Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton

Abstract

Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton Paul R. Dekar William Apel : Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton . : Foreword by Paul M. Pearson ( Maryknoll, NY : Orbis , 2006 ) pp . xxi + 202 . ISBN 13: 978‐1‐57075‐681‐8 ( paperback). $19.00 . In an icon over my desk, Thomas Merton, portrayed wearing the Cistercian cowl, sits in a Zen position. With great serenity, Merton unites two spiritual trajectories. With his raised right hand he seems to recall Jesus saying in a number of contexts, “do not be afraid” or “peace be with you.”1 With his left hand pointed down, Merton seems to recall the Buddha saying, “Be mindful.” On the back of the icon, an inscription observes that Merton pointed a way forward in this time of profound cultural change, and danger. As William Apel states in his preface, Thomas Merton corresponded with people around the world, especially during the last years of his life, a period when four books on Asian religions appeared: Gandhi on Non‐Violence (1965), The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), Mystics and Zen Masters (1967), Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968) plus the Asian Journal (1973). Merton’s approach to dialogue was experiential rather than dogmatic, as suggested in a passage in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians…We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.2 Merton saw his study of the world’s religions and his engagement with a great variety of people as a contribution in the direction of world peace and unity. He received correspondents at the Abbey of Gethsemani; he visited some elsewhere, whether in New York City—Daisetz T. Suzuki (1964)—or in Asia (1968). Most, however, he never met. As a spiritual discipline he encouraged his interfaith friends to embrace others, that they too might unite in themselves and experience in their own lives all that is best and most true in the numerous spiritual traditions, “a kind of arduous and unthanked pioneering.”3 After an introductory chapter on Merton’s life of letters, Apel organizes his book around a cluster correspondents chosen for the depth and variety of their religious experiences: Abdul Aziz (Muslim), Amiya Chakravarty (Hindu), John Wu (Chinese), Abraham Heschel (Jew), D. T. Suzuki (Buddhist), Glenn Hinson (Protestant Christian), Thich Nhat Hahn (Buddhist), June Yungblut (Religious Society of Friends), and Dona Luisa Coomaraswamy (Roman Catholic with Jewish origins). Each chapter introduces the friend, a theme specific to each individual and the text of a significant letter by Merton to that individual. Notes and bibliography guide readers to such literature as Rob Baker and Gray Henry, eds., Merton and Sufism (1999), Beatrice Bruteau, ed., Merton and Judaism (2003), or Robert H. King, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh (2003). For twenty‐first century persons of faith, Apel has lifted up the most urgent contribution, perhaps, of Merton, who wrote, If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother [and sister], to make the world better, more free, more just, more livable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic “rejection of the world” and “contempt for the world” is in fact not a choice but the evasion of choice. [Those] who pretend [they...