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Thomas Merton remains an influential Christian figure

Film about the last year of Merton’s life screens Dec. 10 at SFU Harbour Centre
Rev. Judith Hardcastle
Rev. Judith Hardcastle holds a photograph of American theologian Thomas Merton. Hardcastle, a minister at St. Andrew’s United Church in North Vancouver, was inspired by Merton. photo Dan Toulgoet

Judith Hardcastle was working in the safety and training department at SkyTrain when she discovered Thomas Merton. Her career quickly veered onto another track.

Merton was a Catholic monk and an American religious thinker who remains one of the most influential Christian figures of our time. He died in a freak accident at age 53 in 1968, but his writings and reflections still inspire Christians such as Hardcastle. After she encountered Merton’s ideas, she made an abrupt career change and entered the ministry. She is a United Church minister as well as the founder and now program director of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada.

“I was smitten with Merton,” she says. “Reading Merton just opened up a whole new world for me in terms of what it meant to have faith and to go deeper spiritually and to realize that Christianity or spirituality or whatever religion is all about becoming your authentic self. I began to embrace some spiritual practices that Merton talked about, meditation and retreats, contemplative time. I finally decided maybe I could be a minister.”

But why did a Catholic Trappist monk turn Hardcastle into a United Church minister? Part of the explanation is that labels and boxes weren’t really Merton’s thing. He spent his early years in the south of France, where his American mother and New Zealander father were artists.

They both died young, leaving Thomas to move from place to place with family members. His upbringing was not particularly religious, but he began exploring theological ideas intently. At the Abbey of Gethsemani, in Kentucky, he found a spiritual home and converted to Catholicism.

“Well what happens when somebody converts?” Hardcastle laughs. “He wanted to be a Catholic but it wasn’t enough to become Catholic, then he had to become a Catholic priest. No that wouldn’t do it, he’d have to become a monk.”

But over time Merton — now known as Father Louis — would reject the strictures of Roman Catholicism. So much so that while his memory is maintained by groups like the Merton Society and even by the Anglican Church, Catholic catechism has largely been scrubbed of his name.

“He became Catholic in the small-c sense,” says Hardcastle, “embracing the world.”

Even early in his years at the monastery, he was exploring Hinduism, Buddhism and interfaith dialogue.

“He was deeply rooted in the Christian tradition but he realized that it’s the universal embrace, that you don’t have to be Roman Catholic to encounter the divine,” she says.

Some of the things Merton did, wrote and believed may seem commonplace today. But that is partly because he broke the ground.

“He was one of the first to explore Islam, and Sufism in particular, and Judaism and east-west dialogue and yoga,” says Hardcastle. “He met the Dalai Lama and the Dalai Lama said that Thomas Merton knew more about Buddhism than any Christian he’d ever met.”

Merton delved into Native American spirituality before it was commonplace for mainstream theologians to do so. He was also involved in some very worldly issues, such as opposing the Vietnam War and nuclear proliferation, and advancing ecology as a political imperative.

This did not sit well with many of his superiors and other Catholics, who believed that a monk’s responsibility was to be more contemplative and less engaged with the issues of the day.

This might not have appealed to some Catholics, but it explains why Merton’s ideas drove Hardcastle to enter the ministry via the United Church, which is very much involved in issues of social and economic justice.

Merton died tragically. He had travelled to Thailand to participate in a conference of monks from Catholic and eastern traditions. It was hot and humid, so Merton took a shower to cool down. Getting out of the tub, he somehow connected with a malfunctioning fan and was electrocuted, 27 years to the day after he joined the monastery. The monk who had vocally opposed the war in Vietnam was flown home to the United States on a flight alongside the bodies of American soldiers killed in that conflict.

There is a bit of a Mertonmania going on right now, partly because it is the centenary of his birth. A new film about the last year of Merton’s life will screen Dec. 10 at SFU Harbour Centre, followed by a panel discussion. There is also a just-released book of essays on Merton by Canadian writers and a pilgrimage to France to walk in Merton’s footsteps in June. Details at merton.ca. There is a Thomas Merton reading room at the Vancouver School of Theology on the UBC campus, which contains almost all his published works and many studies of his thoughts.

Merton left behind more than 50 books, his most noted being The Seven Storey Mountain, as well as 2,000 poems and many essays.

“Imagine what he would have produced had he lived,” says Hardcastle.

PacificSpiritPJ@gmail.com

@Pat604Johnson