December 10, 2008, was the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton. He died, on the same date as he entered the monastery at Gethsemani 27 years earlier. He died of electrical shock in a bathtub in Thailand, only a few hours after he had spoken to a conference of Benedictine and Cistercian Abbots in Bangkok. His last words at the conference are reputed to have been, "so I will disappear."Thomas Merton's death was labeled an accident, though given the circumstances it could have been murder, or even suicide. To me there seems to be something a little odd about the symmetry of the end of his old life as he entered the monastery and the end of his life on earth sharing the same date, but that's something to consider some other time.
On the same day, at his home in Switzerland, theologian Karl Barth died. Merton had written about Barth some years earlier, and they both shared a commitment to extracting the heart of christian faith from the cultural prison in which it had been placed (a lesson a goodly number might consider learning once again), Barth going so far as to stand up directly to Hitler at the beginning of WWII. Both men were far more conservative in their various perspectives than I am comfortable with in my own life and in our present world, but they both struggled (in concert with so many others) to move humanity in the direction of deeper spirit, and heart, and love.
Just before his death, on a trip through Asia leading to the conference where he died, Merton met with the Dalai Lama as part of an ongoing search for commonality and comunication between kindred spirits on different sides of geographical and spiritual divides. It was just one part of an ongoing struggle for Merton that waxed and waned through his 27 years at Gethsemani, and certainly would have continued to who knows where had he lived.In another interesting connection, December 10 is also the anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights, a document that was heavily influenced by Jacques Maritain (quoted in the previous post), a friend and mentor for Merton and a man of eloquent, spiritual humanism. Maritain's spirit resides behind the brilliance of that document and is echoed in writings from Merton like this one from his book, Faith and Violence. "I am on the side of the people who are being burned, cut to pieces, tortured, held as hostages, gassed, ruined, destroyed. They are the victims of both sides. To take sides with massive power is to take sides against the innocent. "
Merton's thoughts, his writings, and his life all depict a deep abiding struggle to fit the bigness of love into the framework of life.
