For the beginning of Lent, I want to offer you these words of Thomas Merton from Thoughts in Solitude, Part Two, Chapter II consists of fifteen lines that have become known as “the Merton Prayer.”  It is the most common prayer of Merton’s that people cite. 

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.    – Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”     © Abbey of Gethsemani

Two other quotes, though, seem more relevant today.  “If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.” 

But this is the one for today:    “Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how. “     Thomas Merton   Contemplation In A World Of Action , p. 246

Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France, to two artist Parents, Ruth and Owen Merton. His early years were spent in the south of France; later, he went to private school in England and then to Cambridge. Both of his parents died by the time he was a young teen.  His mother, whom he deeply loved, died of stomach cancer when he was six, and his father began a relationship to a woman who verbally abused little Thomas, and he moved in with his mother’s parents with his brother John Paul.

After two years, his father took him to London, then to France, in hopes of marrying his lover.  Realizing that it would not work, the father ended the relationship and packed his son off to boarding school while he continued his art career. 

He reunited with his father only to discover that he was dying of a brain tumor, which took his life when Thomas was 17.  He was a complete agnostic.  In 1932, on a walking tour in Germany, he developed an infection.  Unwisely, he ignored it and it developed into a case of blood poisoning so severe that at one point he thought he was going to die. But “the thought of God, the thought of prayer did not even enter my mind, either that day, or all the rest of the time that I was ill, or that whole year. Or if the thought did come to me, it was only as an occasion for its denial and rejection.” His declared “creed” was “I believe in nothing.” 

A trip to Rome, however, found him drawn to the churches and the mystery in their beauty.  Eventually he returned to the United States to finish his education at Columbia University in New York City to embark on a literary career.  But his spiritual longings continued to grow. 

But Merton’s active social and political conscience was also informed by his conversion to Christianity and Catholicism in his early twenties. In December 1941, he resigned his teaching post at Bonaventure College, Olean, NY, and journeyed to the Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky. There, Merton undertook the life of a scholar and man of letters, in addition to his formation as a Cistercian monk.

His alone-ness deepend.  In March 1942, during the first Sunday of Lent, Merton was accepted as a novice monk at the monastery. In June, he received a letter from his brother John Paul stating he was soon to leave for war and would be coming to Gethsemani to visit Merton before leaving. On July 17 John Paul arrived in Gethsemani and the two brothers did some catching up. John Paul expressed his desire to be baptized, and on July 26 was baptized at a

church nearby leaving the following day. This would be the last time the two saw each other. John Paul died on April 17, 1943 when his plane’s engines failed over the English Channel.  Merton’s entire immediate family was gone.  He was left with God alone.

In the years that followed, The more than 50 books, 2000 poems, and numerous essays, reviews, and lectures that have been recorded and published, now form the canon of Merton’s writings. His importance as a writer in the American literary tradition is becoming clear. His influence as a religious thinker and social critic is taking its place alongside such luminaries as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Flannery O’Connor, and Martin Luther King.

And yet, he was always struggling with himself.  One day, Glenn Hinson, who was then professor of Church History at Southern Seminary, took his students to the Abbey of Gethsemani on 7 November 1960, to introduce them to the Middle Ages. The class came primarily to develop their awareness of the communities that developed in the Middle Ages, not to learn about a life of prayer.

The host, Thomas Merton, gave the class more than they expected. After talking about the rise of the monastic life in the Medieval period, Merton asked if there were any questions.  One student asked what Hinson most feared would be asked. The student said, “What’s a smart fellow like you doing in a place like this?”

Hinson said that he expected Merton to respond in anger or frustration that he’d not been heard, but Merton responded very simply: “I am here because this is my vocation. I believe in prayer.”

Both in his life, which ended prematurely when he was electrocuted by accident by an appliance in his room while visiting Bangkok, Thailand, and in his writings, he could be called the most loquacious explorer of silence of all.  Yet the prayer I bring today for us is silence itself.  And this short statement about what it is.  “Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how. “    

Not everything is fun or exciting. Some things are merely important, so we do them.  Drink water and eat every day.  Sleep every night.  Breathe constantly.  Thankfully the Lord put automated systems in for us.  But some things are left to our freedom—like prayer.

Elton Trueblood, wrote of this in “The Cultivation of Reverence” in his book,  The New Man for Our Time, published 1970 but which, other than the updating of language, reads like it just came off the press, or better, from that spiritual physician’s diagnostic lab.  He wrote

We often hear the criticism that the. Church is afflicted with piety, but the real trouble is that its piety is not deep enough! Since the materials are available, all that is needed is the recognition of where they are, and the will to employ them. An important contribution would be the liberation of the term piety from its present damaging connotations, reinstating it as a term of respect. We, indeed, still have a little piety; we say a few hasty prayers; we sing meaningfully a few hymns; we read snatches from the Bible. But all of this is far removed from the massive dose that we sorely need if we are to be the men and women who can perform a healing service in our generation.

Only by a conscious and continuing nurture of his inner life can any man avoid the tragedy of killing the thing he loves. Trueblood concludes, “We shall never have a better world until we have better persons in it.”

Nearly all of the classics of devotion have in common-the conviction of the possibility and, indeed, actuality of the divine-human encounter. And it requires a sturdy determination to move down, deep, toward the depths of truth and life. Not for the faint of heart. You need courage.

God comes as mystery, God gently works among us, not steamrolling as the world prefers, but whispering, waiting, standing back after speaking, inspiring, persuading, giving us visions, experiences, dreams and courage from nowhere.  So it is not always reading signs so much as paying attention, listening, shutting out the static noise, reorganizing and downsizing that gets us to the real stuff.

It isn’t so much “either or” as it is balance.  Who can argue that many lives today are out of balance?  Many out of control.  Oddly this imbalance is often rooted in sin, that says, “I want what I want no matter what.”  The truth of the Christian life says, “You don’t really know WHAT you want.  Stop and think about it.

We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. Trueblood goes on:  With one concerted voice the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life with the dictum: Discipline is the price of freedom.

Balance means accepting the responsibility to alternate the various parts of our lives in appropriate portion.  It requires:

 Putting God first  “We shall never have a better world until we have better persons in it.”

• Accepting ourselves and our limitations instead of railing against them
• Overcoming the fear of what Nouwen called “the three directions” of the spiritual life—toward God, toward others, and toward ourselves through attention to our lives.

Invitation—Invite you to a few moments of reflection.  Where are you “out of control?”  Unbalanced?  Struggling?  Frustrated?  What is the other side of your overfunctioning?  Do you need silence because of too many people? 

In the insanity and chaos of this moment, finding inner peace is not a contradiction. It is essential, to be able to hear that inner voice that will enable us to sift wheat from chaff, nonsense from moral imperative, and spur us to the right action rather than frantic and superficial anxiety.