Thomas Merton

June 15th, Thomas Merton

I saw the country in a light that we usually do not see: the low-slanting rays picked out the foliage of the trees and high-lighted a new wheatfield against the dark curtain of woods on the knobs, which were in shadow.

It was very beautiful. Deep peace. Sheep on the slopes behind the sheep barn. The new trellises in the novitiate garden leaning and sagging under a hill of roses. A cardinal singing suddenly in the walnut tree, and piles of fragrant logs all around the woodshed waiting to be cut in bad weather.

I looked at all this in great tranquility, with my soul and spirit quiet. For me, landscape seems to be important for contemplation. Anyway, I have no scruples about loving it. Didn’t Saint John of the Cross hide himself in a room up in a church tower, where there was one small window through which he could look out at the country?

- Thomas Merton, from The Sign of Jonas

Easter

“In the old days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blessed fire home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as lamps came on in the windows of the farmhouses one by one.”

- Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton, from "Seasons of Celebration"

“…The year is not just another year: it is the year of the Lord—a year in which the passage of time itself brings us not only the natural renewal of spring and the fruitfulness of an earthly summer, but also the spiritual and interior fruitfulness of grace.”

From Thomas Merton

“When you are by yourself, you soon get tired of your craziness. It is too exhausting. It does not fit in with the eminent sanity of trees, birds, water, sky. You have to shut up and go about the business of living. The silence of the woods forces you to make a decision which the tensions and artificialities of society may help you evade forever. Do you want to be yourself or don’t you?…Are you going to stand on your own feet before God and the world and take full responsibility for your own life?”

- Thomas Merton, from Contemplation in a World of Action

Thomas Merton - "To belong to God I have to belong to myself..."

“To belong to God I have to belong to myself. I have to be alone—at least interiorly alone. This means the constant renewal of a decision. I cannot belong to people. None of me belongs to anybody but God. Absolute loneliness of the imagination, the memory, the will. My love for everybody is equal, neutral, and clean. No exclusiveness. Simple and free as the sky, because I love everybody and am possessed by nobody, not held, not bound.

In order to be not remembered or even wanted, I have to be a person that nobody knows. They can have Thomas Merton. He’s dead. Father Louis—he’s half dead too. For my part, my name is that sky, those fence-posts, and those cedar trees. I shall not even reflect on who I am and I shall not say my identity is nobody’s business, because that implies a truculence I don’t intended. It has no meaning…Now my whole life is this—to keep unencumbered. The wind owns the fields where I walk and I own nothing and am owned by nothing, and I shall never even be forgotten because no one will ever discover me.”

- from The Sign of Jonas

Cutting Up an Ox

Prince Wen Hui’s cook
Was cutting up an ox.
Out went a hand,
Down went a shoulder,
He planted a foot,
He pressed with a knee,
The ox fell apart
With a whisper,
The bright cleaver murmured
Like a gentle wind.
Rhythm!  Timing!
Like a sacred dance,
Like “The Mulberry Grove,”
Like ancient harmonies!

“Good work!” the Prince exclaimed,
“Your method is faultless!”
“Method?” said the cook
Laying aside his cleaver,
“What I follow is Tao
Beyond all methods!”


“When I first began
To cut up an oxen
I would see before me
The whole ox
All in one mass.


“After three years
I no longer saw this mass.
I saw the distinctions.


“But now, I see nothing
With the eye.  My whole being
Apprehends.
My senses are idle.  The spirit
Free to work without plan
Follows its own instinct
Guided by natural line,
By the secret opening, the hidden space,
My cleaver finds its own way.
I cut through no joint, chop no bone.


“A good cook needs a new chopper
Once a year–he cuts.
A poor cook needs a new one
Every month–he hacks!


“I have used this same cleaver
Nineteen years.
It has cut up
A thousand oxen.
Its edge is as keen
As if newly sharpened.


“There are spaces in the joints;
The blade is thin and keen:
When this thinness
Finds that space
There is all the room you need!
It goes like a breeze!
Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years
As if newly sharpened!


“True, there are sometimes
Tough joints.  I feel them coming,
I slow down, I watch closely,
Hold back, barely move the blade,
And whump! the part falls away
Landing like a clod of earth.


“Then I withdraw the blade,
I stand still
And let the joy of the work
Sink in.
I clean the blade
And put it away.”


Prince Wan Hui said,
“This is it! My cook has shown me
How I ought to live
My own life!”

- Chuang Tzu, trans. by Thomas Merton

"Christ has sanctified the desert,

and in the desert I discovered it. The woods have all become young in the discipline of the spring: but it is the discipline of expectancy only. Which one cut more keenly? The February sunlight, or the air? There are no buds. Buds are not guessed at, or thought of, this early in Lent. But the wilderness shines with promise. The land is dressed in simplicity and strength. Everything foretells the coming of the holy spring. I had never before spoken so freely or so intimately with woods, hills, birds, water, and sky. On this great day, however, they understood their position and they remained mute in the presence of the Beloved. Only his light was obvious and eloquent. My brother and sister, the light and water. The stump and the stone. The tables of rock. The blue, naked sky. Tractor tracks, a little waterfall. And Mediterranean solitude. I thought of Italy after my Beloved had spoken and was gone.”

- Thomas Merton, from The Sign of Jonas