no other treatment: "He did not make a big thing of his writings, and once they came out he never read them again...

...I owe him more than words can say...

...So, if he 'over-wrote' himself, it was out of the frailty of his own enthusiasm, or his own compulsion...

...If ever I were forbidden to write, I would soon land in a mental hospital...

...It turns out that Merton was very interested in community life, "knew what was going on, kept his eyes open, and missed little...

...More than that, the abbot has since retired from a position of authority and is himself living in a hermitage...

...But the abbot insisted that Fr...

...That he was not simply in favor of monastic revolution is evidenced by his remark at Calcutta, that "In the West there is now going on a great upheaval in monasticism, and much that is of undying value is being thrown away irresponsibly, foolishly, and they are accepting things that are showy, that have no ultimate value...

...The community of priests and brothers at Gethsemani, not all of them outstanding intellectuals or charismatic personalities, were, after all, married to him...

...First of all, desire for more solitude aside, it seems that most of Merton's special needs, intellectual and physical, were met by Gethsemani...

...The calling did not make him...

...He did not appreciate the business ventures (e.g., the production and sale of cheese), and he let them know it...

...But to him, making something of that would be like a priest priding himself for his priesthood...

...He has left his mark deep in this community, and it will be with us for years to come, for he has planted it in the hearts of a generation, and God willing, it will be planted again for generations to come...

...In actual life it turns out that for the last 15 of the 20 years during which Dom James was Merton's superior, Merton was his own chosen confessor...

...A nun who met him on his trip to Asia, near the end of his life, asked him whether Gethsemani had accepted Renewal...

...Various stories have circulated to the effect that it was his abbot, Fr...

...One last and (for me) unexpected observation: I have just returned from a visit to a Carthusian Monastery (the only one in North America...

...We all honor prophets, but would we want our daughter to marry one...

...But he wanted for so long to enter a hermitage...

...it was how he answered it that mattered...

...What about Fr...

...He did not go out of his way to be humble about them, to speak disparagingly about them...

...The abbot felt he had a kind of genius on his hands, a great talent loaned by God to the monastery...

...Let us now answer those pesty questions-the ones most often raised by rumors and scuttlebut-and put them behind us, so that we can go on to consider what kind of a man Merton appeared to those who knew him best...

...He was a monk to whom God had given a special gift for writing as He had given other brothers special gifts for painting, growing cabbages, ruling (Merton took a vow never to accept office as abbot), and bread baking...

...He let them know it...

...Also I look forward to being at (our monastery at) Hong Kong and may be seeing our three volunteers there...

...This is the part of the book that I personally enjoyed most...

...I began with that question because I had heard so many rumors that the man had left Gethsemani, left the Trappists-and even, according to some, left the Christian faith...

...What he experienced at the hands of the narrow Trappist censors is another story-and one that the book sets forth in frank manner...

...Was Merton compelled, by a money-hungry community, to slave away at his typewriter, to over-write, wear his talent thin, so that Gethsemani would have the royalties to found more daughter-houses...

...Louis to do just about what he pleased...

...But I hope to be at least in a monastery-Rawa Sening...

...Had Merton run off to a hermitage, against obedience, by the way, he would never have won this privilege for the entire Order...

...Flavian said: "This was a younger Brother, even a boyish Brother, one who could have lived a hundred years without growing old...

...And even if, in a few places, it leans slightly toward hagiography, it still has the ring of truth...

...It's complicated...

...todd gitlin's most recent book is Busy Being Born: Poems for Survivors of the Sixties (Straight Arrow Books...

...He tried to answer it with all he had...

...It turns out he had the same basic attraction to solitude that Merton had...

...Beyond all fads and passing enthusiasms, abiding...

...Flavian Burns, had been a novice under him...

...REVIEWERS michael zeik teaches at Marymount College in Tarrytown...

...Did a narrow-minded abbot (a man with a business degree from Harvard University, if I'm not mistaken) frustrate the writer's abiding desire for the eremitical life, the Carthusian or Camaldolese hermitage...

...What Merton wanted-and I'm never going to be able to do justice to his vision in a short review-is both authentic contemplative experience, and openness to the social realities of the 20th century...

...This new work, edited by Brother Patrick Hart, Merton's secretary in the monastery, continues the process of what the Chinese call "rectification," and what the West, on another level, calls "demythologization...

...Sheed & Ward, $8.95 If you know something about Thomas Merton, if he has been an influence in your life, then you probably love him...

...Did this prophetic voice of 20th century monasticism proclaim the end of "religious life" as we know it...

...Did he see the whole lifestyle outmoded by the urgent demands of society in this apocalyptic century...

...In fact, the abbot is frequently cast in the role of prosecutor (the Hebrew word is 'Satan') in Merton's monastic career...

...Abiding desire" is not even an accurate description of Merton's feelings toward solitude...

...how could they have endured him...

...Merton once told him, "I'm grateful that you put no obstacles to my writing...

...He knew he was a writer, he knew he was a successful writer, he knew he was a name...

...Prayer was oxygen...

...The picture I get from the book is that the Order held back permission for Merton to leave the community, and that the abbot, once Merton had convinced him of the 'normality' of graduating from community to ere-metical life, pleaded his case for him...

...He was, then, both a Brother and a Father, and to those who wished it, he was also a faithful friend...

...Finally, did Merton proclaim the end of the monastic life in this generation...

...If you want to know his full mind on this, read the book...

...Louis replied...

...James Fox, who prevented this development for over a decade...

...This book is written pretty much by those who rubbed shoulders with him daily over a period of more than 25 years...

...They now have cornflakes for breakfast...

...Plus a few chapters by those who did not see him regularly, but who were close to him intellectually and spiritually...

...How did it work out...

...Surprisingly well...

...Oh sure, they're doing great," Fr...

...The abbot who buried him, Fr...