Louisville Process Theology Network

“I have known for a long time that in the contemplative
orders of this country the accepted framework has not be adequate to take care
of the vocations. The monasteries both  of common life and of hermits are
organized in a rigid and stereotyped way for one kind of life only, which is not
bad in its own way, and which seems to persist because it is relatively easy to
keep in order.

It is a matter of rules and observances which keep the monk
busy and enable him to live a life of comparative recollection and  prayer,
protecting him against some of the distractions of life, keeping him in trim by
a certain amount of austerity.

Unfortunately this regimented form of existence, which is
sound enough when based on the best traditions, tends to be rather empty and
frustrating, to many vocations, and  indeed there is a very general feeling that
the life easily become a dead  end.

It retains its meaning for those who have some kind of
responsibility in the community or who work in a way that contributes to the
community, while for others, well, they tend to vegetate.

There are few contemplatives who can continue simply to live
the monastic life as it is organized and really grow as they go on. The older
generation still manages it. They younger ones, after my age group, tend to be
more and more dissatisfied and disoriented.

There is also a very keen sense of need for a simpler, more
open type of monastic life, in which the work will be more real and there we be
more sense that one is living as an ordinary poor people live, not as
institutionalized and dress-up poor monks with personal poverty in a rich
community. This is one of the great trends in the Order today …

The basic trouble is perhaps that (we) are still very
immature in the spiritual life because (we) are still very centered on a self or
which (we) want to attain the best of ends: (we) want to possess contemplation
and God.

But, to think contemplation is something that one can attain
and  possess is just to get off on the wrong road from the very beginning. What
(we) really need is solid and simple direction, and more than that, what (we)
need is the kind of really basic sort of training that the Desert Fathers and
the early monasteries gave: to shut up and stop all speculation and get down to
living a simple laborious life which (we) can forget (ourselves)."

Excerpt of the letter by Thomas Merton to Catherine de Hueck

from “Compassionate Fire” by Robert A. Wild, Page 83