‘A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton’
Book review |- Written by Patrick Hart | Special to The Courier-Journal

In the latter part of March 1998, I had the good fortune of attending a lecture by then-Bishop Rowan Williams of Monmouth, Wales, sponsored by the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland at Merton’s prep school of Oakham, which attracted participants from around the world. After his excellent presentation in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, I congratulated him. What I recall of our conversation was his insistence on the enormous influence of William Blake on the early Merton. Along with Hopkins, Newman and Blake, Merton was steeped in the Russian Orthodox theologians who had migrated to Paris.

Following a brief Author’s Foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he acknowledges his indebtedness to Merton over the years from the time of “Elected Silence” (the British edition of Merton’s autobiography heavily edited by Evelyn Waugh), to “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” “studying for my doctorate with Merton’s friend, A.M. Allchin, proved a doorway into still more of his mind and spirit. A few years later The Asian Journal gave me my first sense that inter-religious dialogue could be (and had to be) a matter of spiritual encounter, and still more doors opened.

Rowan Williams arranged these “engagements” into five chapters, beginning with a paradoxical tribute to Thomas Merton in “a person that nobody knows.” He concludes this short chapter with words of wisdom: “The great Christian is the man or woman who can make me more interested in God than in him or her. A paradoxical tribute, but the highest that can be paid.”

The second chapter, “Bread in the Wilderness,” concerns the monastic ideal in Thomas Merton and Paul Evdokimov, which first appeared in Theology and Prayer, essays in monastic themes presented at the Oxford Cistercian Conference in 1973, edited by A.M. Allchin.

“New Words for God,” the third chapter, deals with contemplation and religious writing and is based on Williams’ talk at Oakham in 1998. It was published in “Thomas Merton: Poet, Monk, Prophet,” edited by Paul Pearson, director of the Merton Center at Bellarmine University for Three Parks Press.

The fourth chapter, titled “The Only Real City: Monasticism and the Social Vision,” was delivered as an address at the Thomas Merton Conference held at Bose in northern Italy in 2004. It later appeared in the Merton Journal, published by the Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

“Not Being Serious: Thomas Merton and Karl Barth” was originally given as a lecture on Dec. 10, 2008, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Merton’s and Barth’s deaths, which reminds us that they died on this day and shared an obituary in the New York Times.

With an insightful Preface by Orthodox writer Jim Forest and an Afterword by Metropolitan Bishop Kallistus Ware, this ecumenical gem is assured a wide and appreciative readership.

Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O, a monk of Gethsemani, is currently general editor of a new series of books on Monastic Wisdom, a Cistercian Publications Imprint from Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn. He was the last secretary to Thomas Merton, the monk, author and mystic.