DIALOGUE WITH THOMAS MERTON | PART 2
I continue with Part 2 of my dialogue with Merton. I indented Merton’s paragraphs below, followed by my comments from 2020 and 2025.
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking.
2020
Here, Merton is forthright in speaking about his own blind spot and calling it an “illusion.” And that he experiences liberation and joy of recognizing the illusion and letting it go–“I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.”
2025
Merton speaks of liberation plainly. The ability to laugh out loud at one’s mistake (for sixteen and seventeen years) requires humility of letting go and courage to accept. I find this so refreshing and challenging. In what areas of my life can I laugh out loud at my mistakes, oversights, and blindness?
The “truth” that all of us are like others has changed and can still change the world. This simple yet profound truth can be easily twisted and manipulated, and it has been. This simple truth was largely viewed as unsophisticated and elementary, and the intricate man-made modern mindset ignored much of this simple, foundational truth. The falsehoods and traps of systemic thinking that divide people into categories would fall and melt away if we embraced and acted from the truth that all men and women are equal. Merton sees this illusion at work implicitly in his monastic system. Often, what is implicit is more damaging than what is explicit. At least, what is explicit is open to debate and critique.
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.
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 no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
2020
Merton then develops his newly found liberation further by exploring the incarnation of God becoming a member of the human race. God, Merton himself, and all the other human race are one–“now I realize what we all are.” However, Merton does not gloss over humanity when he mentions absurdities, sorrows, and stupidities of the human condition. What is inferred here is that we come to this kind of knowing (really awakening) not by information, concepts, and rationale, but only by interior realization combined with an external divine visitation.
2025
Merton’s joy of being a man is rooted in the incarnation of Christ. As he understood what we all are, his focus shifted to “if only everybody could realize this!” Therein lies the invitation for us, too, at this point in our lives and history. In one of Richard Rohr’s influential books, The Universal Christ, he explores the idea of incarnation beyond the Incarnation of Christ to the recognition of the Divine presence in both humanity and nature, in everyone and everything. Both Merton and Rohr share an expansive incarnational worldview, seeing the world as Christ sees it. As we learn to see through Christ’s eyes—which is at the core of transformation—we experience the immense joy of being part of the human race.