Merton grew and developed over the years, in an
interior sense, more deeply than anyone I know, and came to be recognized as
the leading mystical writer in the English-speaking world. Robert
Giroux
I
September 18/Eagle River
Alaska-the Convent of the Precious
Blood-surrounded by woods, with a highway (too) near. The woods of
Alaska-marvelous-deep in wet grass, fern, rotten fallen trees, big leaved thorn
scrub, yellowing birch, stunted fir, aspens. Thick. Humid. Lush. Smelling of
life & of rot. Rich Undergrowth, full of mosses, berries-& probably (in
other seasons) flowers. The air is now here cool and sharp as late November in
the “outside” (ie. “the States”) (“lower 48”).
Thomas Merton (p.10)
Thomas Merton took the
monastic vow of stability with great commitment and seriousness. He spent
most of his years, often with many doubts and conflicts, at Gethsemane monastery.
He knew why many of the Desert Abbas/Ammas, Pachomius, Cassian and Benedict
warned against the tendency to flit, butterfly like, from one spiritual
director, community and conference to another with no substantive rooting or
grounding. In short, the spiritual discipline of stability could do much to
rightly form and transform the soul in opposition to the more transient and
less committed peregrination that many in the past and today tend to be
enfolded within.
The final year of Merton’s
life (1968), though, he was offered the opportunity by his Abbot of exploring a
variety of options for a hermitage. The hermitage at Gethsemani could become
too busy, and the contemplative reality that Merton sought to probe and
experience often became thwarted by its proximity to the active monastery.
Merton did, in his final year of life, become a contemplative rover and gypsy
of sorts. His search for a hermitage far from Gethsemane is well
recounted in Woods, Shore, Desert: A Notebook, May 1968, The Asian
Journal of Thomas Merton and Thomas Merton in Alaska: The Alaskan
Conferences, Journals, and Letters.
Merton died in 1968 in Asia, but before he traveled to Asia, he flew north and Anchorage and Eagle River in Alaska. It was when he was in Eagle River that he led a retreat for a small community
of nuns. There has been much work and reflection done on many aspects of
Merton’s life and thought, but few have been those that have pondered Merton’s
Alaskan conferences, journals and letters, and fewer still that have trekked to
Eagle River and Anchorage in Alaska to check out the site where he gave the
retreat. The fact that little attention has been given to Merton’s visit Alaska
is highlighted in footnote #1 in Robert Daggy’s “Introduction” to Thomas
Merton in Alaska.
Daggy made it abundantly obvious in the “Introduction” that Monica Furlong’s biography of Merton virtually ignored the trip, Jim Forest omitted the trip in his initial biography, Deba Patnaik was confused about the place that Merton led the retreat when in Alaska and the film biography of Merton overdid the Asian trip and simply turned the back on the Alaska trek. Why such omissions and errors? This short essay attempts to correct the obvious lack of interest in the Alaska trip, and offers a more positive read of it.
II
September 18/Eagle River
The convent chapel looks out through big
windows at birch,
a purple & green mountainside. Quiet
Thomas Merton (p.10)
Angus Stuart and I decided, since it was forty years this autumn (1968-2008) since Merton went to Alaska, to take the trip to Eagle River and Anchorage, to coincide with the year, month and days that Merton was in Alaska. It is significant to note that just as there is a presidential race in the USA in the autumn of 2008, there was a presidential race in 1968. Merton commented about this in the lengthy poem, ‘Mosaic: Paper and Funnies’ (pgs. 11-14) in Thomas Merton in Alaska. Merton’s poetic insights cannot be missed.
Wallace
had a big day Tuesday
Dramatic
increase “He’s moving up
Fast” said
a strategist and …
And again,
And it was
from Curtis LeMay
Speaking in the Anchorage Westward Hotel
Also in
Kenai
Many are
now
Wearing Wallace buttons.
George Wallace was running as
a candidate for president in 1968, and General Curtis LeMay was his vice
presidential running mate. Sarah Palin of Alaska was running as the vice
president with McCain in the presidential election of 2008.
Our trip to Alaska
in the footsteps of Merton had all sorts of overlap and historic affinities.
Merton was in Alaska when the republicans were strutting their election stuff. We were there when
Palin had been catapulted into the national and international spotlight. A
sense of Déjà vu could not be missed.
Merton was in Eagle River from September 18-22/1968, and used Anchorage as base to check out other hermitage sites in Alaska from September 23-October 2/1968. Angus and I live in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, and we are on the national board of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada (TMSC). We knew, in advance, it was going to be a long drive to Alaska, but we were not sure how many hours we would be on the road. We did, though, want to be in Eagle River forty years to the days Merton had been there. We were also interested to see and hear what had happened to the small convent since that time. We were in for some pleasant and delightful surprises.
We left the Lower Mainland to begin our pilgrimage to the far north early on the morning of September 15th. It was still the dark before dawn when we packed into Angus’s truck, and we knew we had many miles to go before we slept and slumbered. I had arranged to stay with friends in Smithers/BC to wind up Day #1. We were on the road for thirteen hours, but when we reached Smithers, we were greeted and feasted well in an out of doors dinner with fresh food from Peter/Nelly’s abundant and gracious table and garden.
Day #2 was another thirteen hour day from Smithers to Whitehorse/Yukon. We were on the AlCan (Alaska-Canada) highway most of the long day, and we were fortunate that Archbishop Terry Buckle offered us a watering hole at the Anglican Cathedral in Whitehorse for the night. We had yet another thirteen hour journey in the truck on Day #3, but we made it from Whitehorse in the Yukon to Eagle River in Alaska. We were eagerly welcomed by the Orthodox (Antiochene) community that now owns the land where the convent once was where Merton gave the retreat. It is a thriving Orthodox parish, and the Orthodox Cathedral (Saint John) sits, in all its beauty and splendour, beside St. James residence (which was the convent in 1968). There are many students that live in residence at St. James, and Angus and I were offered the honour of staying in the Thomas Merton room at St. James.
III
September 18/Eagle River
Sense of belonging here. The spirit of the community is good. They will move to a better site. This is a nice house but has “a water problem”
Thomas
Merton (p. 11)
The small Roman Catholic order of nuns that lived in a rather meager building in 1968 when Thomas Merton was in Eagle River (he lived in a trailer beside the building) left the place shortly thereafter. The nuns in their red and white habit were called Sister Adorers of the Precious Blood, and they had arrived in Eagle River in 1967. The bishop of the diocese had planned on starting a larger retreat centre in Anchorage, and the Eagle River setting was meant to be but an interim convent for the contemplative order.
The lack of water near
the convent forced the nuns to leave the place in 1970 to Anchorage. The busy life the bishop placed on them, as contemplatives, nudged many of the
nuns to return to their mother house in 1972.
The spartan convent was
finally sold, and in 1972 a group of Campus Crusade people from Anchorage bought the property and more land in the area. There was a significant number
within Campus Crusade in the late 1960s-1970s that were questioning their
limited and a-historical understanding of Christianity. Many came to see that
the form of Christianity they were committed to was thin and missing in much.
It was in the 1970s and 1980s that many leaders within Campus Crusade became
Orthodox. This tale is well recounted and told in Becoming Orthodox: A
Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith (1989), by Peter Gillquist. There
was a thriving Campus Crusade group in Anchorage in the 1960s-early 1970s, and
it was this group that became Orthodox and bought the property in 1972 where
Merton had led the retreat in 1968.
IV
September
19/ Alaska
I am now
here on a bright cold morning & the first thin dust of snow is on the lower
hills. Mt. McKinley is visible in the
distance from the Precious Blood Convent. Next to which I live in a trailer
(very comfortable).
Thomas Merton (p.14)
I mentioned above that we were
welcomed with great kindness and tenderness when we arrived at what is now
Saint John Orthodox Cathedral on the evening of September 17th/2008.
A couple of students who lived in the Thomas Merton room left, and allowed
Angus and I to live in it while we were in Eagle River. The room is spacious,
the window expansive, and on a clear day Mt. McKinley (Denali) can be clearly
seen in all its white magnificence. The weather played cat and mouse with us,
so the sights we had hoped to see were not always in abundance.
Angus and I woke September 18:2008
in the Thomas Merton room on the exact day (40 years earlier) that he had
arrived in Eagle River
V
September 19/Alaska
It is a nice house among the birches, at the foot of the low mountains, looking out through the trees toward Cook Inlet & Mount McKinley-the nuns may move in a few months as the place is not quite suitable.
Thomas Merton
(p.16)
The Orthodox community had
asked Angus and I to speak about Merton and Orthodoxy in the evening, so the
lecture room (where Merton would have led the retreat) was packed when Angus
and I lectured for about an hour on Orthodoxy and Merton. There is suspicion
amongst some within the Orthodox tradition about Merton, and we did what we
could to allay such fears. Jim Forest was often mentioned as was Kallistos Ware
who contributed three articles to Merton and Hesychasm: The Eastern Church:
The Prayer of the Heart (2003). The well known Anglican, A.M. Allchin, has
also written a great deal about Merton, and Allchin has bridged the Orthodox
chasm in such classic as The
Kingdom of Love and Knowledge: The Encounter between Orthodoxy and the West
(1982). Merton was quite drawn by V. Lossky and spoke of him in his Alaskan
conferences, and Allchin in The Kingdom of Love and Knowledge did the
same. There are those, therefore, like Kallistos Ware, Jim Forest and A.M.
Allchin that have walked the extra mile to bridge the frets and worries that
some within the Orthodox tradition might have about Merton.
