Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was one of the most influential spiritual writers of modern times. A Trappist monk, peace and civil rights activist, and widely-praised literary figure, Merton was renowned for his pioneering work in contemplative spirituality, his quest to understand Eastern thought and integrate it with Western spirituality, and his firm belief in Christian activism. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, is the defining spiritual memoir of its time, selling over one million copies and translating into over fifteen languages.

Merton was also one of the most prolific and provocative letter writers of the twentieth century. His letters (those written both by him and to him), archived at the Thomas Merton Studies Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, number more than ten thousand. For Merton, letters were not just a vehicle for exchanging information, but his primary means for initiating, maintaining, and deepening relationships. Letter-writing was a personal act of self-revelation and communication. His letters offer a unique lens through which we relive the spiritual and social upheavals of the twentieth century, while offering wisdom that is still relevant for our world today.

Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters

The Essential CollectionBy Thomas Merton

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 Thomas Merton
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061348327

Chapter One

While all of Thomas Merton's letters shed light on his life and work, writing a letter was, on some occasions, an opportunity for him to tell his story in brief. The earliest of such letters was one that Merton wrote to Abbot Frederic Dunne in January 1942, a little more than a month after Merton entered the Abbey of Gethsemani. Writing to fulfill the canon law requiring him to identify the dioceses in which he had lived before coming to the monastery, Merton traced the story of his conversion and previewed the narrative line of his best-selling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. In brief accounts of his life more than two decades later, Merton struck quite a different chord, as illustrated by the letters and excerpts that follow. In 1963, Merton drafted a form letter that he sent to those requesting information about his life and writings. He sent a copy to Tommie O'Callaghan, a friend in Louisville whom Merton chose as one of three trustees of his literary trust, and quipped: "This might amuse you—I send it to High School kids who want me to write essays for them." In May 1967, he included a short curriculum vitae in a letter to poet Jonathan Williams and prefaced it this way: "I am bad at writing these things, 'born on a chimney top in Strasbourg in 1999' etc., but you can select what you want from this one: there is plenty of choice." In June 1968, in a letter to Sister J. M., Merton offered a cogent reprise of the periods of his life as a monk and writer.

To Abbot Frederic Dunne, O.C.S.O. Frederic Dunne, O.C.S.O., was Merton's first Abbot. When Abbot Dunne died on August 4, 1948, just two months before the publication of The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography the abbot had directed Merton to write, Merton noted in his journal that Abbot Dunne "is very close to me and will remain so all the rest of my days. . . . His sympathy was deep and real. . . . I don't know who was ever kinder to me."

[Gethsemani Novitiate] January 2, 1942

At the suggestion of my Father Master, I am writing out for you this outline of the main facts of my life and education, including, in particular, the circumstances of my conversion and vocation.

I was born Jan. 31, 1915, in Prades, France, in the diocese of Perpignan, of Protestant parents. My father was a native of New Zealand, my mother an American. Both are now dead; my mother died when I was six, my father in 1931. I have no knowledge of having received even a Protestant baptism. It is barely possible that I did: but no record exists of it, and no one is left to tell me.

In 1916 my parents brought me to America. I lived here until 1925 when I returned to France with my father. Then I went to the Lycée of Montauban—a public institution of secondary education, for two years. In 1928 I was sent to England, where from 1929 to 1932 I attended Oakham School at Oakham, Rutland, in the Diocese of Nottingham. This was my address from the age of 14 to 16½. After that I came to America and lived most of 1933 with my grandparents at Douglaston, Long Island, in the Diocese of Brooklyn. During the scholastic year 1933-4 I attended Cambridge University, in England, on a scholarship in modern languages. My home address, however, was my grandparents' residence—50 Rushmore Ave., Douglaston, Long Island, N.Y. In fact this was really my home address, although most of the time I was away at school, from 1931 to 1934. But I actually lived there from 1934 to 1939. During that time I attended Columbia University, where I got a B.A. degree, and later I pursued my studies and took an M.A. in English, and even did some work towards the degree of Ph.D. I taught English at Columbia one term.

My next address, 1939-40, was 35 Perry Street, New York City, in the Archdiocese of New York.

After that, from June 1940 to December 1941 my address was St. Bonaventure College, St. Bonaventure, N.Y., in the Diocese of Buffalo. There I was employed as an assistant professor of English.

As to my conversion: I had been brought up without much religious training of any kind. My grandparents gave money to the Episcopal Church, but never attended it. My father was a just, devout and prayerful man, but he did not like the Protestant cenacles in France, and never went to the length of becoming a Catholic. He died a good Anglican. The school I went to in England was Anglican, but I protested against the liberal teaching in religion we received there, and because it seemed to me to have no substance to it, I proudly assumed that this was the case with all religions, and obstinately set my face against all churches. Thus from the time of my leaving Oakham School until 1938, I gradually passed from being anti-clerical and became a complete unbeliever. The consequences of this in my life were disastrous. My only concern was with earthly things: thinking myself passionately devoted to "justice" and "liberty" I began to take an interest in atheistic communism, and, for a while, I held the "doctrines" of radicalism, concerning religious institutions: namely that they were purely the result of social and historical forces and, however well-meaning their adherents, they were nothing more than social groups, which the rich made use of to oppress the poor!!!

Suffice it to say that I could not be happy holding such beliefs; and the earthly life, which promised happiness on a purely natural level, had instead brought me great disappointments and shocks and miseries: and I was making bigger and bigger mistakes and becoming more and more confused. I began to realize that my interpretation of the natural order was very mistaken.

Continues...

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