Thomas Merton: Responding to Listener Questions

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics. Thanks.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome to our first question and response session for Turning to the Mystics, where we'll be reflecting on questions that have come in about season one, where we've been turning to Thomas Merton as our mystic. Jim, I just wanted to start by thanking you so much for this podcast. All the emails we've gotten show a lot of support and gratitude for what you've been doing. And for those of us listening to this in real time, you'll recognize that from the beginning of this podcast to where we are now, life's changed a lot for Jim personally, with the loss of his wife, and then also for all of us with the coronavirus. So Jim, I wanted to thank you for hanging in there and for continuing to give us the gift of your teaching. I also wanted to thank everyone who sent in a question and gave us some feedback. It's been so helpful to hear from you. So thank you for taking the time and making the effort to connect with us. It's been an incredible response, and we're grateful for the community that's listening to this podcast. We had so many great questions. We've decided to do two sessions of question and response. This first one will be looking more at content questions around Thomas Merton's teachings. And the second one had more questions about practice.

But before we begin, I just wanted to note that a lot of these questions were very personal and very vulnerable. And we're so grateful for that willingness to share your lives. And Jim will be looking to respond with these deep truths that open up the personal to the universal. So these questions become the questions for all of us to help us all find that deeper depth of truth about our lives.

Does that sound right, Jim?

So let's begin with the questions. The first one I can answer. So we had a lot of people asking how long they will be able to access Season 1 and some concern that once Season 2 began that they wouldn't be able to access Season 1 anymore. So just wanted to share the good news is that Season 1 will stay available into the foreseeable future. So you'll have the option to keep going back to it over time. And then also I'd recommend if you're wanting to send friends to this podcast to start them back in Season 1 and in particular the introductory episodes.

So onto the questions about Thomas Merton. You ready, Jim?

So Mary has a question about a stumbling block she encounters in the text from Thoughts in Solitude. Her question begins, in Session 2 where Merton says, My Lord God, Mary says she gets stuck on the word Lord.

She says that it's not strictly a sexist or patriarchal thing that could be fixed by political correctness. It's more, what does Lord mean in Merton's context? How is it relevant for today?

James Finley (3:52)

Yes.

You know, my sense of this with Merton and all these Christian mystics is that they're clearly talking about how we deepen our experience of in response to God's presence in our life, the presence of God. But when I say, my Lord, God. When I say my Lord, it means that I'm in a personal relationship with God. That God's in a personal relationship with me.

And the meaning of my life is found in that relationship.

And in that relationship, it's a relationship of love, like an overwhelming, boundaryless love, to which I am to surrender myself over, into the hands of God, that I may be led by God, into this deeper union. So it isn't just God as in a philosophical, philosophical sense of God, or I believe God, or I believe that God exists. Rather, I believe that God has personally awakened me to God's personal love for me, and that God empowers me to give myself to God in this deepening relationship. So God then is my Lord. That is, He's Lord of my true self. That He is personally guiding me. He's personally sustaining me. And I think Lord has that connotation of discipleship or personal intimacy. I think it's been in that way. I want to add one more piece, too.

And therefore that Lordship has gradiations of depth to it. So in the beginning, we might understand it reflectively as in Lectio Divina, like I'm in this relationship with God, God's relationship to me, and I listen to God speaking to me in the Lectio, then I speak to God, and I go back in this way. But the Lordship of God becomes more and more contemplative as it becomes more and more a communal realization of my nondistinction from God. Nondistinct from me in God wholly giving yourself or giving himself to me is my very life. So it becomes, it gravitates towards a mystical Lordship, a communion and identification. Now, that kind of nuancing is very important, mystic, and all the... What is it that makes the mystical explicitly mystical? And I think it's that.