"Inexorably life moves on towards crisis and mystery. Everyone must
struggle to adjust himself to this, to face the situation for 'now is
the judgment of the world.' In a way, each one judges himself merely by
what he does. Does, not says. Yet let us not completely dismiss words.
They do have meaning. They are related to action. They spring from
action and they prepare for it, they clarify it, they direct it." --"
Thomas Merton ,"" August 16, 1961
The fourth volume of Thomas Merton's complete journals, one of his final
literary legacies, springs from three hundred handwritten pages that
capture - in candid, lively, deeply revealing passages - the growing
unrest of the 1960s, which Merton witnessed within himself as plainly as
in the changing culture around him.
In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and
frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds
himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and
the irresistible pull of social concerns. Precisely when he longs for
more solitude, and convinces himself he could not cut back on his
writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about the contemporary
culture ("the 'world' with its funny pants, of which I do not know the
name, its sandals and sunglasses"), war, and the churches role in
society.
Thus despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his
celebrity and growing concerns for social issues fuel his writings on
civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with
those who urge him to leave the moral issues to bishops and theologians.
This pivotal volume in the Merton journals reveals a man at the height
of abrilliant writing career, marking the fourteenth anniversary of his
priesthood but yearning still for the key to true happiness and grace.
Here, in his most private diaries, Merton is as intellectually curious,
critical, and insightful as in his best-known public writings while he
documents his movement from the cloister toward the world, from Novice
Master to hermit, from ironic critic to joyous witness to the mystery of
God's plan.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, writer and peace
activist. His spiritual classics include "New Seeds of Contemplation,
The Sign of Jonas, Mystics and Zen Masters" and "The Seven Story
Mountain"
