Excerpts from the International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting (2005) and the American Benedictine Academy Convention (2008): [From the conclusion of] “Sharing the Experience of the Divine Light”: Thomas Merton’s Path to Inter‐religious Understanding; Encounters and Dialogues with Muslims

Abstract

Excerpts from the International Thomas Merton Society General Meeting (2005) and the American Benedictine Academy Convention (2008): [From the conclusion of] “Sharing the Experience of the Divine Light”: Thomas Merton’s Path to Inter‐religious Understanding; Encounters and Dialogues with Muslims Sidney H. Griffith The networks within which we have reviewed Thomas Merton’s encounters and dialogues with Muslims may well stand as a paradigm for many of his inter‐religious engagements. They all began on the personal level and evolved in some instances into a level of familiarity that even yielded important publications. One thinks in this connection, for example, of books such as Merton’s Mystics and Zen Masters1 or The Way of Chuang‐Tzu.2 They reveal the depth of Merton’s inter‐religious empathy and his capacity to experience the “other” from within. In this way he was able to bring his largely Christian readers into the world of Zen Buddhists, Taoists, and Muslims in ways that not only would help them to gain an authentic sense of the “other” but even to see how knowledge of the “other” might aid a deeper development of their own Christian faith. This is readily evident in Merton’s involvement with Muslims, albeit that he never wrote a book called Mystics and Sufi Masters. As we have seen, Merton came into what we might call his “Islamic consciousness” through his correspondence with Louis Massignon, which led him very soon into his correspondence with Abdul Aziz, which in turn prepared the ground for his personal meeting with Sidi Abdelslam. This personal encounter, and his deep reading in the writings of Frithjof Schuon, brought Merton briefly to the exciting thought that through a special relationship with Schuon he might actually be able to insert himself into the genuine Sufi tradition, all the while deepening his own Christian commitment. But Merton came to see that authentic inter‐religious dialogue meant not crossing the boundaries of his own faith commitment, even while gaining an ever deeper awareness and appreciation of Islam. His experience carries an important message for those of us who today strive to come to a deep understanding of Islam and a sense of inter‐personal communion with Muslims in the search for peace and harmony in a world in which many people fear only a “clash of civilizations.”3 One can only speculate about what Thomas Merton would make of the intrusion of a religiously warranted terror into Christian/Muslim relations in the late‐twentieth century, a terror that in 1996 even consumed the lives of seven French Trappist monks, who, inspired by the teachings of Louis Massignon, were striving to live their monastic lives inter‐religiously, in lived witness to their Christian faith, among the Muslims of Algeria.4 The events of 9/11, the wars in Afganistan and Iraq, the renewed threat of nuclear war and mutual assured destruction that dominate our headlines today all evoke themes that engaged Merton in the sixties. Maybe that is why even forty years after his death there is scarcely a bookstore in the United States that does not stock several Merton titles even now. From the inter‐religious perspective, his ideas are still fresh. Thomas Merton never intended to develop an inter‐religious or comparative theology from a Roman Catholic perspective. The focus of his concern was very much on his personal experience with those with whom he corresponded. Within this framework, almost intuitively, he nevertheless articulated thoughts that are striking for their immediate relevance to today’s inter‐religious encounters. For example, in his journal Merton spoke of meeting his correspondent “on a common ground of spiritual Truth, where we share a real and deep experience of God.” He spoke of working toward a “conversion of us both,”“upwards,”“a real growth, an interior development.”5 And in a letter to Abdul Aziz, Merton spoke of “the sharing of the experience of the divine light, and first of all of the light that God gives us.”6 And while he called attention to the divisive potential of too much concentration on what he called “the realm of words and ideas,”7 Merton was nevertheless sensitive to the importance of...