Mystical Spring

Merton Matters

Every great passion begins in relationship.

Passion is an often misunderstood word. For convenient minds, those who wish to place it into a more simple and basic definition, the word passion is associated with sex. Though often true, however, the word passion can be associated with that idea but also and with more. For every word, there is the local definition and then there is the ‘more’.

So for passion–whose Latin meaning links it to the idea of suffering–I first became involved in learning about Thomas Merton and his writing passions when a friend of mine told me about monasticism and gave me a book written by the great 20th century Catholic spiritual master.

My inquiry became a full fledged journey and my journey became a passion. My passion became a relationship, my relationship became a new beginning.

This new beginning started with reading his book Seeds of Contemplation, a must read for every spiritual seeker. My best advice is to read one page a day, using a similar style of reading such as Lectio Divina. Allow the passages to sink into you and mediatate on. Its fruitful reading.

But the book I have been reading of late is his Seeds of Destruction lent to me by a good friend and lover of TM, John Donaghy, a Catholic worker from St. Thomas Aquinas and currently in Santa Rosa de Copan in Honduras.

Seeds of Destruction issued in 1964, gives an intimate look into the period from an outside view. His predictions for the future are breath taking. Focusing his passionate writing on the atomic bomb, civil rights, and the impact of the Vatican council and murder of Pres. Kennedy, a person can almost feel comforted by his gazing into the crystal ball of the future. Much of his insight has come true, and in doing so has relieved our current generation of much blame. It only appears as a predestined pathway that was simply unavoidable.

Can this be true? Should we revisit predestination as a credible aspect of destiny?