Journey to Gethsemani
by Terry Taylor
Executive Director, Interfaith Paths to Peace
I first visited the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani on the day after Thanksgiving in 1979. I had been drawn to the Abbey by a book called The Seven Storey Mountain by a monk named Thomas Merton who had been a part of the monastery community from 1941 until his accidental death in 1968. The book had given focus to the spirituality that was beginning to grow in my life as I neared my thirtieth birthday. In 1979 I was working at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. I rose before dawn on that November morning and drove for six hours and more down I-65, and then on the two-lane highways that led me to and through the city of Bardstown.
The closer I got to Gethsemani, the more apprehensive I became. The bleak gray morning sky and the trees already denuded of leaves seemed to mirror my anxiety. My expectations were so high that I was terribly afraid that there was no way that Gethsemani could be as good as I hoped.
But as I passed over a low rise and the monastery steeple and the walled guesthouse courtyard came into view, I began to relax and smile. There were no signs that blared out “Home of famous monk Thomas Merton.” In fact, if you weren’t looking for the monastery and hoping to find it via directional signs, you might have stayed lost forever.
I stayed for three days on that trip, reading, walking in the woods across the highway, attending the “divine office” as the monks chanted the Psalms every three hours or so throughout the day. Everything and everyone I encountered at Gethsemani spoke (as had Merton’s words) of the beauty of silence and solitude and the presence of God.
The monastery and its guest house in 1979 were very different from the way they were when Merton joined the community three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in WWII. Back in the 1940s, Life Magazine had called the Trappists “the Marines of the religious orders” because of the severity of their life style. The monks slept on straw mattresses, lived and worked without heat even in the coldest winters, hardly spoke a word to each other, and ate a meager vegetarian diet. Their community life was so demanding that paradoxically there was little time for individual prayer.
When I first walked into the guesthouse 38 years later, almost everything had changed. Merton had been drawn by the severity of the place. But in 1979, things were a bit easier, for monks and guests. The buildings were heated, the food was ample and delicious, the monks worked a reasonable day, spoke when they needed to, and had ample time for personal reflection and individual prayer.
But the soul of the monastery was what had really changed. Even though Merton was drawn to Gethsemani by its difficult challenges and its separation from the world, over his 27 years as a monk his life and writings helped to radically transform the spiritual life of his own monastery, but also the world of religious practice for millions of Americans, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Muslim. Even Buddhists.
Merton was a pioneer in three major areas: returning to religion of contemplative spirituality, connecting healthy spirituality to work for pe3ace and justice, and breaking down the walls that separated members of one religion from another.
As his own understanding of what it meant to be a “religious” person changed more and more until on March 18, 1958, he stood at the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets in downtown Louisville and realized two important facts. First, even though he was a cloistered monk, his life as a human being was not fundamentally different from that of anyone else in the workaday world. Second, his life behind the wall did not absolve him from responsibility for those outside the confines of the monastery.
On that day, in a very real sense, Merton knocked down the wall that surrounded Gethsemani and every other monastery. And when the wall had crumbled he took a step out into the secular world to embrace its problems, challenges and joys. But perhaps more importantly, he invited all of us to step over the rubble and into the world of spirituality.
It is hard to understand the significance of this today when every bookstore and magazine rack shouts out some new miraculous spiritual insight, but in the 1950s and before, many people saw ministers, priests, rabbis and others in “the religion business” as responsible for everyone’s spiritual needs. As laypersons we might go to church and read the Bible, but spirituality was left to the professionals.
Because of the work that Merton began in his lifetime, we live in a very different world. A world where all of us can proclaim our spirituality, and Jews can be friends with Muslims, Catholics with Protestants. And Gethsemani itself has become a popular stopping place for people from virtually every Christian denomination, for Jewish leaders, Muslims, and Buddhists. All are welcome.
The Inter-religious Celebration of Thanksgiving that will take place at Gethsemani on September 25 will bring together as concelebrants leaders from the world’s great religions. Those who attend the service will, we hope, mirror that rainbow of humanity.
