So, what's your take on how Merton sees monastic life changing?  Was he right?

Saint Benedict in his Rule makes it quite clear that the whole aim of the Benedictine life is to form Christ in us, to enable the Spirit of Christ to carry out, in our lives, actions worthy of Christ.  (Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey)

I hear thunder.  I expect the rain is not far behind.  I'll be driving down to the Abbey this morning and so I was reminded about a journal entry that I've written about before from Thomas Merton.  Here it is again for your reading pleasure.

April 15, 1961

Thunderstorm. The first I have sat through in the hermitage. Here you can really watch a storm. White snakes of lightening suddenly stand in the sky and vanish. The valley is clouded with rain as white as milk. All the hills vanish. The thunder cracks and beats. Rain comes flooding down from the roof eaves, and the grass looks twice as green as before.

Not to be known, not to be seen.

If you read my blog very often, you know that I enjoy reading Thomas Merton's writings.  Once in a while, I like to grab one of his journals and read what he was thinking about and writing about around this time of year.  Here's an entry from 1963.

January 25, 1963

Still very cold and bright.

The best thing about the retreat has been working in the pig barn and then walking back alone, a mile and a half, through the snow.

I think I have come to see more clearly and more seriously the meaning, or lack of meaning, in my life.  How much I am still the same self-willed and volatile person who made such a mess of Cambridge.  That I have not changed yet, down in the depths, or perhaps, yes, I have changed radically somewhere, yet I have still kept some of the old, vain, inconstant, self-centered ways of looking at things.  The situation I am in now has been given me to change me, if I will only surrender completely to reality as it is given me by God and no longer seek in any way to evade it, even by interior reservations.

Hitherto my interior reservation has been always "Of course there must be something better, and who knows if that is not for me?"

Well, there is something better:  but it must come out of an inner transformation of my own self, in Christ.  What is better is Christ, that is to say, for me to live completely in and by Him.  I already do live in Him, of course, but there remains much to be surrendered that still remains "my own."

I'm always intrigued by how much "normal" stuff Merton writes about.  The weather.  His own internal struggles and failings.  His frustration with himself and others, etc.  Perhaps that's why I resonate with his writing as much as I do. 

Here's a Merton quote to chew on for a while. It opens a book entitled The Gift of Being Yourself written by David Benner. I'm kind of excited to read this. How can a book be bad that starts off with Merton? Take a look.

There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend:
to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

It's been raining some in Lexington over the last 24 hours. Besides us being very dry here in Kentucky, I'm happy to see it rain because I simply enjoy a rainy day. It's probably my own illusion but a rainy day seems to slow things down just a bit. Life doesn't seem like such a whirlwind. I long to go and sit on my porch with a cup of coffee in hand and watch it rain. Better than that, I'd love to lose myself in the sound of the rain. Most of the time life is too busy to take advantage of a rainy, stormy day. Life calls. My job calls. Although I may have to be physically present at work, I take time to stare out the window and imagine myself surrounded by the sound of the rain.

Thomas Merton writes about rain quite often in his journals. In one of my favorite Merton books, The Intimate Merton, we find this journal entry.

April 15, 1961

Thunderstorm. The first I have sat through in the hermitage. Here you can really watch a storm. White snakes of lightening suddenly stand in the sky and vanish. The valley is clouded with rain as white as milk. All the hills vanish. The thunder cracks and beats. Rain comes flooding down from the roof eaves, and the grass looks twice as green as before.

Not to be known, not to be seen.

Of all the authors I've ever read, no one speaks to me in the same way Thomas Merton does. I can't explain it. Somehow, Merton and I have a deep connection through shared struggles and shared longings.

There's a prayer that I first found at the Abbey of Gethsemani. It was sitting in a non-descript brochure holder on the front desk. I picked it up and began to read. I was immediately taken in by this prayer.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

There are several sentences in that prayer I could have penned. I love the honesty of it. Even after nearly ten years of monastic life, ten years of prayer, and ten years of community, Merton did not have life figured out. He too questioned the future and what that may look like. In short, there was a lot Merton didn't understand about his own journey and was able to somehow trust God with his life and future. I love the last part of the prayer. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

(Thoughts in Solitude, p. 92)