I confess but without repentance….

First, one of my favourite quotations from Thomas Merton, quoted in Shannon’s biography:

But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions – because they might turn out to have no answers. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society [ and also in the church] comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.

Back in the 80s and 90s I read the five volumes of Thomas Merton’s letters, borrowed for long periods from the University Library. Merton has been like a benevolent virus in my bloodstream ever since I read The Seven Storey Mountain. I struggle to identify with his monastic expression of Christian life, not because I disagree, disapprove or have any right to question the way another follows Jesus – and how Merton followed Jesus. At the same time few writers put into words the spiritual value of the interrogative mood, the maturing power of good questions, and at the same time expresses in beautiful words, the joy of the search for god – and the joy of knowing God seeks us.

So. In the Old Aberdeen bookshop, I bought the four of the five volumes on the shelf. My spiritual reading for a while is going to be an exercise in reacquaintance – and I’ll still be uneasy about the monastic preoccupations – but I’ll also find my own faith and my own way of following Jesus probed by a consultant on the inner life. The letters to friends, the letters to fellow religious, the letters on social justice and the letters on war and peace are likely to intrigue, frustrate, inspire, annoy, educate and certainly edify (build up) the faith of this baptist bibliophile – who readily confesses to yet another capitualtion, and is so saisfied it would be hypocritical to profess repentance.

Who else is a Merton fan?