Learning to Love

Besides The Diary of Anne Frank, this is the first journal of another person that I have read.
It was needed in my life at this particular juncture… these two months in time.
I’m grateful to read of his many conflicts and contradictions. He makes me feel less alone in the challenges of loving God, self, and others (both personally and globally) honestly and well.

I stumbled on this book in the library of The Abbey of Gethsemani and was shocked and delighted to open up the journals of Thomas Merton and stumble upon a steamy love affair. My whole silent retreat was sidetracked by me obsessively reading this monastic romance novel. Sadly, the affair only lasted about 100 pages, so it took me a while to get through the whole thing. Well worth it, though. Thomas Merton was fantastically human and also wonderfully interested in the world of ideas. Meeting him through these journals has made me love him forever.

I must say in advance that to appreciate this volume [number six] it is critical to read the volumes leading up to this point. Some might call Merton's position one of a mid-life crisis but whatever it is labeled it is a privilege to be able to glean into this man's thoughts. At the writing of this journal Merton has been in a cloistered life for twenty-seven years and it's not been easy and here we find him regretting a good deal of it and wondering what it's all about. In all of the other journals combined we never hear of him doing so much drinking and drunkenness and the affair that he has with the nurse is so sad because he;s genuinely in love and yet the society that he keeps forbids such relationships. turmoil is what you see and you have to wonder how much of it wa from the Vietnam war and other events of the sixties. for a monk, a hermit no less, he was involved far beyond what you would imagine. to be listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and LIKING them is something extraordinary. Here too is the evidence of his strong departure from his catholic roots as we see him delving further into other religions such as Sufism and Zen Buddhism. he was a man who struggled for his place in this world and although he found aspects of it he remained troubled. certainly an excellent volume the best thus far but you have to read the others to understand this one in context pf the man.

"Being a songwriter is like being a nun: You're married to a mystery." - Leonard Cohen.

Conflicted between the path of marrying a woman or continuing his vows in the monastic life, Jesuit priest James Martin made the coments:

"when you enter the religious order, you don’t check your sexuality at the door. You fall in love. And my novice director said, “And if people don’t fall in love with you, something’s wrong because you’re living a loving life, and we’re human beings.” And actually, I was horrified. I thought, “Oh, my gosh, what if I fall in love?” Not that love is a bad thing, but this would be terrible. And I did. I fell in love in a very deep way, and I had to make a decision" (http://www.onbeing.org/program/james-...)

Martin, in many ways is a successor of Thomas Merton. He referencing Merton's seminal work "The Seven Storey Mountain" as the point at which he left a career in corporate finance and entered the Jesuit order. Like Merton, he has stature in the community, a well known name, and one whose flock extends the confines of a tradtiional church home.

"Learning to Love" is a collectd of journal entries from 1966-1967, in which Merton describes his falling in love with a young woman, and honoring his commitment as an man who has abandoned the world. We meet him when he is 25 years in, at 51 years of age, and already a prominent Catholic leader. With earnestness, and provactiveness, his journal entries show a conflict that tests his faith and his biology:

"I have no intention of keeping the M. business entirely out of sight. I have always wanted to be completely open, both about my mistaken and about my effort to make sense out of my life. The affair with M. is an important part of i - and shows my limitations as well as a side of me that is - well, it needsto be known too, for it is part of me. M need for love, my loneliness, my inner division, the struggle in which a solitude is once a problem and a "solution".

It's not so simple as walking away from a love interest. Merton details his distaste for the stiffling head abbott and his joylessness, he confronts his own confuson about what good he is doing in the woods of Kentucky, and seeks spiritual understanding in constraints that deny him a greater happiness. Throughout this book he tests his ways to a relationship with M. Asking God for acceptence to do so, and testing conventional ways to leave the brotherhood in good graces.

One of the joys of the book is Merton's inexhorable seeking of God in all things. We never doubt his faith, as he states: "I have no hestiation in firmly desiring and intending 'to be a Catholic and to hold all my herat to the truth faith of the living God manifested in Christ and in his Church. And no monkeying! Amen. Whatever I seek in other traditions is only the truth of Christ expressed in other terms, reject all that is really contrary to his Truth." (p,358-359). But it is interesting how he loves writing about Bob Dylan vinyl records, seeks the company of Zen Buddhists like Thicht Nhat Hanh for meditation, and offers some sympathy for the university radicals. He cozies up to existential literature like Kafka and Camus, rabidly devours the leading thought thinkers of his day.

Merton maintains a self-awareness in his journals that makes the book universally fascinating. Sometimes it's the subtle aspects of his wooden home, snow falls, spotting wolves and killing giant bugs that give it a "Walden" presence. All of this gives a slowness and visual understanding of his daily world. And there are the more thoughtful centering thoughts about giving space for God, being a vessel who is useful in his writings for a larger American culture, and evocatively writing about the unjust American prescence in Vietnam. And he knew these writings would be found, asking them to not be published until 25 years after his death.

Faith asks us to put a stamp on ambiguity. To have confidence in a a set of cards that are not yet revealed. Whether or not we agree with Merton's decisions, and whether or not he finds the inner peace he looks for, it's the searching of the questions themselves that give meaning to the journey.

Having worked my way through the other volumes, I found this one particularly interesting. Merton falls in love with a young nurse, thirty years younger than himself. The whole volume speaks to the often strange and conflicted person Merton was. He openly shares his humanity, his weakeness and his struggle to find his true self.

"I am destroyed by too much perfection"

Reading someone's diary is dangerous. I can't say I've ever had a book consume me the way this one has. This has to be one of the most remarkable accounts of the human condition I have ever read. At this stage in his life, Merton was pulled in two directions-- trying to walk to heaven and hell at the same time.

On one hand, he was a hermit who denounced the world. He wanted to stare at trees and grass, feel the sacred oneness, pray, adore his creator, and spread peace and love in every way he possibly could. On the other hand, he was an "important figure" in the Catholic world and he knew it all too well. He saved and organized every word he ever wrote so it could one day be studied by thousands. He was told over and over that his voice mattered, so he devoured every bit of culture he could get his hands on to voice his opinion on the matter.

Then came the big love! Oh, the big love. One day he says this woman is the most beautiful blessing from God. They are wrapped in divine tenderness-- all is perfect. The next day he is in total panic, unrest. He knows they can't go on like they have been. What good could come? It is all a total nightmare. He can't sleep or eat. What a horrible hermit he has become. She never leaves his mind... then he talks to her on the phone and oooh what warmth and joy! Nothing compares with this!

During the two weeks I spent reading this book, I entered a state of schizophrenia. I swear I felt the tension of his soul in my body and carried it around with me. I too couldn't eat or think straight. I fell into a deep state of love that was uniquely of God and not of God. A truly wild human experience.

I found Merton's narrative of his journey toward human love interesting but disappointing. Certainly this famed author, revered for the impact he had on so many contemplatives, documented in detailed honesty the tormented "human love," that he eventually gave back to God, choosing to stay in religious life. What I found disappointing was the self-centered portrayal of this journey. He shares little insight that would lead us to understand why he would have been so smitten by a young nurse and left me wondering if it was longing for human connection rather than love -- a strictly a personal reaction to his narrative that might or might not be accurate.

Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton) (v. 6) by Thomas Merton (1998)