What strikes you about Thomas Merton is the sheer likeability of the man. He is a 'true man of no status' , a universal man, a shy man without a mask, perhaps what we might term in the local argot 'a good bloke'. Towards the end of his life he wrote an essay called Day of a Stranger, (1981, Intro. Robert E. Daggy), the word 'Stranger' denoting one who is an outsider to the modern technological world, puzzled by the drives and ambitions of ordinary folk. This little pamphlet-like work is interspersed by Merton's own black and white photographs from around the hermitage. Unlike a lot of images in 'spiritual' writing these enhance and do not detract from the text. Of all his writing I think this essay best shows the essence of his personality and where he had arrived at in 1965. This was an a time when he had just begun to settle into living in his hermitage in the woods at the Abbey at Gethsemani in Kentucky. He had gained separation (in part) from the suffocating world of the abbey life, what he called a 'hot environment' meaning one where busyness ruled if only in a institution of religious men fretting over purpose and meaning. It reminds one of the atmosphere of modern bureaucracy where all must be engaged and transmitting messages, all is movement and flight. The content is not as important as that one is seen as a party to this game of exchanging messages. Merton had at this time also ripened in his understanding of Eastern thought, of Zen, Taoism and Buddhism in its various facets. He appears to have adjusted his Christian view to find a place for this wisdom; or perhaps he was heading in the opposite - a place for Christianity in Eastern spirituality. Just to read Day of a Stranger is a 'blessing', a release from the craziness of a particular day and an odd sense of being in a still point with Merton in his hermitage in the woods, with his bare attention to the simple surroundings of the new home and the loveliness of the little piece of Kentucky nature where he lived and had his being. Here is a self-dialogue from Day of a Stranger--Why live in the woods?
--Well you have to live somewhere.
--Do you get lonely?
--Yes, sometimes.
--Are you mad at people?
-- No.
--Are you mad at the monastery?
-- No.
--What do you think of the future of monasticism?
--Nothing. I don't think about it.
--Is it true that your bad back is due to Yoga?
--No
--Is it true that you are practising Zen in secret?
--Pardon me, I don't speak English.
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| Plate 46 from Day of a Stranger |
