Thomas Merton

  • Born: January 31, 1915
  • Birthplace: Prades, France
  • Died: December 10, 1968
  • Place of death: Bangkok, Thailand

American monk and writer

Merton is best known for his spiritual autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, in which he explores how one might become a spiritual person in a nonspiritual age. His later works continued the search for spirituality through his experiences as a monk, and though for a time he seemed to be renouncing the world, he became a sort of prophet seeking to reform it.

Areas of achievement Religion and theology, literature, social reform

Early Life

Thomas Merton (MURT-ehn) spent the early years of his life being shuttled between France, England, and the United States. His parents, artists Owen Merton and Ruth Jenkins Merton, were from New Zealand and the United States respectively, but had met and married in Europe and had settled in the small town of Prades in the French Pyrenees, where Thomas (actually registered at birth as Tom) was born.

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The family did not stay long in Prades, however, leaving in 1916 to escape from World War I. They lived on Long Island, New York, with Ruth’s parents. Five years later, when Thomas was only six, his mother died of cancer. After that, he lived variously with his father, his mother’s parents, other relatives, and family friends. In 1925 his father took him to the south of France to live, where he spent two unhappy years at a French school. Young Merton was happier in England, where he and his father moved in 1928. He attended Oakham School, wrote for the school paper, and eventually became its editor.

In 1931 his father died of a brain tumor. After graduating from Oakham in 1933, Merton had a disastrous year at Clare College, Cambridge, where he spent most of his time partying; he also might have fathered an illegitimate child. In 1934 he withdrew from Cambridge, returned to New York, and enrolled at Columbia University.

Merton did well at Columbia, completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees and writing a thesis on the mystical poetry of William Blake. He continued to live a bohemian life but also began to become interested in religion, especially Roman Catholicism, although he had been raised in the Anglican Church. He converted to Catholicism in 1938 and expressed an interest in becoming a priest or a monk. He also was interested in a writing career. He produced several novels that no one would publish but succeeded in publishing some poems and book reviews. He also took a position teaching English at St. Bonaventure College (now University) in New York.

Still seeking to become a monk, Merton applied to the Franciscans, but was turned down by them. He then went on a retreat at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky and knew immediately it was the place for him. He entered the monastery permanently on December 10, 1941.

Life’s Work

Except for a few trips to conferences in his later years, Merton spent the rest of his life at the monastery or in Louisville, Kentucky, on brief outings. The monastery Merton chose was a strict one that belonged to the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, also known as the Trappists. He took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and found himself in an institution in which he and his fellow monks were expected to spend most of their time in communal prayers and manual labor while eating a meager diet and wearing simple robes. They also were to be silent most of the time and use sign language instead of speaking.

Merton discusses his decision to subject himself to this strict discipline in his best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His idea was to free himself from the dissipated, undisciplined life he had led before entering the monastery. His original view was that he had to reject the world entirely, but he slowly gave up this idea. In the last ten years of his life especially, he saw his mission as one of reaching out to humanity while still maintaining his distance from the world.

For a while Merton even thought that, in order to purify himself and devote himself to God, he would have to give up his writing, but writing was too strong a drive in him. To his surprise, he found that his superiors in the monastery encouraged him to write, though they did also censor what he produced. Merton thus found himself in the paradoxical situation of having joined a monastery dedicated to the rule of silence and yet being able to speak, through his writings, to the world outside the monastery. Furthermore, he was quite candid about this paradox and about his struggles over his writings. He also struggled over his desire for greater solitude.

The Trappists were a communal order, and the monks at Gethsemani spent most of their time together. Merton soon decided that a hermit’s life would be ideal, like that practiced at some other, more contemplative monasteries. However, his superiors told him it was God’s will that he remain a Trappist, and he did, though he eventually won concessions, including a little hut that he used as a private hermitage on the monastery’s grounds.

Merton wrote about his struggles with his monastic life in several journals he published, notably The Sign of Jonas (1953) and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966). He also wrote books on contemplation, such as New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), in which he connected contemplation and prayer with community, wrote that contemplation was not just for monks, and argued that it must be accompanied by compassion for others.

Acting on his conviction that the truly spiritual person, even a solitary monk like himself, must connect to the world, Merton in his last years began writing about political issues. He opposed the Vietnam War, called for racial harmony, denounced nuclear weapons, and supported nonviolence. Also in these years he began to explore other spiritual traditions, such as Zen Buddhism, Daoism, and Sufi mysticism.

Exploring these traditions led him to Asia in late 1968, where he met the Dalai Lama and attended a religious conference in Bangkok, Thailand. He died there on December 10, 1968, after he was accidentally electrocuted.

Significance

Merton became instantly famous with the publication of The Seven Storey Mountain, a spiritual autobiography depicting his search for meaning in an apparently meaningless world. The book struck a chord in the postwar world of 1948, as did some of his later works in which he tried to explain prayer and contemplation through his personal experiences. Paradoxically, even though The Seven Storey Mountain ended by renouncing the world, it nevertheless appealed to that world as it spoke to all who were eager to follow him in his search for spirituality in a secular era.

Merton became a prophet for his era, trying to lead people away from mindless conformity and faith in technology. He tried to show them a path of contemplation through which they might connect with the deepest, most interior part of their being, and by doing so connect with God.

Bibliography

Cunningham, Lawrence. Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. Clear and informative account of Merton’s life after he joined the monastery and of the works he composed there. Discusses Merton’s views on prayer. Includes a useful annotated bibliography.

Elie, Paul. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. An examination of Merton alongside Catholics Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. These writers, taken together, paint a vivid portrait of the “Catholic moment” of the mid-twentieth century.

Furlong, Monica. Merton: A Biography. San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, 1980. Overview of Merton’s life, with useful discussion of his work as a teacher of novice monks. At times seems unsympathetic, presenting him as suffering from neuroses.

Kramer, Victor A. Thomas Merton. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Includes a biographical sketch and a discussion of Merton’s major works. Also includes a useful chronology, a bibliography, and an index.

Labrie, Ross. The Art of Thomas Merton. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1979. Literary analysis of Merton’s writings. Discusses his struggle over whether he could be both a monk and a writer. Index, bibliography.

Mott, Michael. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. The authorized biography. Focuses on the details of Merton’s everyday life rather than on the nature of his achievements. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Padovano, Anthony. The Human Journey: Thomas Merton, Symbol of a Century. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982. Focuses on Merton’s significance as a symbol of his age. Places him in the American context.

Shannon, William H. Thomas Merton: An Introduction. Cincinnati, Ohio: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005. Revised edition of Something of a Rebel. Includes a clear and informative biographical sketch, an insightful examination of Merton’s continuing significance, a discussion of his most important writings, and an explanation of his notion of contemplation. Index.

Shannon, William H., Christine M. Bochen, and Patrick F. O’Connell. The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002. A good resource that outlines Merton’s life and writings in an easy-to-read encyclopedic format. Includes name and subject indexes and a bibliography.

1941-1970: 1948: Merton Publishes His Spiritual Autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain.