Customer Reviews

Great wisdom if we are ready for it - By: DAVID-LEONARD WILLIS, 10 Jan 2004
The title of this book derives from 1953/54 when Merton was able to enjoy special opportunities for solitude & meditation; the contents of this book are thoughts on the contemplative life & fundamental intuitions that seemed, at that time, to have importance. As such, the chapters do not necessarily relate to one another & are, as the title suggests, a collection of thoughts whilein solitude. "It is quite likely that intuitions which seem to be most vital to the writer will not have much importance for others, who do not have the same kind of vocation." For the writer, these reflections on man's solitude before God & man's dialogue with Godin silence are essential to his monastic way of life. It is a counterbalance to totalitarianism & the murderous din of materialism that must not be allowed to silence the voices of the Christian Saints, Oriental sages like Lao-Tse or the Zen Masters or Thoreau, Martin Buber or Max Picard. "What is said here about solitude is not just a recipe for hermits. It has a bearing on the whole future of man & of his world & especially, of course, on the future of his religion." Part I is composed of 19 thoughts on aspects of the spiritual life; part II of 18 thoughts on the love of solitude.

The desert, supremely valuable to God because it has no value to men, is the logical dwelling place for the solitary with nothing between himself & his Creator. But as man has moved into the desert for testing nuclear weapons or building casinos, the desert moves elsewhere. The new desert is despair.

All temperaments can serve as material for ruin or for salvation; if we make our temperament serve us we can do better than another who serves his temperament. The things we love tell what we are. A man who sins but does not love his sin is not a sinnerin the full sense of the word. Even if we are temperamentally inclined to anger, we are still free not to be angry. We are free to desire either good or evil. Too many ascetics fail to become saints because their rules & ascetic practices have merely deadened humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly,in all its capacities.

Jesus had a clear vision of God but experienced our human emotions of affection, pity, sorrow, happiness, pleasure, grief, indignation, wonder, weariness, anxiety, fear, consolation & peace. If we are without human feelings we cannot love God as we are meant to love Him - as men.

Our five senses are chilled by inordinate pleasure. Penance cleans the senses & gives them back their vitality. Lack of self-denial & self discipline is the cause of mediocrity of much devotional art, much pious writing, many sentimental prayers & many religious lives. "Some men turn away from all this cheap emotion with a kind of heroic despair, & seek Godin a desert where the emotions can find nothing to sustain them. But this too can be an error. For if our emotions really diein the desert, our humanity dies with them. We must return from the desert like Jesus or St. John with our capacity for feeling expanded & deepened, strengthened against appeals of falsity, warned against temptation, great, noble, pure."

No amount of technological progress will cure the hatred that eats away the vitals of materialistic society like a spiritual cancer. The only cure is spiritual.

A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thoughts for life, ideas for action. Our destiny is to live out what we think. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into reality.

Real self-conquest is the conquest of ourselves by the Holy Spirit. Self-conquest is really self-surrender.

Laziness & cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of the spiritual life & they are most dangerous when masked as discretion. The problem is that discretion is one of the most important virtues.

"Why should I want to be rich, when you were poor? Why should I desire to be famous & powerfulin the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets & stoned the True rejected You & nailed You to the Cross? Why should I cherishin my heart a hope that devours me - the hope for perfect happinessin this life - when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?"

Thomas Merton has great wisdom to pass on to us if we are ready to receive it.