A man driven to find God, Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who entered Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky in 1941. This journal recorded his thoughts and reflections from 1946, when he made his solemn profession of vows, to 1951, on prayer, silence, contemplation, writing, the Sacraments, and other Catholic rituals. During this period, he published his conversion story, The Seven Story Mountain, was ordained as a priest, and became a U.S. citizen. He also wrote or published Waters of Silo, New Seeds of Contemplations, and The Ascent to Truth. Toward the end of the journal, he emerges as a more senior monk and becomes responsible for the education of junior members of the monastery, as Master of Scholastics.
One reads Merton for his insights, wisdom, beautiful rhetoric, and poetic imagery. As with all journals, the author's entries hop abruptly from one haphazard subject to another and can make for a bumpy reading experience. As in many of his books, he comments on the Benedictine charism and monastic life, from both an experiential and an intellectual perspective. Along the way, he comments on various spiritual books of others and his desire to be a saint. He loves his life in the monastery and cites few struggles. With the enthusiasm of a convert, he can be scrupulous, prideful, or extreme in places.
The monastery grounds occupy 2,600 acres, with knolls, valleys, groupings of trees, a pond, and all the birds, bugs, and animals one would expect. It is also a working farm, with all of the barns and farming equipment to go along with it. Merton was the monastery’s forester and planted tens of thousands of trees. He knew all the different, local species of trees and how to cut, plant, and nurture them. Just think: the trees he planted would be about 75 years old today–huge, mature trees. I liked how Merton distinguished different species of birds by their songs. As one might expect from a contemplative, his observations of nature are subtle, and his descriptions of nature are beautiful and poetic, in a way that honors their creator.
Comically, when Merton submitted a draft of The Seven Story Mountain to the order’s censors, they rejected it while telling him he should take a correspondence course in English grammar. I say “comically” because he is one of the great writers of the 20th century, having published about 75 volumes of prose and a dozen volumes of poetry. The censor also scolded him for revealing too much of his not-so-saintly life before entering the monastery (this was the early 1950s). Rather than giving up or getting angry, Merton chose to view it as a challenge. Long after Merton’s death, it became known publicly that he had fathered a child out of wedlock in England, before entering religious life. In the journal, he subtly hints at this when he expresses a desire to maintain his spiritual virginity.
The title alludes to the quote from Jesus, “no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet” (Mt 12:39), a reference to The Book of Jonah. In both the book’s brief epigraph and the lengthy, beautifully soaring meditation which is the epilogue, Merton cites the story of the reluctant prophet Jonah, swallowed by a whale, but then regurgitated, as representative of how he sees himself and his role as a monk, as both a prophet and one of the repentant men of Nineveh.
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