Two very different men

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. Thomas Merton

Last week I had ordered two different documentaries to come one after another. The first was the story of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had been in his home, Taliesin West in Arizona, many years ago and found it quite interesting in terms of its connection to the land. So I thought it'd be good to learn more about his life-- of which I had known little. Creativity sounded good to me as one subject to explore. It was a Ken Burns special, which normally means good.

Farm Boss and I were tired that night. The farm has had more than a few upsetting hassles recently due to weather and who knows what all. So we turned it off after maybe 40 minutes with the intention of watching the rest the next night.

The next night, I asked him, do you really want to see the rest? He felt as I did. No. Wright was such an obnoxious person, even in that 40 minutes, that it was hard to separate that user of a personality from his work. To us, it was nearly disgusting at how he had gone into his career, used people, demanded his way. It was simply not bearable to spend more time with him

The next video to arrive was Merton: A Film Biography, which was the polar opposite from Wright. Thomas Merton, a prolific writer, philosopher, spiritualist, and humanitarian was as opposite from Wright as I think it's possible for two men to be which makes it rather interesting that I had chosen them to be watched so closely together.

If you have read any of Merton's writings (70 books, numerous essays), you know that as a Trappist monk, he had a dedication to first the monastic life which spread out into a love for mankind and a desire to speak out on what he thought it took to live life fully.

He moved on though in his thinking and that's part of what makes him so profound. He was willing to grow, to challenge even his old ways of thinking. He was a mystic but not religiously bound to any one system even as he remained a Catholic. If he had not died prematurely, one wonders where he might have gone on this lifelong hunt for spiritual truth.

His concern went beyond the Spirit to how this all impacted human life. It was flesh and spirit. Basically he believed it was impossible to have such a life without standing on your own feet, without having a certain sense of liberty. When others rule your life, and most frequently in our country, that could be corporate rulers, you cannot have a true openness to the spiritual truth of life. You are bound up in what you must do. He spoke out about that, against war, and for an understanding that religious similarities of beliefs that he found in a deep study of Buddhism and Christianity, as practiced by Christ, were very similar.

The documentary is by necessity cursory about a lot of Merton's life, but it really is inspiring. I felt, especially in our day and age where it's easy to become very disillusioned with life and all that is going on in the world, it was worth watching and spending some time thinking about.

'In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.' Thomas Merton

Image from Joy of Propaganda