Thomas Merton: Contemplation in Action by Terrence A. Taylor Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a member of a Roman Catholic monastic community that embraced silence, yet he spoke volumes about the most important spiritual issues of our day. He was an enormously complex man who sought silence, solitude and contemplation while at the same time living an active life that led him to friendships with hundreds of people scattered throughout the world. Although his movement and communication was quite restricted for the 27 years that he was a member of the Cistercian order, he played a key role in shaping historical events by speaking out on important moral issues of his day. His leadership established him as a model for how people of faith from all walks of life can immerse themselves in a spirituality that will naturally give rise to concerns for their fellow human beings and for all of God's creation. This silent monk spoke powerfully and eloquently on three extremely important aspects 0f spiritual life: contemplative spirituality, social justice, and inter-religious dialogue. Merton recognized the individual importance of each of these, but he understood better than most people that inter-religious dialogue and work for social justice are not separate from spirituality but must grow out of it in an organic way. Climbing a Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton was born in 1915 in the south of France. Both of his parents were artists who traveled a great deal, and the young Merton was shuffled from house to house, from country to country, in a way that gave him little opportunity to learn what the word “home" meant. Being orphaned early in life only heightened this sense of displacement. During his adolescent and teenage years, Merton spent considerable time in boarding schools in France and England. He was extremely bright and his academic prowess at his English school earned him a scholarship to Cambridge University in the early 1930's. Unfortunately, he devoted more time to carousing than to studying during his first year of college, and in the process impregnated a young woman. His mother's family made a settlement with the young woman and whisked Merton off to the United States where they could keep a closer eye on him.1 In 1935 Merton enrolled at Columbia University where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in English. At Columbia he was deeply influenced by the poet and scholar Mark Van Doren who became his mentor. While still a student, Merton embarked on a nascent career as a writer, composing novels, essays, reviews and poetry over the next decade. Not much of what he wrote in those years was published. After graduating he took a teaching position at St. Bonaventure College in upstate New York and began work toward a doctorate. Despite a nominally Anglican upbringing, religion was apparently not a significant part of Merton's youth. That began to change during his years at Columbia. He underwent a gradual conversion experience that led him to baptism in the Roman Catholic Church and the desire to become a priest in the Franciscan Order. The Franciscans initially accepted Merton, but on hearing the story of his Cambridge years 1
re-printed from Hungryhearts, PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship | March 2011