Wild Heart

"Drunk on the floor of Nick’s Bar in Greenwich Village, murmuring repeatedly, “I’m going to be a priest! I’m going to be a priest!” Jinny was part of his life then, A Cistercian monk of the Strict Observance. A hermit, for God’s sake. Sitting on the floor in his pajamas, drinking sherry on the rocks, listening to New York. Jinny Burton.

It all came together now. New York, as secular a city as cities can get. Here, of all places, a contemplative Catholic hermit is ready to meet a Zen Buddhist scholar. A Trappist monk—as Catholic and celibate as you can get. Wondering why he never married, regretting all that was lost along the way. He was wild as an undergraduate at Columbia—he was at Columbia now, Butler Hall. He was worse at Cambridge. The sounds of New York. He was faithful to them. Twenty-two years of the strictest discipline the Catholic Church sanctions. And still not settled. Happy. Content. It does not last. Home. He had found the only home he had ever known. Now he was restless again. It was not enough. It never is enough.

The sherry was good. And New York, the love affair with New York was on again. He hated it once—but that was only because love frightened him. The Nazis bombed Warsaw the last time he had seen her. The war had begun. Before it was over, Hiroshima would be incinerated. His mother’s body was reduced to ashes. Harlem always troubled him. He listened to it now. In an early poem he had seen America crucify Christ and children in Harlem. Sounds of anguish.

His journey was nearly over, but he did not know it then. He felt as though he had walked through the whole century. He would die before the century ended. But they belonged to each other—this century and Thomas Merton. All the Jinny Burtons, all the Harlems, all the prayers in the night, all the belongings. New York. Kentucky. Rome. Paris. London. He became a symbol of the twentieth century—of its turmoil and sensitivity, of its conflict and restlessness, of its furtive peace and fugitive wars, of its holocausts and Hiroshimas and Harlems and hopes. Everyone he loved would die in this century. He would die too…soon. But death would not have an easy time of it...

Merton was frightened by his own capacity for anarchy and indulgence. He required constraint and discipline to order his life. Had he not become a Trappist, he most likely would have dissipated his talent and destroyed his life. His conversion to Catholicism began the process of radically ordering his life. The conversion experience was intense; the church he joined, strict and authoritarian. But this was not enough.

Catholicism tends to be more demanding in its doctrinal expression than in the behavior it demands of its believing members. Reformed Christianity, on the other hand, stresses moral rather than theological rectitude. Merton needed something or someone to order his personal life. The monastery offered him the discipline he required to save himself. It is doubtful he would ever leave monastic life, although he sometimes toyed with the idea. Intuitively he knew that without monasticism he would wander into futility. His vocation was a response both to God and to his own need to remain consistent with himself. Even as a hermit he maintained strong ties with his community and its superior.

The tension in Merton between anarchy and discipline proved creative. Too much of either would have destroyed him as an artist. The secret of his genius has something to do with balance between extremes. His writing is never worse than when he follows the strict rules of Scholastic theology or Cistercian piety. The Ascent to Truth and his biographies of Trappistine mystics are among his worst books.

As he breaks free of this rigidity into a spontaneity more his own, he writes poetry and theology in a more imaginative and ingenious manner. The Geography of Lograire and Zen and the Birds of Appetite may be the best work he ever did in either genre. If too much discipline would have destroyed his talent, his distinctive anarchy would also have limited his range and his vision. His writing appealed to so large an audience because there were passages in his books that both radicals and reactionaries found congenial...

Thomas Merton was a man of contradictions: assertive yet elusive, committed to the stability of the monastic life but a wanderer at heart, a man who came to symbolize in a unique way his country and century. Still today, perhaps more than ever, he fascinates us with his spiritual genius and brilliant insights into the heart and soul of humankind. Merton’s life was a search on many levels and, as such, it offers readers guidance on their own spiritual quests."

Anthony T. Padovano, The Spiritual Genius of Thomas Merton