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THE SEEKER AND THE MONK
EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONS with THOMAS MERTON
By Sophfronia Scott
A SAINT JULIAN PRESS BOOK REVIEW
Written by Publisher – Ron Starbuck
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THE first time I read Thomas Merton’s
book, New Seeds of Contemplation, the 1962 revision of his 1948 Seeds
of Contemplation, I was fourteen years old.
It was a book I found in my father’s library at the United Methodist
Church where he served as an ordained clergy and their senior pastor. One day, while sitting in his office it
caught my eye and I asked if I might borrow it to read. Somehow, I never returned the book to
him. A few years later when I went off
to my first year of college, it went with me.
Today it rests on a shelf in our own library here at home.
THOMAS MERTON is one of my oldest
friends. Merton’s words from New
Seeds of Contemplation are words that have flowed in and with and through
me my entire life nearly. Imagine for
just a moment, the impact of this poetic-prose from “Pray for Your Own
Discovery,” Merton’s sixth contemplation.
“THERE exists some point at which I
can meet God in a real and experimental contact with His infinite
actuality. This is the “place” of God,
His sanctuary—it is the point where my contingent being depends upon His
love. Within myself is a metaphorical
apex of existence at which I am held in being by my Creator.
God utters me like a word containing
a partial thought of Himself.
A word will never be able to
comprehend the voice that utters it.
But if I am true to the concept that
God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him I was meant to embody, I shall
be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself
nowhere. I shall be lost in Him: that
is, I shall find myself. I shall be
“saved.” 1
IN her book, The Seeker and the
Monk, author Sophfronia Scott describes a similar experience when hearing
Merton’s words read out loud for the first time. “I first met Thomas Merton in December
2011. I was at the start of a graduate
program in which I would earn my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing when I
heard a lecturer, Robert Vivian, quote an extended passage from Merton’s Conjectures
of a Guilty Bystander. The section
called “The Night Spirit and the Dawn Air” begins with “How the valley awakes .
. .” Hearing those words, to put it
simply, set my world on fire:”
“HOW the valley awakes.
At two-fifteen in the morning there are no sounds except in the
monastery: the bells ring, the office begins.
Outside, nothing, except perhaps a bullfrog saying “Om” in the creek or
in the guesthouse pond. Some nights he
is in Samadhi; there is not even “Om.”
The mysterious and uninterrupted whooping of the whippoorwill begins
about three, these mornings. He is not
always near. Sometimes there are two
whooping together, perhaps a mile away in the woods in the east.
The first chirps of the waking day
birds mark the “point vierge” of the dawn under a sky as yet without
real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in
perfect silence opens their eyes. They
begin to speak to Him, not with fluent song, but with an awakening question
that is their dawn state, their state at the “point vierge.” Their condition asks if it is time for them
to “be.” He answers “yes.” Then, they
one by one wake up, and become birds.
They manifest themselves as birds, beginning to sing. Presently they
will be fully themselves, and will even fly.
Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment
of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to “be” once
again, as it did on the first morning that ever was.” 2
AFTER her first encounter with Thomas
Merton, Sophfronia Scott goes on to describe her feelings at the time. “Suddenly I wanted to be outside at the crack
of dawn, eager to sense the voice of the Creator Spirit giving the waking birds
this vital message, their cue: it is time for you to be. I too wanted God to tell me it was time for me
to be. Merton goes on to say, “Here is
an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not
understand.” I felt something open up in
my whole being. It felt immense and
small at the same time because it felt like one word: Yes.
Yes, I thought. That’s
exactly it.” 3
WHAT unveils and unfolds in the
author’s everyday conversations with Thomas Merton, is something wonderous to
read and behold. Through her
conversations and contemplations with Merton, he is revealed to us as someone
who is wholly human, and yet, still able to teach us how to see ourselves
living within the world in miraculous ways, at the virgin point, from which all
creation arises. And the infinite
possibilities of our own transcendence and transformation as someone who is
wholly human too, and something more. In
her ongoing encounters with Merton, Sophfronia Scott helps us to realize the
deep certainty of God surrounding us in each moment. In the book’s first chapter and in one of her
conversations she calls to our contemplative attention these words of Merton.
