A hermitage is not where I\u2019m supposed to be. Somehow I sense this. I\u2019m supposed to be saying something, doing something. And yet I feel anything I could offer would get swallowed up in the noise\u2014I\u2019d be an infant crying out into a hurricane. I stand on the edge of an abyss, my hands in my pockets. . . . I feel as though Thomas [Merton] stands next to me in a similar stance. He helps me think about the possibilities. I think he\u2019d say I have to get out there. I have to find a way to serve. He\u2019d definitely say my hermitage idea is wrongheaded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe contemplative life is not, and cannot be, a mere withdrawal, a pure negation, a turning of one\u2019s back on the world with its sufferings, its crises, its confusions and its errors,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe attempt itself would be illusory. No person can withdraw completely from the society of other people.\u201d [1] When he entered the monastery after months of spiritual struggle, Merton described a lightness, as of . . . a leaving of the world. . . . His writings from his earlier years focused mainly on the cultivation of interior spirituality. . . . But as he matured, both emotionally and spiritually, he too sensed there was more\u2014way more\u2014he could be doing. The world, the very state of it, required that he bring his voice to the table. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1961, he wrote his first article on peace, \u201cThe Root of War Is Fear,\u201d and laid out the place for Christians in the struggle for peace. He writes, \u201cThe duty of Christians in this crisis is to strive with all their power and intelligence, with their faith, hope in Christ, and love for God and humankind, to do the one task which God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for the total abolition of war.\u201d [2] . . . <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the introduction to Merton\u2019s book Passion for Peace<\/em>, author William H. Shannon writes, \u201cWhat had happened to him was that his solitude had issued into what all true solitude must eventually become: compassion. . . . This sense of compassion . . . moved him to look once again at the world he thought he had left irrevocably twenty years earlier, in 1941, when he had entered the monastery. He now felt a duty, precisely because he was a contemplative<\/em>, to speak out.\u201d [3]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A hermitage is not where I\u2019m supposed to be. Somehow I sense this. I\u2019m supposed to be saying something, doing something. And yet I feel anything I could offer would get swallowed up in the noise\u2014I\u2019d be an infant crying out into a hurricane. I stand on the edge of an abyss, my hands in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}