Book Review: Thomas Merton book on retreat at home, a workbook by Esther de Waal

by Peter Menkin

Today, again, I asked myself during centering prayer, to let my heart be open to God. This is the Christocentric God of the Trinity about which I speak. The book, “A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton” by Esther de Waal is an

Thomas Merton at ease

excellent exercise for home retreat that helps one come to opening the heart to God. The book does so in words, and it has photographs by Thomas Merton.
Irregardless, through the words or by looking at the photographs, one can find a way of looking at the world in the everyday and finding God. Set out as a seven day journey, take the book kindly and give it attention during the day, setting aside the time to go into the retreat. In the notes on Thomas Merton, the writer says, “The message of love, the primacy of love, this is the most basic definition of monastic life as Merton discovered it…” Thomas Merton was a man who lived a life of love, learning so much about it and Esther de Waal, a Benedictine, is a good person to help us along the way with this love that Thomas Merton knew.

She asks questions in the days of the retreat. In day one, she asks, “Who am I before God at this point in my life?” She goes on in an intimate way, teaching us to become intimate with God: “…I am overawed to think of the person that I am, that unique person, so lovingly created by God in all the fullness and riches of my own individuality, a person made to be His daughter, His son.” Is this too

Thomas Merton, portrait

close for some readers (what I think is these are starting points for considerations). So, as to being too close, I think not; the book is personal. If the reader has a starting point of relationship with God, and is not afraid to explore both the sensitive and open areas of relationships, he or she will find these more meaningful statements as time goes on. This is a book to be used more than once, is what becomes apparent.

Another thing this book helps with is the way of contemplation. As she quotes Thomas Merton, using his poetry throughout the book, we have a guide to help us in our spiritual exercise and quest. On “Day Three–The Solitary Within: The True Self” Merton is quoted: “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?” From Psalm 139 she quotes a response for this retreat exercise. “For it was you who created my being/knit me together in my mother’s womb/I thank you for the wonder of my being,/for the wonders of all your creation.”
“Day Four–Encounter With Christ” is the fourth day, and the central day of the retreat. Remember,this book is a retreat for seven days read a chapter at a time, day by day. The great gift Merton offers readers is a sharing of his experience in contemplation, his spiritual journey, and mostly his coming to know God. The book is kept under the section of books for “Spirituality/Prayer” and those interested will find that they too are with “..the Christ of God who in

In the wood

the spirit of his love lives in the people of God…” This is a book that is open to the reader, and open to people who are seekers of God who desire to pray. This is a prayerful book, need I say.
How religious is this book? I ask the question so that you as a reader will know that this is a book that is approachable. It “answers” the statement by John Cassian, in his “Conferences” which I am now reading about the relationship with God that a seeker may look for in his life. Even the advanced who are spiritually inclined will find this an approachable book by this measure of Cassian’s: “…We ought to know where we should fix our mind’s attention and to what goal we should always recall our soul’s gaze.” That can be an advanced question for many of us, and this book is helpful in meeting the statement’s intent for one’s life. This is a book that has life moving possibilities, one step at a time.

Book Reviewer: Peter Menkin

I would be missing a significant aspect of this book if I did not mention the photographs by Thomas Merton. One can say that one has seen his photographs, if one reads this book. Something worthwhile for an educated person in the 21st century. If you are a reader of the journal “Weavings” you may come to Thomas Merton’s photographs better prepared for seeing the contemplative in everyday things. The Journal is a quarterly series of articles from Upper Room publications on such topics. “A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton” does ra comprehensive job of helping one to see. Thomas Merton sees things in his world, and one must look at the photographs and then make the connection with the common things of ones world and life. That for me is a good entry point of understanding these photographs in a book that is a retreat.

A commentary on Thomas Merton by a woman who is well prepared and able to make such commentary, essentially this book is her interpretation of Merton’s writings set as a retreat for people at home or use in a retreat setting away from home. With a foreword by Henri Nouwen, and photographs by Thomas Merton (including a most intriguing one of him next to a cross — large, large one) on the cover, the title by Esther de Waal is published by Servant Publications of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I listened to a webcast some years ago, from Trinity Church in New York if memory is correct, when a woman editor with Publisher’s Weekly said that one of the things that competed with Church life was good reading — in other words books. This is one of those books that can compete with a retreat time away from home, and for me that was the value of it. I could have the book at home, use it for study and prayer on a seven day course and come closer to God in my relationship with Him by the book. This book is a good thing in the world.


This review appears on the pages of The Church of England Newspaper, London. Originally written in 2005, it is now posted 2011 again.

