Retreat Weekend: Interlude - On the Porch

I purposely neglected to bring any books with me this weekend. This proved to be a more difficult choice than I might have guessed. Since the age of about nine, I've always packed at least two books whenever I go anywhere for more than one night.


I return the two books I borrowed from the Guest House library yesterday. Thomas Merton's treatise on contemplative prayer proved a little heady for me, and I found myself growing increasingly annoyed at Chesterton's ostentation. I want to stick with Merton, though (this is a Trappist abbey, after all), so I'm pleased to discover a slim volume by the late Basil Pennington about a week's retreat he undertook at Merton's hermitage in Kentucky.

I take the book out to the sun porch and begin to read, listening to the rain scour the valley. To my amusement, the first words of Fr. Basil's that I read are, "I am sitting on a porch. A whipping storm has just passed..."

...the clouds are still low and running, with sun from the west breaking through the layers. The evergreens are catching the harmony of the wind. There is a freshness in the air but yet a tingliing chill, just enough to make a coat comfortable. The blue is winning out as the clouds continue running to the east. The view from the porch!--I wonder how Tom ever wrote anything, or anything but poetry. Each season, each day, must have its own unique beauty. Right now it is the changing sky that commands all. The distant knobs are lost in deep shadow. Bird calls, unfamiliar to my ear, come through when the trees are quiet. This is indeed a place which the Lord has made.

The thought that this priest, this monastic contemplative, experienced much the same on his retreat that I am experiencing on mine delights and consoles me, as does the fact that the ghost hovering over his retreat is that of Thomas Merton. After all, the fact that I now consider myself a Christian is probably more Thomas Merton's doing than anyone else's.


When I began practicing zen over a dozen years ago, it was with a group formed by two elderly Catholic nuns. I felt a bond with Merton because of his own affinity for zen and other Asian contemplative practices, his friendships with Buddhist monastics like Thich Nhat Hanh, the thoughtful manner in which Merton outlined similarities and differences between zen and Christian mysticism. I read his Mystics and Zen Masters and Thoughts in Solitude before plunging headfirst into The Seven Storey Mountain, which remains the most profoundly affecting spiritual memoir I have ever read. In it, Merton describes his conversion, his ordination, his passions, and his doubts so vividly, so plainly, that the more I read, the more he became something like a friend, rather than some distant, long-deceased spiritual master.

Years later, as a Quaker, when I began feeling myself increasingly drawn to Christian teachings, Merton's reflections on prayer, compassion, and action were my touchstone and my guide.