Back in 1968 Thomas Merton made two long trips outside his monastery. On both trips he made extended stops at the Trappistine community of nuns in northern California, the Redwoods Monastery. Both times he gave a series of talks to a small gathering of religious men and women, active and contemplative. The topic: renewal in depth. The talks were recorded and finally published in 2024 in a book entitled Merton in California. I read the book twice, and it has sparked a number of observations, insights, and comments….brought me back to my own concerns for many years.
But first let us go back to that tumultuous era and recall our own mindset at that time:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, sparking race riots in cities across the United States.
Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California Democratic primary.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was the site of violent clashes between police and anti-war protesters.
The Glenville Shootout in Cleveland resulted in multiple deaths between Black militants and police, followed by days of rioting.
The Tet Offensive began, a major series of attacks by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army that marked the first televised war.
The My Lai Massacre, where hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed.
The Republican National Convention nominated Richard Nixon for President. Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed, a landmark piece of legislation aimed at prohibiting discrimination.
Prague Spring: A brief period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia was ended by an invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August.
Time magazine came out with an issue headlined “God is dead,” a lengthy article about a trendy group of Protestant theologians who practiced a new radical theology that few seemed to understand.
USS Pueblo incident: North Korea captured the U.S. Navy surveillance ship USS Pueblo, holding its crew for 11 months.
Apollo 8: The crewed spacecraft Apollo 8 orbited the Moon for the first time on December 24, with its crew becoming the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and the Earth as a whole.
Olympics Black Power salute: At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a Black Power salute during the medal ceremony.
Merton died in a freak accident in December.
I graduated from college and had already visited the Carthusians and Gethsemani in Kentucky and felt completely lost….almost went to Canada.
I won’t compare that era to this one….not a wise or simple thing to do. Each has had plenty of its own peculiar nightmares! In any case, the buzz word among Catholics of that era was “renewal,” and that was the topic of Merton’s talks at Redwoods: renewal of monastic life and contemplative life in general. At times the talks are deeply insightful, even profound, and at other times annoyingly superficial, hurriedly glossing over some real questions and complexities….but always illuminating some aspect of one’s spiritual journey. A digression: Reza Aratesh, the Iranian Sufi psychologist whom Merton wrote about and with whom he corresponded and who helped him get a deeper understanding of the Sufi path, once visited Gethsemani after Merton’s death. He got to listen to some recordings of Merton’s talks to his novices/other monks about Sufism; and he was disappointed and even upset….to him the talks seemed flip, superficial, even misleading. When Merton talked he was prone to that; he moved fast over a lot of material and wanting to communicate as much as possible to people to whom this material was unfamiliar. Analogy: A trip where you “Do Europe in 10 Days”! Example: I read his A Course in Christian Mysticism, a transcription of his conferences to his novices in the early 1960s. To me this was barely readable, and I don’t plan ever to go back to this work. But when he is focused on a topic and writing with his acute reflection, it’s a very different matter. His long essay, “The Philosophy of Solitude,” I can never leave, it illumines my heart so much! (And of course his essays on Zen and contemplative prayer). In these Redwoods talks you find a bit of both
I was struck by his use of the other major religious traditions in shedding light on Catholic contemplative renewal….today that kind of language would not be unusual but back in 1968 it definitely was “different.” And there are some surprises here: he spends more time talking about India and Hinduism than about Buddhism/Zen. The latter he was very conversant about; the former not so much…and it shows. He seems to have little or no interest in Advaita Vedanta as such but spends considerable time talking about the various kinds of yogas and the lessons we can learn from them. He is mainly attracted by the pluralism and diversity of Hinduism. Another puzzler: he does not seem at all intrigued or fascinated by the sannyasi reality. And finally: remember, this is 1968….he shows awareness of the existence of Shantivanam, and substantial writings by Monchanin and Abhishiktananda have been published and he seems aware of them, but he almost totally ignores Abhishiktananda and spends considerable praise on Monchanin. This partially explains that when he does get to India he doesn’t seem to seek out Abhishiktananda. While there he shows little interest in Hinduism but absolute fascination with Tibetan Buddhism. Interesting!
