Smart people are always saying things like, “For every two new books you read, you should go back and reread one of the best ones.” Well, just like I rarely rewatch movies, I also find this difficult to do with books. There are just so many new things to explore! In fact, I think I could count on two hands the grand total of all books I’ve ever read more than once.
A couple years ago, I devoured all the Merton I could find. Alas, the parts that I didn’t blog about have evaporated from my memory. I remember No Man is an Island being especially good though, so I’m rereading it. And waddayaknow?! It is really good. It’s one of those books that is difficult to quote from on this blog because there is no good place to stop. I type in one paragraph, and then tack on the next, and then discover that the next 3 pages are worth quoting as well. The end result is that I don’t end up blogging about much of it at all, because it would take more effort to summarize into something of a readable length.
Nevertheless, here is an example of some of the spiritual no-nonsense talk Merton gives in the preface:
No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man’s despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning. That, indeed, is one reason why man tends to rebel against himself. If he could without effort see what the meaning of life is, and if he could fulfill his ultimate purpose without trouble, he would never question the fact that life is well worth living. Or if he saw at once that life had no purpose and no meaning, the question would never arise. In either case, man would not be capable of finding himself so much of a problem.
Our life, as individual persons and as members of a perplexed and struggling race, provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is.
This is a difficult task, for many reasons…
-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, p.xi
Merton goes on to talk a lot about “finding yourself”, but it’s nothing like the shallow stuff you heard in grade school or the stuff you still hear on Oprah. It’s ALL wrapped up in God.