Thomas Merton and Spiritual Reading (Lectio Divina)…

This past week and weekend, Denise and I had the wonderful opportunity and blessing to visit the campus of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia (the above Celtic Cross is at the center of the campus).  I had never visited Columbia’s campus prior to this, and I can say without a doubt that I not only fell in love with the campus, but actually felt like I had found my spiritual home!  We are enrolled in Columbia’s Lifelong Learning’s Certificate in Christian Spiritual Formation program.  It has been a wonderful opportunity for the two of us to study together, share wonderful insights, and delve deeper into our own spirituality as individuals and as a couple.  In the 29 years since I graduated from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in Minneapolis/St Paul, MN (yikes!), I have never had an opportunity like this to truly study and immerse myself in spiritual formation and education!

This particular course was a study of Thomas Merton’s Journals with the idea of wrestling with them and being with them and allowing God to speak through them.  Lectio Divina, a monastic and spiritual practice, quite literally means Sacred Reading in the Latin.  Usually, the Lectio is done using Scripture or writings from the Spiritual Fathers and Mothers of the early church.  The process of Lectio has you reading slowly, and repeating those readings three times with a prayerful and open attitude.

In my own educational and professional life (high school, college, seminary, and professional military education), my reading was always for information.  I sought information that would help me write a paper, take an exam, or pass a class.  Even when I read the Bible from cover to cover multiple times in preparation for the English Bible Exam my second year of seminary, I read for information in order to recognize styles of writing, patterns, and ways to identify where particular passages on a multiple-choice exam came from.  And then, as a pastor and chaplain I would often read the texts with an eye to what I was going to preach on that Sunday!  Yet, despite my best efforts to get information for sermons or papers or class, Scripture soaked into my very being.

Thomas Merton, was a contemplative Trappist Monk (officially the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance) of the Abbey of Gethsemane, Kentucky who lived from 1915-1968.  He was a monk, poet, prolific writer (over 70 books of secular and sacred writings), social activist, and pioneer in the area of interfaith dialogue with the religions of the East.  One of his most famous epiphanies or revelations (the site is marked by a bronze marker in Louisville, KY with the words he wrote in his journal) occurred on March 18, 1958.  The journal entry is as follows:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

You have to understand, Merton wrestled his whole monastic life (and even before) with his ego, selfishness, and a desire to escape the world and people to be alone with his thoughts and with God.  This man, often desired to retreat from the world (and his fellow monks) to write, think, and observe (his journals are filled with amazing observations of nature and insight along with a very big dose of self-centered ego!).  Yet, in the midst of the crowded world of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, he had the stunning realization that he was connected with all these strangers by the grace of God!

I spent four days reading (his journals are not easy to read in one setting… the man is definitely ADHD and bounces around continuously!) wrestling, wondering, questioning, getting frustrated, and eventually finding spiritual insights that were amazing. What was amazing about his writings? For me, it was coming to the realization that this man was ordinary! He wasn’t a “super-monk” or “super-mystic”, he was an ordinary man!  I had several visions over the course of the study of me walking with him… laughing, talking, observing, and laughing again….  His writings about the Cold War, the Nuclear Arms Race and Vietnam definitely resonated with this retired Chaplain as I pondered all that I have seen and experienced.

As I process the course in my own heart and think about the ten-page reflection paper that I will write, (Will ten pages be enough for all that I learned?), I return once more to the process of Sacred Reading.  In the words of St. Simon and St. Garfunkel, I need to slow down… I am moving too fast… and this course has helped me to do just that. As I reflect on my journey of faith and life… as I reflect on the journey of my newly discovered brother, Father Louis (when Merton was ordained a priest, he took the name Louis)… I realize that I do need to slow down… to enjoy what God has placed before me… To actually see it!

Each morning when we awake (and before we were married, it was a text), I say to Denise, “This is the day the Lord has made.”  She in turn responds, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  Slow down… Thomas Merton, as much as his mind was continually racing, did from time to time slow down… Slow down and truly be… Be in the presence of the Lord… And see what the Lord had to offer him… May we, dear reader, do the same!