Dancing in the Water of Life
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13Sarx (or “flesh”) is used by Paul as the opposite of God (pneuma, “spirit”). Humans as sarx are therefore “sinners.”
14“Paul’s Areopagus speech” refers to Acts 17. “Peter’s ‘naturae’” refers to “partakers of divine nature” in 2 Peter 1:4
15“Book Providence” is unclear, though this is what Merton wrote in his journal. He perhaps missed a word or words as he was writing. It could possihly read “Book [of] Providence,” but that makes little more sense.
16Merton changes this entry to “January 1, 1964” in Vow of Conversation, which makes more sense.
17Published as Seeds of Destruction, 1964.
18Bishop John J. Wright, then bishop of Pittsburgh.
19“The Shakers,” Jubilee 11 (January 1964): 36–41. “Ecclesiastical Baroque,” Commonweal 79 (February 7, 1964): 573–74.
20Emmanuel Célestin Cardinal Suhard (1874–1949) was archbishop of Paris (1940-1949) during the Nazi occupation of France.
21Frederic Dunne was the first American abbot of Our Lady of Gethsemani (1935-1948). He died in Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 4, 1948, en route to Gethsemani’s new foundation at Conyers, Georgia.
22“Thomas Merton: A Modern Man in Reverse,” Atlantic Monthly (January 1953): 70-74.
23“The Climate of Mercy,” published in L’Évangile de la Miséricorde: Hommage au Dr. Schweitzer (Paris, 1965): 311–29.
24Seasons of Celebration, published in 1965.
25Gandhi on Non-Violence, 1965.
26Merton’s French translator.
27Merton’s English publisher.
28In the original journal, this paragraph is preceded by an indecipherable quotation from Robbe-Grillet in French.
29Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1“The Zen Revival,” Continuum (Winter 1964): 523–38.
1The “question” was prompted by the publication in 1963 of J. A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God and later in 1963 by David L. Edwards’s collection of essays, The “Honest to God” Debate: Some Reactions to the Book Honest to God.
2Published under the title Pilgrimage to Crusade, Cithara 4 (November 1964): 3–21.
3Soon after this incident Merton wrote the draft of a poem called “Merlin and the Deer” in his Working Notebook #14. Merton’s whimsical comparison of himself with the sorcerer Merlin plays out the theme of solitude of this section of the journal. See The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (1977), p. 736.
4Merton was reviewing “Barth’s Dream and Oilier Conjectures.” The excerpts mentioned were not taken from this journal, but from the one published as Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years, vol. 4 of The Journals of Thomas Merton, edited by Victor A. Kramer (HarperSan-Francisco, 1996).
5Three letters were excerpted from Seeds of Destruction in Motive (November 1964): 4–8.
6Quotation from “Les prières dans la Cathedral de Chartres. II. Prière de Demande.” In Charles Péguy, Notre Dame (Paris: Gallimard, 1941), pp. 48–50.
7Merton here refers to the Archbishop of Liverpool, John Carmel Heenan.
8National Catholic Welfare Conference, precursor of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB).
9Dom James (Abbot James Fox), now seemingly a supporter rather than an opponent of the hermit life, gave Merton permission to spend “full days” at the hermitage starting on December 16, 1964. There were signs–such as Dom James’s order to have the hermitage wired for electricity–that Merton would be allowed to spend more and more time there, perhaps eventually to live permanently at the hermitage.
10“Rain and the Rhinoceros,” Holiday 37 (May 1965): 8, 10, 12, 15–16.
11“For a Renewal of Eremitism in the Monastic State,” Collectanea Cisterciensia 27 (1965): 121-49.
12Publishers in Brescia, Italy.
13Merton wrote the following note in the margin: “I leave this as it stands. All through this book are such ‘rumors,’ all exaggerated. I leave them as they were when they came to me.”
14Gethsemani, A Life of Praise, 1966.
15Merton reviewed Jacques Cabaud’s Simone Weil: A Fellowship in Love (1964) in Peace News, (April 2, 1965): 5, 8.
16Charles Maloney, Auxiliary Bishop of Louisville.
17The Impact of Vatican II, ed. Jude P. Dougherty, 1966.
18Boom!!! (Caracas: Esta Edicion, 1965): 3.
19Merton refers to the death of Viola Liuzzo.
1“Nishida: A Zen Philosopher,” Zen + the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968): 67–70.
1Merton was asked by his friend Miguel Grinberg in Buenos Aires for some journal passages that would describe a “typical day” in his life and that could be published in the periodical he edited, Eco Contemporaneo. Merton responded by writing a “journal-like” essay, which he called “Day of a Stranger.” This is the first draft of “Day of a Stranger”; Merton later revised and expanded the essay.
2Merton quotes here from the Old Testament book Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiasticus is often subtitled “The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach.” It is not included in the Jewish or Protestant scriptural canons.
2The Way of Chuang Tzu, published by New Directions, 1965.
3“Symbolism: Communication or Communion?” Mountain Path 3 (October 1966): 339–48.
4“An Open Letter to the American Hierarchy (Schema XIII and the Modern Church),” World-view 8 (September 1965): 4–7.
5Seven poems by Merton appeared in this volume, published by Doubleday (Anchor) in 1965.
6“Zen Buddhist Monasticism,” Mystics and Zen Masters (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969): 215–34.
7“The Other Side of Despair: Notes on Christian Existentialism,” The Critic 24 (October-November 1965): 13–23.
8“The Good News of the Nativity,” Bible Today (December 1965).
9“Holy Camp,” The Critic 24 (February-March 1966): 68–70.
10Merton’s grandmother, Martha Baldwin Jenkins (1865–1937).
1Literally “the need to chat,” but the experience is of talking to oneself or, even more likely, to objects, animals, etc., when no other human is present.