Esther de Waal, profiled in our Living Spiritual Teachers Project, is now 93 years old. This book of hers began to appear thirty years ago and has gone through a few editions. We missed reviewing it until now, when it has been issued again in the United States with a new foreword by poet, theologian, and Thomas Merton expert Bonnie Thurston.
Both written and photographic arts are on display, as de Waal opens to us both aspects of Thomas Merton’s creativity. De Waal relays a great deal of the famous Catholic writer’s personal story — of university life in England and again in New York City, a life of parties, girlfriends, and jazz clubs, and then surprising his friends by visiting the strictest Roman Catholic order of monks, in Kentucky, and then returning to stay with them for good. Merton was craving solitude and contemplation and found them in monastic life, somewhat.
What makes his life and writings so perennial for so many is that his looking, seeking, and desiring never came to a rest. As de Waal writes on Day Seven of this retreat, in a chapter called “Integration,” “Merton is such a good guide … for he was so aware of being pulled in many directions.”
De Waal sometimes describes her purpose in this book in personal terms. She calls it, for instance, “steps taken by one woman in trying to draw closer to God with Merton’s help.” She writes often about prayer, but don’t let that old-fashioned word “prayer” hang you up; this is a book about prayer as “desire,” and finding the sacred and holy in one’s desire. [See the Spiritual Literacy Alphabet Practice of Yearning.] Merton’s life and monasticism were all about this, and de Waal’s literary sensitivities bring these broader themes out poignantly.
“Our real journey in life is interior,” Merton said, and it isn’t always quiet. This retreat with the themes of his life and writings aims to help any reader willing to follow its process of prayerful slowdown, a way of nurturing the solitary within.
Go Deeper:
Practicing Spirituality with Thomas Merton: An E-Course encouraging you to drink deeply from the wells of this Trapist monk's thought and practice.
