Wisdom from Thomas Merton’s Last Talk

1968 was year of great change in the United States and the wider world: the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the counterculture, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy. In December of that year, Thomas Merton flew to Bangkok, Thailand, and gave a talk about Marxism and monastic life. He recognized that the world was at a crisis point and many monastics of various religious traditions were finding themselves having an identity crisis.

To name the moment, he tells the story of a Tibetan Buddhist monk anxiously deciding whether to stay or flee in the face of the invading Communist army of China. The monk asked his abbot for guidance and the abbot replied: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own two feet.”

Merton believed this was the message for the moment. Calling this “an extremely important monastic statement,” he repeated for emphasis: “If you forget everything else that has been said, I would suggest that you remember this for the future: ‘From now on, each one will have to stand on his own feet.’”

I don’t think this is only a message for monastics, or for those facing the tectonic shifts of the 1960s. It’s a timely, prophetic message for us as we navigate the spiritual and political realities of our time.

Our Own Two Feet

What does it mean to “stand on our own two feet”? Initially, it sounds like Merton is calling for individualism, that we should all practice self-reliance and do what we think is best. I don’t think that’s his point. Merton spoke often of interdependence, community, and compassion. He wrote a book titled No Man Is an Island. Merton would surely agree with this paradox: More than ever, we need to be individuals; more than ever, we need to be interconnected.

When we look at the context of his “own two feet” statement, we see that Merton’s focus was on freedom from political and even religious structures. Whether that freedom comes voluntarily or involuntarily, we must accept that the time for relying on structure is gone.

Merton challenged his monastic colleagues (and challenges us) not to place faith in structures, whether they be political or religious. He admitted that he was skeptical of Marxist revolution, even though he agreed that the concept of “alienation” was “basically a Christian idea.” He was also fully aware of the limitations and failings of the Catholic hierarchy.

In light of these limitations, he argued, we should let go of our reliance on structures. He explained: “We can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force. You cannot rely on structures. The time for relying on structures has disappeared.”

Merton was not opposed to structures, per se. We should “use” but not “rely on” them. He clarifies: “They are good and they should help us, and we should do the best we can with them. But they may be taken away, and if everything is taken away, what do we do next?”

As theologian Paul Tillich put it, also speaking in the 1960s, “For in these days, the foundations of the Earth do shake.”

Carol Aust, Torch. Used by permission.

Finding our Footing

What do we do when the foundations shake and structures are dismantled? Many turn to political revolution or religious revival. We must stand for justice and mercy in the public square, in the spirit of Caesar Chavez. Or we must rise from the ruins of our religious structures to rebuild Christ’s church, in the spirit of Saint Francis. But neither big government nor triumphant religion will save us.

That last lecture from Merton provides a message for our moment that is more resonant and resolute than either political revolution or religious revival. It reaches to a still deeper place, calling us to strengthen the roots of lasting spiritual and social transformation.

Maybe Merton’s message calls us less to Caesar Chavez and Saint Francis and more to the example of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. They too called the followers of Jesus to stand on their own two feet, but in a way that defied categorization: socialism and anarchism, agrarian and urban, traditional and radical, independent thought and interdependent living. Maybe the ministries of Merton and Day can help us find our footing as we stand on our own feet.

Hospitality

First, we can follow Day’s example of hospitality.

We renovate our homes, open our houses of worship, and set apart a “Christ room” wherever we can. In the coming days, we may need to shelter those needing hospitality due to displacement and migration caused by war, economic hardship, and climate instability. Hospitality is increasingly an economic and political necessity, but it is also a fundamental spiritual practice. It reminds us, even as we stand on our own feet, that we need each other.

When we can’t rely on structures, we rely on God and one another. And that’s really all we ever had anyway. “There is no one left, none but all of us” wrote muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell.

Last year, the region of East Tennessee where I live was hit by devastating floods. Members of my church were trapped as rivers overflowed, dams threatened to break, and roads became impassable. Remote regions were inaccessible and first responders were overwhelmed.

So we didn’t wait for FEMA; we took inventory of our own gifts and resources. We called around to see who had a pickup truck or a spare room or water jugs and explored whether we could make our church building available to folks who had to evacuate their homes. And we stayed “faithful in the small things,” texting and calling, asking what folks needed and how they were doing. We held them in our hearts, sent love, and lifted prayers. In these local, simple, faithful actions, we were choosing hospitality over scarcity.

Solidarity

Through solidarity, we stand with one another. We stand in a particular place and stand with particular people, and thus reject the temptation to abstraction. Like Day and her mentor Peter Maurin, we embrace both the localism of subsidiarity and the universalism of solidarity. We build this solidarity from the ground up, sometimes literally, recalling Maurin’s conviction that we cannot have a “healthy and sound society” without “proper respect for the soil.” Now more than ever, our movements must be “grassroots.”

“What we need is here,” proposed agrarian poet Wendell Berry in his poem “The Wild Geese.” “The kingdom of God is in your midst,” said Jesus (Luke 17:21). If we can no longer rely on structures, we must take stock of our personal and community assets. When we do so, we are responding to Jesus’ gospel question and invitation: “How many loaves do you have? Go and see” (Mark. 6:38). In the naming and numbering of our gifts, we make our loaves and fishes available to God and our community, trusting that they can be transformed into abundance.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Cuba. Many of the people we visited had memories of a time called the “special period.” This period was a time of great hardship for Cubans during the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Cuba had been supported by the Soviet Union and isolated by the United States, so they found themselves on a secluded island without outside assistance. No one was coming to save them. They were forced to stand on their own feet.

Food and resources were rationed by the government and many Cubans were on the verge of starvation, so they took inventory of their “loaves and fishes.” This family has a generator; that family has a fan. This family has a garden; that person knows how to cook tasty meals. They had more resources than they realized; the kingdom was closer than they thought.

They began a practice of organizing community kitchens, where everyone would bring what they had and do what they could. Somehow, there was enough for everyone. When they told us those stories, they pointed to a value that empowered them to be resilient and resourceful: solidaridad.

I pray that the situation in the United States never gets as desperate as the Cuban “special period,” but we can still nurture that spirit of solidarity. When our food systems erode and grocery prices skyrocket, we experiment with community gardens, community kitchens, community meals, and community supported agriculture. We keep showing up for potlucks and baby showers and blessing newlyweds.

As Maurin reminded us, we need real community more than “mass society,” so we shift our attention toward mutual aid, manual labor on the land, and long conversations with friends and neighbors. Dorothy Day said it beautifully: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Community is indeed the “only solution.” So we “gather up the fragments” that nothing be lost (John 6:12) and count every sheep, so that no one is lost (Luke 15:7). No one is disposable. We all stand on our own two feet, but we are standing side by side and face to face, ready to care, share, and shelter.

Spirituality

Standing on our own two feet in a spiritual sense was likely the heart of what Merton was saying in his last talk. We can’t rely on structures to nurture our souls, guard our hearts, or come to terms with our trauma and sin. Structures can’t “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” That is our work.

To stand on our own two feet, we must have a place to stand. We need a geographical, ecclesial, and theological “place” to take our stand. But most essential is a spiritual place to stand, a center that can survive the shaking of foundations.

My favorite picture of Dorothy Day was taken in 1973 by civil rights photographer Bob Fitch, at the site of her eighth and final arrest. She was seventy-six years old and picketing with striking farm workers in California. In the iconic image, she sits outside, calmly and confidently, on a chair, between two police officers with their hands on their guns. Before she was arrested, she told the officers: “If you don't arrest me, I'll be here tomorrow. And I'll recite for you the beatitudes, which is the reason why we're here. And maybe you would like to hear that, officers.”

She was sitting in a chair, but she was standing. Standing powerfully in solidarity. Standing prayerfully in her deep spirituality.

As much as I admire many Catholic companions and saints, I am not Roman Catholic. I am a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. And Quakerism was born as a movement committed to spiritually standing on one’s own two feet.

The man considered the father of Quakerism is George Fox. As a young man, he was a restless seeker wandering around the countryside of seventeenth-century England in search of a spirituality that could “speak to his condition.” After being disappointed by all the state-sponsored churches and clergy, as well as the reform movements of his day, he finally had a revelation. He records the moment in his journal: “And when all my hope in all men was gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is One, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.’ And when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.”

Like Merton with his structures, Fox names the loss of hope in “men” and help from “outward” religious systems. There is only One who can speak to our condition. Fox insisted that each person must stand on their own two feet before God. And so the movement that arose from Fox, Margaret Fell, James Nayler and many others, was one that shed nearly every religious structure and found their faithful footing in the “glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

Early Friends gathered (often illegally) in silent, unprogrammed worship. Free from liturgical forms and resisting religious hierarchy, they sat in expectant stillness until they felt the Spirit move. When so led, they would rise to their feet and speak the words that rose in their hearts.

Over the years, some Friends have adopted some of the religious structures common in other tradition, but the heart of our faith remains to stand on our own two feet, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the presence of our spiritual community.

I am grateful for the faithfulness of Friends and the wisdom of saints. Merton, Day, Fox, and many others provide critical wisdom and timely guidance. But ultimately, we cannot rely on them either. We must work out our own salvation, discern the “signs of the times” in our own season, and listen deeply for how Christ is “speaking to our condition” in the present moment.

“I Will Disappear”

After giving his last talk, Merton dismissed the group with these words: “So I will disappear from view and we can all have a Coke or something.” Later that day, he would die of electrocution in his bathroom. Many believe it was an assassination. His body was flown back to the United States in military aircraft returning from Vietnam, a war he opposed.

Merton is long gone, as are Dorothy Day and George Fox. Today, when we hear news of civic bonds broken, democracy fraying, the safety net decimated, and foreign aid gutted, we may again fear the disappearance of treasured institutions and supportive structures. We should defend what’s right and “not grow weary of doing good” (Gal. 6:9). But in the end, we must stand on our own two feet, finding our own faithful footing. We must meet our present moment with a courageous response grounding in hospitality, solidarity, and spirituality.