And if you decide to attend, and you notice that there is still a wall surrounding the Guesthouse courtyard, take a moment to look closer. The wall hasn’t literally crumbled, but there is a door at one corner. And it isn’t locked.
by Terry Taylor
Executive Director, Interfaith Paths to Peace
I first visited the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani on the day after Thanksgiving in 1979. I had been drawn to the Abbey by a book called The Seven Storey Mountain by a monk named Thomas Merton who had been a part of the monastery community from 1941 until his accidental death in 1968. The book had given focus to the spirituality that was beginning to grow in my life as I neared my thirtieth birthday. In 1979 I was working at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. I rose before dawn on that November morning and drove for six hours and more down I-65, and then on the two-lane highways that led me to and through the city of Bardstown.
The closer I got to Gethsemani, the more apprehensive I became. The bleak gray morning sky and the trees already denuded of leaves seemed to mirror my anxiety. My expectations were so high that I was terribly afraid that there was no way that Gethsemani could be as good as I hoped.
But as I passed over a low rise and the monastery steeple and the walled guesthouse courtyard came into view, I began to relax and smile. There were no signs that blared out “Home of famous monk Thomas Merton.” In fact, if you weren’t looking for the monastery and hoping to find it via directional signs, you might have stayed lost forever.
I stayed for three days on that trip, reading, walking in the woods across the highway, attending the “divine office” as the monks chanted the Psalms every three hours or so throughout the day. Everything and everyone I encountered at Gethsemani spoke (as had Merton’s words) of the beauty of silence and solitude and the presence of God.
The monastery and its guest house in 1979 were very different from the way they were when Merton joined the community three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in WWII. Back in the 1940s, Life Magazine had called the Trappists “the Marines of the religious orders” because of the severity of their life style. The monks slept on straw mattresses, lived and worked without heat even in the coldest winters, hardly spoke a word to each other, and ate a meager vegetarian diet. Their community life was so demanding that paradoxically there was little time for individual prayer.
When I first walked into the guesthouse 38 years later, almost everything had changed. Merton had been drawn by the severity of the place. But in 1979, things were a bit easier, for monks and guests. The buildings were heated, the food was ample and delicious, the monks worked a reasonable day, spoke when they needed to, and had ample time for personal reflection and individual prayer.
But the soul of the monastery was what had really changed. Even though Merton was drawn to Gethsemani by its difficult challenges and its separation from the world, over his 27 years as a monk his life and writings helped to radically transform the spiritual life of his own monastery, but also the world of religious practice for millions of Americans, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Muslim. Even Buddhists.
Merton was a pioneer in three major areas: returning to religion of contemplative spirituality, connecting healthy spirituality to work for pe3ace and justice, and breaking down the walls that separated members of one religion from another.
As his own understanding of what it meant to be a “religious” person changed more and more until on March 18, 1958, he stood at the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets in downtown Louisville and realized two important facts. First, even though he was a cloistered monk, his life as a human being was not fundamentally different from that of anyone else in the workaday world. Second, his life behind the wall did not absolve him from responsibility for those outside the confines of the monastery.
On that day, in a very real sense, Merton knocked down the wall that surrounded Gethsemani and every other monastery. And when the wall had crumbled he took a step out into the secular world to embrace its problems, challenges and joys. But perhaps more importantly, he invited all of us to step over the rubble and into the world of spirituality.
It is hard to understand the significance of this today when every bookstore and magazine rack shouts out some new miraculous spiritual insight, but in the 1950s and before, many people saw ministers, priests, rabbis and others in “the religion business” as responsible for everyone’s spiritual needs. As laypersons we might go to church and read the Bible, but spirituality was left to the professionals.
Because of the work that Merton began in his lifetime, we live in a very different world. A world where all of us can proclaim our spirituality, and Jews can be friends with Muslims, Catholics with Protestants. And Gethsemani itself has become a popular stopping place for people from virtually every Christian denomination, for Jewish leaders, Muslims, and Buddhists. All are welcome.
The Inter-religious Celebration of Thanksgiving that will take place at Gethsemani on September 25 will bring together as concelebrants leaders from the world’s great religions. Those who attend the service will, we hope, mirror that rainbow of humanity.
And if you decide to attend, and you notice that there is still a wall surrounding the Guesthouse courtyard, take a moment to look closer. The wall hasn’t literally crumbled, but there is a door at one corner. And it isn’t locked.
posted by Interfaith Paths to Peace at 9:47 AM
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