{"id":1507,"date":"2017-03-22T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2017-03-22T05:00:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T09:00:38","slug":"merton-on-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/merton-on-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Merton – On Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For Thomas Merton, nature is an icon, a window into God.\u00a0 In multifaceted ways, nature mirrors God\u2019s Beauty.\u00a0 Nature is epiphanic; it comes from God, reflects God, and belongs to God. Nature is a sacrament of the presence and goodness of its Creator.\u00a0 According to Merton: \u201cAll creatures are like syllables in a song which God is singing.\u00a0 Everything that is is just a little syllable in this song which God is continually singing.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 By listening to the messages that created things convey by simply being themselves, one comes to know God a little better.<\/p>\n

Merton, a lover of nature, believed that to awaken to nature is to awaken to God.\u00a0 Merton wrote: \u201cThe world is willed and held in being by God\u2019s love and, therefore, infinitely precious in God\u2019s sight.\u201d[2]<\/a> The most minuscule of creatures is important to God.\u00a0 Hence, according to Merton, \u201cIf you love God, you will respect God\u2019s creatures.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Merton, who believed that silence and solitude are requisite for the prayerful consideration of nature, proclaimed: \u201cLet me seek, then, the gift of silence and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

In his life as a monk and, in the last few years of his life, as a hermit, Merton celebrated nature. He participated wholeheartedly in the rhythm and cadence of his natural surroundings.\u00a0 \u00a0He experienced kinship with birds and deer and the woods and knobs that are all part of the bioregion called Gethsemani.\u00a0 Merton journaled:\u00a0 \u201cI want not only to observe but to know living things, and this implies a dimension of primordial familiarity which is simple and primitive and religious and poor.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Merton enjoyed taking dips in small lakes on the Abbey property and walking barefoot on blankets of pine needles in the woods of Gethsemani.\u00a0 Merton delighted in the dawn and, in self-forgetfulness, listened closely to choruses of croaking frogs. In a letter to Rosemary Radford Ruether, Merton noted:\u00a0 \u201cOne of the things I love about my life, and, therefore, one of the reasons why I would not change it for anything is the fact that I live in the woods and according to the tempo of the sun and moon and seasons in which it is naturally easy and possible to walk in God\u2019s light, so to speak, in and through God\u2019s creation.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Merton was an avid proponent of ecological conscience which is centered in an awareness of human beings\u2019 true place as dependent members of the biotic community. Merton viewed sound environmental stewardship as an essential dimension of authentic Christian consciousness and commitment.\u00a0 He championed the absolute importance of cherishing and reverencing all things in their beingness.\u00a0 He wrote:\u00a0 \u201cAs we go about the world and everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, it purifies and plants in us something more of contemplation and heaven.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1968, in an address to a group assembled at Our Lady of the Redwoods Monastery in California, Merton issued a clarion call to his audience to participate in the festival of nature by joining in nature\u2019s cosmic dance.\u00a0 He encouraged his listeners to \u201cDrink it all in.\u00a0 Everything, the redwood forests, the sea, the sky, the waves, the birds, the sea-lions.\u00a0 It is in all this that you will find your answers.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cDrink it all in\u201d is exactly what Thomas Merton sought to do in the course of his own life.<\/p>\n

In his poem \u201cO Sweet Irrational Worship\u201d Merton\u00a0 testifies to his experience of communion with nature: \u201cI have become light\/ Bird and wind\/ My leaves sing\/ I am earth, earth\u2026\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0Thomas Merton now plays in the New Eden, God\u2019s Paradise that encompasses and goes beyond planet Earth and the Milky Way galaxy.\u00a0 Merton, the nature mystic, now dances with God in God\u2019s cosmic universe and delights in joining with all those who celebrate God\u2019s holy creation.<\/p>\n

Sr. Marilyn Sunderman, RSM, Ph.D.<\/strong>, is professor of theology and chair of the on-campus undergraduate theology program at Saint Joseph\u2019s College<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Thomas Merton, Tape 7: Life and Truth: The Merton Tapes located in the Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, Ky.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Thomas Merton, Love and Living, <\/em>Eds. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart (<\/em>New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1985) 159.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Thomas Merton, The Secular Journal<\/em> (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1959) 13.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude <\/em>(New York: The Noonday Press, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995) 194.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude<\/em>: The Journals of Thomas Merton Vol. 3 1952 \u2013 1960,<\/em> Ed. Lawrence C. Cunningham (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) 190.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love, <\/em>Ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985) 502.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation <\/em>(New York: New Directions, 1949) 22.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a>Quoted in \u201cMan of Prayer\u201d by David Stendl Rast in Thomas Merton: A Monastic Tribute,<\/em> Ed. Brother Patrick Hart (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1974) 80.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a>Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton <\/em>(New York: New Directions, 1977) 344.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Thomas Merton, nature is an icon, a window into God.\u00a0 In multifaceted ways, nature mirrors God\u2019s Beauty.\u00a0 Nature is epiphanic; it comes from God, reflects God, and belongs to God. Nature is a sacrament of the presence and goodness … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1],"tags":[193,295],"class_list":["post-1507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-nature","tag-thomas-merton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}