What to Listen for: Merton as Teacher—A Note

Abstract

What to Listen for: Merton as Teacher—A Note Victor A. Kramer and Glenn Crider Hundreds of hours of tape: a hundred hours commercially released; scores of lectures selected and reviewed,1 yet we have hardly begun to listen. An aspect of Merton, barely heard, are the voice recordings made from his hundreds of hours of lectures, often given on Sunday afternoon for his community. They are full of insight, often topical, as when he speaks informally about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.2 An example of the value of Merton’s taped lectures is seen within a large group devoted to an investigation of Cassian in relation to fundamental questions about prayer.3 Footnotes 1. Published in The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality & Social Concerns, and indexed in Vol. 17, ed. Victor A. Kramer (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2004), p. 318: The Merton Tapes: Lectures by Thomas Merton. Review by Victor A. Kramer. 2 (1989), pp. 314‐19; The Merton Tapes 2 [Second Series], Review by Dewey Weiss Kramer. 3 (1990), pp. 311‐20; The Merton Tapes 3 [Third Series], Review by Victor A. Kramer. 5 (1992), pp. 362‐68; The Merton Tapes 4 [Fourth Series], Review by Dewey Weiss Kramer. 6 (1993), p. 235; The Merton Tapes 5 [Fifth Series], Review by Steven L. Baumann. 7 (1994), pp. 176‐78; The Merton Tapes 6 [Sixth Series], Review by Richard D. Parry. 9 (1996), pp. 264‐66; The Merton Tapes 7 [Seventh Series], Review by David King. 12 (1999), pp. 235‐39. 2. The following excerpt from Merton’s taped lectures appears in The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality & Social Concerns, Vol. 16, ed. Victor A. Kramer (New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 14‐16. “First of all, the question of the death of Martin Luther King [Jr] is a little closer to home than you realize. You probably don’t know the details. Some friends of his and of mine—mutual friends—in Atlanta were discussing with Martin Luther King about his coming here for a retreat in preparation for the march in Washington. And one of the times when he could have come was last week and they were sort of thinking about [this] and I got this letter from this Quaker woman in Atlanta written on Wednesday which was the day that Martin Luther King went to Memphis.: So I will just read what she says:: Wednesday: Martin is going to Memphis today and I learned he won’t be back until the weekend so John will see him next week. I was going to talk to him tomorrow and get another plan going. If the Memphis march becomes violent again there will be a terrible shattering for him. I hope both he and [Thich] Nhat Hanh will soon go to Gethsemani. (Nhat Hanh is this Buddhist from Viet Nam.) If Martin had taken a period there at Gethsemani he might have had the wisdom and repose to stay out of Memphis in the first place. And it was a mistake to go there. He had done no preparation and came in cold to a hot situation where the young militants had him just where they wanted him.So, in other words, it was kind of a crucial and providential thing—he might have come here and if he had come here he would not have gone to Memphis, and if he had not gone to Memphis he would not have been killed. Of course, one of the things you need to understand is that this whole race situation is much more complicated right now than it looks to us because there’s a big division within the [African Americans] themselves.: Most of the [African Americans] don’t want this violence and they’re trying to keep this thing non‐violent and they’re trying to keep it quiet. And you’ve got a lot of young kids who are very mad and very fanatical, and they’re not really members—some are members of [a] certain movement—others aren’t. And they are trying to push the violence. He was actually caught between those two groups in Memphis.: And that was what...