Saturday, December 12, 1998

30 years after his death, noted monk Thomas Merton is remembered

By Art Jester

Knight Ridder Newspapers

TRAPPIST, Ky. -- On Dec. 10, 1968, at 10 a.m., a telegram reached the abbot of the Trappist monastery south of Bardstown, its terse message bearing the most alarming news.

Signed by an officer of the U.S. State Department, the cable read: "Department regrets inform you following message received for you from American Embassy Bangkok Thailand: 'Informed by Abbott Weakland that Thomas Merton has died.' "

Thomas Merton dead? At 53 and at the peak of his spiritual and literary powers, Merton was, in all likelihood, the most famous Christian monastic since Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century.

Millions -- from the most devout traditionalists to the most skeptical seekers -- eagerly read Merton's prolific writings on such topics as spirituality, monasticism, literature, Zen Buddhism, politics, war, non-violence and racism as well as works of poetry and autobiography. For many, his religious quest combined with his political urgency expressed the anguished spirit of a troubled age.

Only three months before, he had begun his historic and long-hoped-for journey to the Far East, to give speeches, to meet with the Dalai Lama and to immerse himself in Buddhism and its keen insights into meditation.

"He was in a jubilant mood," Brother Patrick Hart, Merton's secretary at the Abbey of Gethsemani, recalled this week.

"He was like a kid getting ready to go to the circus. It was a dream come true. He never thought he would get to Asia. He was going with the idea of learning from the wisdom of the East."

And that he did, as his journals and letters from that trip reveal. But, about 3 p.m. Bangkok time on Dec. 10, Merton took a shower during a midday rest after his address at a conference. He reached out and touched an electric fan that was later found to have a short, and he was electrocuted.

"People couldn't believe it," Hart remembered. "They were stunned. He was so vibrant, so full of life, and three months later -- dead. Merton gave so much."

Thirty years later, what Merton has given to his countless spiritual devotees has never stopped; through his books and books about him, Merton might exert more global influence than ever.

"A lot of us were influenced by Merton," Hart said, speaking of others who came to Gethsemani to become Trappist monks. "He was an instrument God used to let us know about this place."

The Rev. Matthew Kelty, a fellow Trappist who had been Merton's confessor, recalled when the abbot, the Rev. Flavian Burns, arose during dinner at noon and began to speak.

"I have bad news for you," Burns told the monks. "Father Louis is dead."

Merton's death was "puzzling, tragic," said Kelty. "It was hard to believe."

Ironically, it was Kelty who had a frightening premonition after Merton left on his trip:

"I had this suspicion we would never see him again," he said. "Sometimes you have premonitions that don't turn out to be true, but this was different. I started to cry, because this would be very sad."

Kelty went to another monk, Brother Lavrans, an artist, and asked him to draw a hand with a diamond in its palm.

Shortly thereafter, as Merton proceeded on his journey, Kelty showed the drawing to some beginning monks.

"Merton is our diamond," he told them. "He's the best we've got. We're going to lose him. God's going to take him. We're never going to see him again."

Then, Kelty said, "I forgot about it" -- until the tragic news arrived.

A week passed before Merton's body came home for burial. It was flown first to California in a military plane bearing body bags with soldiers from Vietnam -- another irony, given Merton's opposition to the war.

His body arrived in mid-afternoon Dec. 17 and was taken to Greenwell Funeral Home in New Haven for identification.

His body then returned to Gethsemani for the last time. His funeral was in conjunction with the regular late-afternoon vespers.

Then the gray metal casket -- Merton is one of only two Gethsemani monks buried in a casket -- was borne to the monk's cemetery, outside the monastery's church.

"I'll never forget it," Hart said. "We went outside to the cemetery, under a cedar tree. It was very emotional. People were crying.

"There was something between ice and snow. You could hear it hit the casket. It was kind of a mysterious moment. I can still hear the snow turning into ice as it hit the casket. "

Even Merton in his journals had hinted at his own premonitions that he might die on the trip. Yet he also saw the journey as his destiny, leading him to his direct encounter with Eastern religions.

"May I not come back without having settled the great affair," he wrote as his plane flew westward over the Pacific.

Perhaps the "great affair" was settled, after all. In a letter to Abbot Burns, delegates to the conference at which Merton spoke described the circumstances of his death and offered these words:

"In death Father Louis' face was set in a great and deep peace, and it was obvious that he had found Him Whom he had searched for so diligently."

(c) 1998, Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.).

Visit Kentucky Connect, the World Wide Web site of the Herald-Leader, at http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.