Lets get back to this renewal thing—the real theme of all these conferences. Once more lets recall it’s 1968 and as far as Catholic renewal is concerned the cat is out the bag and the horse is out of the barn….it’s really on and affecting every aspect and every segment of Church life, lay, clerical, religious, monastic. There is a lot of excitement, confusion, and expectation….and all three at the same time! In a bit of oversimplification we could say there were two distinct wings to this renewal: one, conservative; the other, liberal. The former saw renewal as a kind of dusting off the old structures, airing out a stale room; the latter saw renewal as almost a kind of demolition job….and these folks looked upon the conservatives as “polishing furniture on the Titanic” when they should be looking for a lifeboat! So Merton was talking about renewal in this context. But he was not about to fall for these easy categories and their unreal worldviews. Merton was aiming for the heart of it all, asking what is the real meaning of renewal . For monks this is intimately connected with the reality of prayer (and we will get into that much more in another posting); and for Merton there is absolutely no other justification for the monastic life except this reality of prayer—rightly understood. It is commonly called “the contemplative way,” and it also has a significant role for active religious in their renewal. For Merton, the institution is there for that reason, not the other way round. For the monk, renewal should center on making all structures and all practices facilitate the contemplative life. Very simple: what helps, you keep; what doesn’t, you modify or discard. Also, for Merton, renewal is about taking seriously the condition and mindset of the modern person who approaches the contemplative way. Easy to get lost here, even get badly hurt.
Given all that, you can sense the frustration and anxiety in Merton about how this renewal will develop. So many monks and nuns have a poor grasp on what is central to their vocation. They are vulnerable to be stampeded into making all kinds of external, superficial changes in order to be “relevant,” in order to attract “modern young people,” in order not to lose people already there…..and the great exodus has already begun by 1968. Merton mentions in passing how a group of monks at his monastery were discussing the possibility of a handball court. There’s committees of monks discussing all kinds of possibilities; endless talking and everything seems up for grabs in a whim. But there’s also the other group for whom even superficial customs or cherished practices are sacred even though they are quite clearly toxic to the contemplative way. You can almost hear the sarcasm in Merton’s voice when he mentions how the “chapter of faults” surely enhanced fraternal charity! There is a kind of glorification of the institution and its image (and we’ll get back to this in a deeper way when we get to contemplative prayer in Part II), and for too many monks and nuns a healthy development of a deep life necessitates running an obstacle course which not many can manage. Merton’s point is that the sclerotic nature of monasticism as an institution had to be shaken up, but always the goal and the point of it all was the deep contemplative life….not simply ‘being modern.”
In any case, if there was hope that a “renewed” monastic/religious life would be more attractive to young people, that proved to be not quite so. The numbers for all Catholic religious life have taken a staggering decline, both active and contemplative. Consider: Trappist monks in the U.S. in 1968, about 700; Merton’s own monastery of Gethsemani, about 160. Today Trappists in the U.S. number about 200; Gethsemani, about 40. The numbers are not any better in the very active, very modern Jesuits: combined U.S. and Canada the Jesuits numbered abound 8000 in 1968; today, about 2000. And all these numbers are declining slowly even more. No kind of renewal, good or bad, could forestall this; the reasons for this decline are deep and complex….and I will touch on this in Part II.
I think Catholic monasticism (western) really missed an opportunity in this age of renewal. The focus was on the “charism of the founder” for each congregation. There was some real authentic developments from that dynamic, but it still inevitably leads to institutional narrow-mindedness and institutional egotism. Instead, all the monastic congregations should have banded together and worked to recover the deep universal monastic charism which could then be expressed in a pluralism and diversity that flows with life and growth in the Spirit. In other words there would only be monks….not members of this or that congregation….something like the phenomenon on Mt. Athos. In any case, just a dream of mine……!
The future of monastic life as we have known it is doubtful. However, monastic life in some form will always be there: small, “off the beaten path” of what the world considers important, perhaps in some sense hidden, with no credentials except prayer and the Divine Presence. Merton thought that was a real possibility, and I think he was truly right…..a lot to be said about this….perhaps later.