BY CORBIN MCGUIRE, OPINIONS EDITOR
Bellarmine University’s favorite Catholic Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, has made news recently both on and off campus as the series of lectures for Merton’s centennial comes to a close.
Francis X. Clooney spoke on Nov. 9 about Merton’s connection to Hinduism and the work he was unable to complete in a lecture titled “Merton’s Yoga: Reflections on the Book He Might Have Written.”
Clooney is the Parkman Professor of Divinity as well as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. According to Bellarmine’s official website, he supports the idea that had Merton’s life not been “so tragically cut short, he might have integrated yoga into his narratives of the Christian contemplative path, grounding the Christian apprehension of the human before God in a philosophy and practice sensitive to the reality of Self.”
This idea is built on the interest Merton had in the contemplative traditions of Hinduism, including vedanta and particularly yoga, throughout the 1960s and up until his final journey to Asia where his life would end.
During this time, Merton is famous for having met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1968 in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama was living in exile, according to merton.org.
In The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, Merton writes: “It was a warm and cordial discussion and at the end I felt we had become very good friends … I feel a great respect and fondness for him as a person and believe, too, that there is a real spiritual bond between us.”
Clooney discussed the mens’ interaction similarly by saying each had no intention of converting the other. Clooney’s discussion of the interconnectedness that so often surrounds Merton is an idea that reached both community members and students.
Senior Rachel Tackett said: “My favorite part of this event was hearing about Merton’s ideas on connection and openness. I found it so important that someone so significant to the Catholic faith had spread his thoughts on all humans being interrelated, and the importance of being open and connected to other religions. I saw and learned that his explanations and ways of doing this went well with acceptance, but still fell in place with Catholicism.”
Following the event, the audience conversed with Clooney in a manner that mirrored the sincerity and genuine nature of Merton himself.
Members of the community asked for guidance on differing faiths within their own families, and students left with a stronger connection to the beliefs they hold dear.
“As a student, I am glad I was able to hear the points made about how I can learn about my own faith and religion through other practices from different people, places and faiths. I also think I gained the important message that it is never too late to become connected with God, and my strength of faith does not have to be stunted by where I am currently, or where I have been in the past,” Tackett said.
With the celebration of Merton and the work he was able to do, the question still loomed: What books would he have written if he had lived to write them?
This is an ambitious question to ask about a man who “wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race,” according to merton.org.
Clooney boldly asked this question and urged that we continue Merton’s work today.
“There are books that Merton did not write,” said Clooney.