Third Commandment: Do not take the name of the Lord in vain

God asks us for reverence and respect. In my Church, we take communion on Sundays and it is a reverent experience. With reverence congregants prepare for communion. With reverence congregants approach the table. With reverence congregants take the body and blood of Christ. This is a holy time set aside for worship and God, as is the Sunday worship experience.

Part of this experience in the Christian faith is remembering Christ, it is a memorial of his death and resurrection. Communion in my Church is a source of entering into and receiving God's love. A difficult experience to communicate, this Sunday communion, these words by Thomas Merton are a help.

Thomas Merton writes of a first Communion experience:
For now I had entered into the everlasting movement of the gravitation which is the very life and spirit of God. God's own gravitation towards the depths of His own infinite nature. His goodness without end. And God, that center Who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me, through incorporation with Christ, incorporated into this immense and tremendous gravitational movement which is love, which is the Holy Spirit, loved me.

From The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith by Thomas Merton, p. 246.

Third Commandment
By Peter Menkin

Entertaining the mystery of God:

Doing as prayer says,

Hallowed be thy name.

Examined by the Ten Commandments.

This is some of the way.

Oh, Third Commandment of mystery and cloud,

so says the Lord,

You Shall not take the Name of the Lord in vain.

So direct; yet we contemplate

the many spiritual dimensions that light the way

to know the will of God brought by Moses.

One more new review: Merton's "Thoughts in Solitude"...


Moved by this slim volume by Thomas Merton, I found "Thoughts in Solitude" to be worth a second read three years after the initial purchase and first reading. Call this an accidental second reading, and a good accident for I had not planned on revisiting the title. To my pleasure, the book is good if not better the second time around. For I was moved by the love this man holds for God, or held, since he is now many years dead. In this book, he lives, and he is as well as a man of God who sought God, but a writer who has the writer's gift of telling us some of the journey of getting closer to God. Or as he might say, God allowing someone to get closer to Him. That is good news.

Readable, and certainly quick going but the kind of book one goes through "easily," it is a book that allows for reflection. I wondered about humility, and I wondered how in the world could something like humility be available to a layman, especially one who has neither the desire for nor the means of holding and having solitude as did Thomas Merton.

I think Thomas Merton held solitude, as one embraces something, as one would embrace God. As a man or woman comes to Christ. Intangible as that may sound, the writer brings the reader to come with him on the inner journey and the journey of desire to be with God in quiet and solitude. Not alone, but in a solitude that is like a solidarity with the Almighty. This is the having solitude that I mention. Or so I understand it by the book.

But I did not come to the book, after reading a while, to admire Thomas Merton. Of course, I do. I did not come to the book to get secrets about God, but Thomas Merton says there are secrets available to those who read the scriptures. There is both the telling and the untelling of a relationship with God that explains to the reader, through inference and through his reflections, that solitude brings people to mystery. I want to believe that there is mystery in the relationship with Christ, that in God we find and feel things (called religious experience) that are not available to us other ways. Thomas Merton writes of religious experience in this book, and he does it very well.

I'm sure you have heard that this is the second of his books that critics cite as one of his two best. The other is, "The Seven Story Mountain." I read that book as the first of his books I read. I am glad I did. Here I stop a moment to tell you I am not doing justice to his writing, for in both books he is a spiritual master. Here he writes of the spiritual life, and for me it is the beginnings of thought on considering spiritual life:

"Spiritual life is not mental life. It is not thought alone. Nor is it, of course, a life of sensation, a life of feeling--'feeling" and experiencing the things of the spirit, and the things of God.

Nor does the spiritual life exclude thought and feeling. It needs both."

I like how he explains this explanation, saying, "Everything must be elevated and transformed by the action of God, in love and faith."

The end of the book is like a prayer, and the entire book has a prayer quality to it. The chapters are short. They are like arrows of writing. There is a warmth to the writing, and an inviting quality is evident because Thomas Merton wants his reader to know what it is to love God, and to recognize this is what a man or woman may have in his or her lifetime.

As I come to the end of this review, it is important to remark that a reader can take his affection, even his passionate humility tempered in a life of solitude, and find ways of understanding and coming closer to God. I grant his is a holy life, an easy thing to say, and I want to close with this quote:

"The solitary life is a life in which we cast our care upon the Lord and delight only in the help that comes from Him. Whatever He does is our joy. We reproduce His goodness in us by our gratitude. (Or--our gratitude is the reflection of His mercy. It is what makes us like Him.)

Peter Menkin, Epiphany