The lecture segment of the evening was followed by a lively and animated question and answer session on Merton and Orthodoxy. The Orthodox community of St. John’s, consciously so, think that the seed insights sown in Merton’s Alaskan Conferences have come to fruition in St. John’s Cathedral in Eagle River.
We were invited, after the evening lecture and question-answer session on Merton-Orthodoxy, to join the rector of the parish, his family and few others for a continuing discussion on Merton, Orthodoxy and many other pressing and not to be ignored issues. Seraphim Rose has had quite an impact on many within the Orthodox tradition, and it is he (more than most) that has spread the negative attitude within the Orthodox community about Merton. We had a long and lengthy conversation about Seraphim Rose, his uncritical devotees, Orthodoxy and Merton.
The recent biography
and tome about Seraphim Rose by Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose:
His Life and Works (2005), has chapter dealing with Rose’s opposition to
Merton. “Thomas Merton, Chiliasm, and the New Christianity” (Part III: 31) in Father
Seraphim takes Merton to task for a variety of reasons. All of reasons,
sadly so, are caricatures of Merton’s perspectives, but Rose has definitely had
an impact on many in the Orthodox community in their opposition and suspicion
to Merton.
Angus and I were fortunate to meet
with Mary Alice Cook the evening of September 18th. Mary Alice had contacted
me a couple of weeks before Angus and I headed north, and she was keen to meet
us. Mary Alice has had published a couple of articles on Merton (Catholic
Anchor: September 22, 2006 & Saint John Orthodox Cathedral Newsletter:
Summer 2006). She has done many interviews with those who knew Merton in his
1968 visit. She also has photos of Merton that few have, and they should be in
archives. Mary Alice gave us copies of her published articles-interviews, and
Angus and I met with her for a lengthy breakfast at Jitters deli in Eagle River
on the morning of September 19th. We spent the rest of the day in Achorage.
VI
I would like now to talk a little bit
about the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church in which I am also interested
and which I think is something that we might profitably explore in the present
day.
Thomas Merton (p.82)
Angus stayed in the Merton
room at St. James’ residence from September 17-21. There was much we learned
about Merton and Orthodoxy while in Eagle River and Anchorage. In fact, there
are substantive segments in Merton’s conferences and retreat with the nuns that
deal with the Orthodox line and lineage. This makes much sense, of course,
given the fact that Alaska was once in Russian territory, and the Russian form
and expression of Christianity is largely Orthodox. There are many Orthodox
parishes still in Alaska. There are plenty of archives and
photos that are still in St. John’s Cathedral that go back to 1968. There is
still more research being done on Merton and his Alaskan trip by those that
live in Eagle River and Anchorage, and such research would take the curious
straight into the core of Merton’s complex and complicated interest in
Orthodoxy.
Most of Thomas Merton’s articles, books, letters and journals have taken to the press, and yet an anomaly still remains. There are a variety of reasons for the fact that Merton’s missive, Notes on Art and Worship, has not been published, but in this tract for the times there is no doubt that Merton pondered the relationship between art, worship and icons. It is in Merton’s long term and historic interest in icons that his bridging ability between the Roman Catholic tradition and the Orthodox tradition was decades ahead of his time. The sooner that Notes on Art and Worship is published the better. The Orthodox community will draw nearer to Merton and Merton’s obvious interest in iconographical will be fully revealed.
We realized we had a long 3
day-thirteen hour a day trip before us when we left Eagle River in the dark wet
morning of September 21. We made it from Eagle River-Whitehorse-Smithers-Lower
Mainland in three days, and our pilgrimage north ended late in the evening of
September 24th.
The Thomas Merton Society of Canada
(TMSC) does an annual Merton pilgrimage, and as a result of the autumn-2008
trek to Eagle River, the TMSC is thinking of doing their summer-2009 pilgrimage
to Eagle River. The week long theme would be on Merton and Orthodoxy. Those who
are on the pilgrimage could stay on St. James residence, and St. John’s
Cathedral would serve as an excellent sacred site from which to explore
Orthodox themes such as hesychasm, iconography, liturgy, Orthodox theology and
Orthodox public theology. Needless to say, Merton’s Thomas Merton in Alaska:
The Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters would be primary material
that we would dip our buckets in and draw water from.
There is much more that could be
said about Merton and Alaska. His many trips from Anchorage to deserted places in Alaska (and his reflections
on such places) is still awaiting some scribe to unfold the fuller tale. This
will also be part of the next trek to the last frontier in the USA that Merton
went to before his tragic and untimely death in 1968. Angus and I were, I
think, the only ones to make the long trip to Eagle River in September 2008 to
ponder Merton’s trek to Anchorage-Eagle River in the early autumn of 1968.
The trip was worth the trek, and
there is a motherlode of research yet to be done on Merton and his Alaskan
pilgrimage.
Ron Dart
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