Thomas Merton, Monk & Mystic

November 24, 2023

This week in Monks, Martyrs and Mystics, we’re studying Thomas Merton. He was a monk known for his writings on the contemplative life. He became more widely known during the Vietnam War, when his writings touched on issues of social justice.

I lived in Louisville from 2016 until 2019, in the historic Henry Clay building on 3rd and Chestnut. My apartment was just three blocks from 4th and Walnut, now Muhammed Ali Blvd, where Thomas Merton had his epiphany. In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Merton wrote:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is…