Thomas Merton
Now at the Crack of Dawn
by Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB

The name is the very essence of the thing, and for a thing or a person to be true means to live up to the name.

Part I

There is a danger of speaking too much about Thomas Merton and too little about his deep concerns.  We should be aware of that danger and make special efforts not to fall into hero worship in speaking of him.  Rather, we should dwell upon the things he stood for.  He still stands for them because he is more alive in the minds of people today than he was before he died.  One of the most important things Merton advocates is the marginal person taking a stand against labels.  If we follow this carefully, we may find that we arrive at our own center by the guidance of Thomas Merton, precisely because we choose to be marginal.

One of the most dangerous labels is the label of “contemplation,” of “contemplative.”  If there was one thing that Merton was always stressing, it was:  “Don’t label me.  Don’t call me a hermit.  If I allow you to call me a hermit I will have to live up to your expectation of what a hermit ought to look like.  Don’t call me a monk; you have your own idea of what a monk is.  I might or might not conform to that idea.  I’m just myself.”

I think the whole life of Thomas Merton could be summed up as one long case of Merton versus labels.  That is what he was all about – knocking down one label after another, and, of course, constantly identifying himself again in one way or another.  The moment he discovered this was a label, he ruled it out.

Yet the whole idea of labels isn’t as simple as that.  It is a complex thing, especially in the context of the monastic life, and very complex in the context of Benedictine monastic life.  One of the words that comes up over and over again in the Rule of Saint Benedict, according to which Merton lived half his life, is what the different things, places, and offices in the monastery are to be:  “sit quod dicitur – let it be what it is called, let it come up to its name.”  The abbot:  “Let the abbot be what he is called.”  The oratory:  “Let the oratory be what it is called.”  So there is a real thrust in the Rule of Saint Benedict to take things and words and ask, “What is it to be called?  Is it really what we call it?  It ought to be what it is called.  Let it come up to its standard.”  And a name sets a standard.

This is profoundly biblical because in the biblical tradition a name is much more than a label.  The name is the very essence of the thing, and for a thing or a person to be true means to live up to the name. People ought to be what they are called; that is, a royal priesthood.  There is a very fine line between labels and being what one is called.  Maybe the clue to the solution of this problem in the context of monastic life is given when we look at the very name and “label” of the monk.  One could almost say that to be a monk means to be one without labels.  So the label of monk or name of monk is to designate one who has no label, who constantly strives to outgrow labels.  That is the one vocation of the monk.

To look at it from a different point of view, the very name monachos has been translated, understood, or explained in the course of tradition, both in the label sense and in the counter-label sense.  In the label sense, as being “one who lives alone.”  Monachos means the “loner,” and unless you live alone, you are not really a monk.  Hence, an external label.  If you don’t come up to that label, you are not really a monk.  Various other aspects of being a monachos suggest that it is always an external thing; that is, it has something to do with being “one.”  The monk is the one-joy man who goes after one thing:  the single-minded man pursuing one purpose….. 

I see Merton as a prophetic watchman for a new dawn in monastic and contemplative life.  That is why he is so exciting for us.  If he were simply a spokesman for something that had been going on for a long time and continues to go on, it wouldn’t be so exciting.  There is the expression:  “the crack of dawn.”  Merton belongs to this “crack of dawn.”  When we were children, we would be so excited waiting for the moment when the chick would emerge from the shell, after pecking at it from the inside of the egg.  When I saw the film of Merton’s last talk at Bangkok I was reminded of this.  It was like the “cracking-open” of the contemplative life, of monastic life, from the inside.  There was something happening there.  It was a very exciting talk and a very exciting picture, in spite of the fact that it really wasn’t a very good address.  Merton was never particularly good at giving public talks.  He was best at personal conversations and informal breezy talks to small groups, like his students at Gethsemani.  There is something very strange about this talk on Marxism and monastic life.  Its interest lies precisely in the fact that Merton was speaking as a prophet almost in spite of himself. 

In the Bible we have the story of the Prophet Balaam, who was invited by Balak, King of Moab, to curse the Israelites.  Balak wanted him to stand up on a hill overlooking the Israelite camp in order to curse them.  But on his way to the king, the ass on which Balaam was riding saw an angel blocking the way.  The prophet didn’t see the angel, but to his great embarrassment, the ass evidently did.  Balaam’s ass didn’t want to go on; he squeezed Balaam’s legs against the rock, trying to evade the angel as he passed down the road.  Only by promising to say what the angel prompted him to say does Balaam get by.  Finally, when he gets to the camp and tries to curse the Israelites, out comes a beautiful Advent prophecy about the star that is rising in Israel.  The king who has called the prophet gets very angry and says:  “Try again.  Say something else.”  He tries again, and an even more glorious prophecy escapes his lips.  Balaam says, “I can’t say anything against the Lord.  I have to say what the Lord wants me to say.”

In the last talk Merton gave, at Bangkok, he is trying to talk about Marxism and the monastic life.  We see in the film that he has notes before him.  Consulting these notes in the Merton archives, we find only a few points of contact between them and the actual talk he gave.  We also see that he was completely carried away.  He goes on, a couple of times, and then comes back to his notes, but he keeps getting side-tracked.  One almost has a feeling that there is some sort of whirlwind or a current that draws him in another direction.  He keeps hanging on to his notes, but gets dragged in another direction.  He keeps talking about the monastery identity crisis (in the notes), but in the talk, in the very first paragraph, he has this interesting remark:  “My purpose is perhaps to share with you the kind of thing a monk goes through in his, shall we say, identity crisis?”  That is the word.  So he is caught off guard, and starts talking about the identify crisis.  Every single word here is significant:  the “perhaps,” the “kind of thing,” the “vagueness” “the monk goes through,” the whole idea of the transitus, the passage, the going through.  And he is saying this just a few hours or minutes before his own going through the treat transitus, his final passage, his – shall we say? – “identity crisis.” 

Again and again, he keeps coming back to this identity crisis, and that’s what makes his talk so exciting.  Merton himself says, “I am not an expert on Marxism, and what I have to tell you about this would be rather inconclusive.”  So it is not the formally announced topic that is exciting, but the dynamic prophetic undercurrent.  Even as he goes on, you can tell from the way he is speaking that he feels the tug more and more.  Then he switches from Marxism, leaving the topic completely behind, and in the second half of the talk he speaks only about Buddhism and Christian monasticism; so he has, in fact, abandoned his original tracks completely.  Yet something comes through strongly and clearly:  a confrontation with crisis, monastic identity crisis.

The very word “crisis” Is connected linguistically with the words “sief” and “sifting.”  There is a connection between “sifting out” and “crisis” in the roots of these words.  A crisis is a situation in which we sift things out.  What is sifted out in an identity crisis is the questions “What are the essentials?”  In speaking of the identity crisis, Merton struggled with the questions, “What are the essentials of monastic life?” – sifting out the essentials.  If you just go through the text of his Bangkok talk, underlining the words “essential” and “essentials,” you will see at a glance Merton’s main concern:  “What are really the essentials?”  The confrontation with Marxism simply provides the forum for confronting monastic life.

(Continue to Part II...)

Additional resource:

Final Memories of Thomas Merton, by Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB