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ARTICLES!Hermits in History: West

Thomas Merton's Preface to The Wisdom of the Desert

Thomas Merton published The Wisdom of the Desertin 1960, hiscontribution to short works collecting favorite sayings of theChristian desert hermits, or Desert Fathers. While the selecting wasdoubtless an enjoyable task, the Preface to the little ensemblesurprisingly emerges as a clear, precise and useful introduction toeremitism as a whole.

Merton begins his introduction by asking what the hermits soughtin going to the desert, in abandoning the cities for solitude. In aword, "salvation," he says. But Merton carefully notes that

abandoning the cities was not only abandoning the pagan character of urban lifebut also abandoning their presumeably increasing Christian presence, "when the'world' became unofficially Christian." Merton notes that

these men seem to have thought ... that there is really no such thing as a"Christian state." They seem to have doubted that Christianity and politicscould ever be mixed to such an extent as to produce a fully Christian society... for ... the only Christian society was spiritual and extramundane.

Merton argues that these hermits were ahead of their time, not behind it, that theyunderstood what was necessary -- and unnecessary -- for establishing a new society.The line of Merton's thought may show its age in Merton's vocabulary,

describing the hermits as the new "axial" men, as "personalists" -- but the point isimportant. The hermits were not pragmatic or negative individualists, not evenrebels against society. They might be seen as "anarchists," -- and "it will do noharm to think of them in that light." They simply believed that their values weresufficient for ruling themselves, and for providing for humane fellowship. Whileacknowledging the titular authority of bishops, these were "far away" and had littleto say about the desert for at least a century.

The hermits sought their own self, rejecting the false self "fabricated under socialcompulsion in 'the world.'" They accepted dogmatic formulas of the Christian faith,but without controversy, in their simplest and most elemental forms. But while themonks or cenobites living in nearby monasteries also conceived of formulas as

necessary scaffolding to their spiritual growth, the hermits were entirely free toconform only to the "secret, hidden, inscrutable will of God which might differ verynotably from one cell to another!" Merton quotes an early saying of St. Anthony:"Whatever you see your soul to desire according to God, do that thing, and youshall keep your heart safe."

But the quote refers specifically to the perogative of the hermit, to one

who was very alert and very sensitive to the landmarks of a tracklesswilderness. The hermit had to be a man mature in faith, humble anddetached from himself to a degree that is altogether terrible.

None other than the hermit could abide within these apparent extremes. Hence theprescribed maturity.

He could not afford to be an illuminist. He could not dare risk attachment tohis own ego, or the dangerous ecstacy of self-will. He could not retain theslightest identification with his superficial, transient, self-constructed self.

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The hermit, above any other person, had to lose himself to a transcendent andmysterious yet inner reality. To Merton this reality was Christ. Clearly, this Christwas not the popularized image of icons and evocations but a transcendent beingdissolved from society and convention. How, then, could the hermit not lead a life ofsimplicity, compunction, solitude, labor, poverty, charity, purity of heart? The fruitof this self-discipline was quies, "rest." This "rest" the world -- meaning society --could not offer.

Merton notes that the desert hermits never spoke of this quies, never distinguished

it from their way of life. They did not theorize, philosophize, or theologize. "In manyrespects, therefore," declares Merton rightly, "these Desert Fathers had much incommon with Indian Yogis and with Zen Buddhist monks of China and Japan."

As is well known to those familiar with his biogrphy, Merton always chafed with hisown monasteric life -- cenobitism -- while fulfilling a grand service to his readers bywriting, a privilege that monastic life afforded him, or rather was afforded to him byhis abbots. But he never shrunk from criticizing his contemporaries. Thus Mertonstates that men like the desert hermits don't exist in monasteries. Though monksleave the society of "the world," they conform to the society into which they enter,with its own norms and conventions, rules and penalties. While many desert

hermits were once monks, they left monastic society and established a new path of"fabulous originality," to which nothing contemporary in Christianity can compare.

The desert hermits

neither courted the approval of their contemporaries nor sought to provoketheir disapproval, because the opinions of others had ceased, for them, to bematters of importance. They had no set doctrine about freedom, but they hadin fact become free by paying the price of freedom.

This price was the experience of solitude and simplicity. The words and sayings ofthe desert fathers are a prompt to reflection, but it was the lived experience ofsolitude that truly counted for them. Hence their sayings are plain, pithy, andtrenchant, born of the experience of solitude and wrestling with the ego. Mertonaffirms their "existential quality." The hermits were humble and silent, with notmuch to say, which makes reading them refreshing. The secrets to their lives arethus revealed directly in their manner of living, expressed in it, and thereforededucible indirectly from their sayings.

Today (as much as in the past), the desert hermits are too often portrayed asascetic fanatics. This is entirely the conclusion of one who has not read their sayingsand tried to penetrate their values. In fact, the hermits strike the careful reader as"humble, quiet, sensible people, with a deep knowledge of human nature." Theirworld seethed in controversy but they "kept their mouths shut" -- not because they

were ignorant or opinionless but because they became like the desert, offeringnothing to the worldly but "discreet and detached silence."

Merton notes that the desert hermits were mostly "on their way" and not boastersof arrival. They were not passionless, bloodless, or "beyond all temptation." This iswhat makes their sayings and their way of life so compelling. The were laborers,and showed genuine concern for the welfare of their fellows in charity, exhibitingthe ideal virtue of Christianity.

Isolation in the self, inability to go out of oneself to others, would meanincapacity for any form of self-transcedence. To be thus the prisoner of one'sown selfhood is, in fact, to be in hell: a truth that Sartre, though professing

himself an atheist, has expressed in the most arresting fashin in his play NoExit (Huis Clos).

Ultimately, charity is love, and holds the primacy over everything else in thespiritual life. Love in fact is the spiritual life, avers Merton, meaning not sentiment,nor mere almsgiving, nor mere identification with one's brothers and sisters

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because they are like oneself. Love here presents itself in all humility and withreverence toward the other and the other's integrity, identifying with that which istranscendent in both oneself and another. Love presumes a death of ego in order toaccommodate the needs of charity and of others. The work of the hermits, which isthe spiritual life, can accommodate the needs of others in this way, looking to theshortcomings of self always, and taking up the proscription of Jesus to judge noone. In this one is free, free to pursue one's own path without obligation.

By the end of the 5th century, the monasteries of Scete and Nitria, so close to the

desert, had become "the world." Merton notes how they had virtually become cities,with laws and penalties. "Three whips hung from a palm tree outside the church ofScete: one to punish delinquent monks, one to punish thieves, and one forvagrants." To this the desert hermits would profoundly demur. Thehermitsrepresented the "primitive anarchic desert ideal." And in the desert, in solitude, alltransgressions eventually serve to enlighten the wayward soul.

Merton completes his preface with a sketch of some important names now familiarto the reader of the sayings: Arsenius, Moses, Anthony, Paphnutius, Pastor, Johnthe Dwarf. Merton's book is brief but invaluable as a start, and worth revisiting forthe familiar.

Merton concludes with a telling paragraph that is every bit as relevant today aswhen he wrote it in 1960:

It would perhaps be too much to say that the world needs another movementsuch as that which drew these men into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine.Ours is certainly a time for solitaries and for hermits. But merely to reproducethe simplicity, austerity and prayer of these primitive souls is not a completeor satisfactory answer. We must transcend them, and transcend all those who,since their time, have gone beyond the limits which they set. We mustliberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that isplunging to disaster. But our world is different from theirs. Our involvement

in it is more complete. Our danger is far more desperate. Our time, perhaps,is shorter than we think.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Thomas Merton's The Wisdom of the Desertis published by New Directions (NewYork, 1960), Sheldon (London, 1974), and Shambhala (Boston, 1994 andreprinted 2004).

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