‘“THE ever-changing reality in the
midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted
dialogue with God,” he writes in New Seeds of Contemplation. “By this I do not mean continuous ‘talk,’ . .
. but a dialogue of love and of choice.
A dialogue of deep wills.” I like
to think Thomas and I have such a dialogue.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not equating him with the divine. In fact, at times he seems like a man out to
“hack” life, wanting to outsmart everything and everyone, even death. I take him to task in such moments. When he describes a Zen teaching on the power
of sincerity or non-deceiving, he observes, “This power of non-deceiving is,
for me, the all important thing and I lack it.
That is, I have the seeds of it but I do not let them grow. I begin to want to assure people of my
sincerity, and then I deceive myself.
And, of course, I am trying to deceive them—that I am sincere.”’
IN their dialogue she gently calls
Merton to task with this insightful observation.
“Thomas, I think to myself
(and to him), I think this shows a lack of love for others. You think yourself smarter than everyone else
so even when you mean well, you think you will be misunderstood. So you have to double explain, hide,
deceive. You don’t trust them, nor do
you really trust what is in your own heart.
That sounds like a tiring way to be.” 4
AS the reader we must imagine that
Merton does hear her; we must suspend our sense of disbelief and become a part
of this conversation too. This is the
invitation the author offers. She
invites us into her questioning journey, into this dialogue. And along the way reminds us that there is an
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is an intimate part of our being. As it is an intimate part of God’s being and
creation; remembering along the way that we are created in the image and
likeness of God, Imago Dei.
WE are one spirit, we are unity, and
all our divisions and dualities simply dissolve away and disappear within this
union. Unity is non-duality, it is this
oneness of creation sought and received.
Unity and oneness are the infinite possibilities, the interconnections,
and interbeing of everything arising together within creation. This marvelous concept of an indwelling
spirit is one that humankind shares across many faiths and spiritual
traditions. We find it elegantly
expressed with these words and poetic images from the book of Ephesians
and the Gospel of Matthew.
Ephesians 4:4-6 (NRSV) — There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in
all.
Matthew 6:22 (AKJV) — The light of the body is the eye: if
therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
ALLOW me to spoil nothing more here,
and encourage you the reader, to move forward on this journey and in this
dialogue without pause. And with an
assurance and affirmation of faith of what will be revealed; here there is an
intimacy between two seekers separated by time and space, and yet, who are in
sacred unity with one another. Knowing that
within a deeper truth we too, who are on this wonderous path, all of us
together, belong to one another.
Ron Starbuck – Saint Julian Press, Inc. © 2021
Notes:
1.
Merton, Thomas.
New Seeds of Contemplation
(p. 39).
New Directions
.
Kindle
Edition.
2.
Merton, Thomas.
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
(Image Classic) (p. 127).
The Crown
Publishing Group
.
Kindle Edition.
3.
Scott, Sophfronia.
The Seeker and the Monk
– “This Monk
Who Follows Me Around” (Chapter 1 – p. 4).
Broadleaf Books – Minneapolis, MN.
4.
Scott, Sophfronia.
The Seeker and the Monk
– “This Monk
Who Follows Me Around” (Chapter 1 – p. 12).
Broadleaf Books – Minneapolis, MN.
The Seeker and the Monk —Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton
By Sophfronia Scott (Author), Barbara Brown Taylor (Foreword by)
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Sophfronia Scott is a novelist, essayist, and leading contemplative thinker whose work has appeared in Time, People, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other outlets. When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published, she was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards and hailed by Henry Louis Gates Jr. as "one of the best writers of her generation." Her other books include Unforgivable Love, Love's Long Line, and This Child of Faith. Scott holds degrees from Harvard and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Web: sophfronia.com Twitter: @Sophfronia Instagram: @sophfronia.scott Facebook: @SophfroniaAuthor |
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