“When we began, we knew it could not be understood. As we went along we wanted it to be understandable, and it never was. There is nothing understandable in love: just joy and then sorrow and then if you are lucky, more joy.”
Thomas Merton, From A Midsummer Diary For M.
Thomas Merton, From A Midsummer Diary For M.
In the spring of 1966 a young, pretty, dark-haired nurse-in-training was assigned to the care of the famous Catholic Trappist monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton, who had come to Louisville, Kentucky for back surgery. There was an immediate attraction between the two, and what followed was a whirlwind romance that ultimately transformed Merton and deepened his understanding of solitude and love.
As much as I’d read about Merton, I didn’t learn about the affair until a couple of years ago. I was surprised to discover this “secret” side of Merton’s life, and even more surprised to find out that Merton hadn’t actually kept the affair so secret. He wrote about it candidly in one of his journals, and before he died in 1968, he gave permission for his private journals to be released twenty-five years after his death. “I have always wanted to be completely open, both about my mistakes and about my effort to make sense out of my life. The affair with M. is an important part of it -- and shows my limitations as well as a side of me that is – well, it needs to be known, too, for it is part of me.”
I’m sure there are those who, after learning about the affair, might be appalled, that the man whom some consider one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the twentieth century, the poster boy for Catholic contemplative life, who had even earned the deep respect of the Dalai Lama, had “broken” his vows and explored this type of relationship with a woman—and alas, a woman more than twenty years his junior. But learning about the affair only made me like Merton more. It reminded me that even the most spiritually enlightened have the same fears and desires and internal struggles as the rest of us. They, too, go through periods of darkness and despair, temptation, and profound loneliness.
But what I found most intriguing about the affair was the woman with whom Merton fell in love. The journal in which Merton writes about the affair was published in its entirety in 1997 as Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. Editor of Learning to Love, Christine Bochen, writes in her introduction, “It seems important to acknowledge that the account that we read here is Merton’s: it reflects his recollection and is shaped by the meaning he finds in and gives to this relationship. Merton shapes the narrative. M. has no voice of her own here. She remains an anonymous figure in this volume, deliberately identified by the editor as M. (though Merton used her name), not to diminish her but to acknowledge the privacy that is her due. “
I think it was those words “M. has no voice of her own here” that first made me think of writing about M.’s story. I wanted to hear her side, give her a voice. How did the affair change her? The trajectory of her life? And what kind of woman was she, to have won the heart of the Thomas Merton? What was it like to have loved and been loved by him? To have caused him to second guess his vocation and consider leaving the monastery altogether?
From what I can gather, M. is still living and would now be in her late sixties or early seventies. For a time, I considered writing a fictional version of the relationship, told from her perspective. However, after consulting lawyers and other sources, I discovered I could run into some legal problems. And I wasn’t compelled to change the characters, to write about any monk or any young woman. The story is special because it is Thomas Merton and it is the M I came to know and admire through his journal. And I wanted to respect not only M.’s privacy but also the mystery of the love she and Merton shared.
Though it isn’t disclosed in the published version of the journal whether the affair was consummated, Merton and M. had an undeniably strong emotional, spiritual, and physical connection. They communicated primarily through letters. Merton wrote love poems as well as an entire diary he gave to M. entitled A Midsummer Diary for M. He sneaked phone calls to her in the Cellarer’s office at the monastery when no one was around. They had dates at the Luau Room at the Louisville Airport and lunched downtown at the old Cunningham’s. M. even came to visit Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani where they shared a picnic lunch and hugged and kissed and kept repeating to each other, “Thank God this at least is real.”
Merton loved the simplicity, child-like innocence, and openness of M.’s love. He writes, “Her love and her heart are a revelation of a most perfectly tuned and fashioned personality, a lovely womanly nature, and an almost unbounded affection, all of which she has given to me. I can only regard this as a kind of miracle in my life.” Perhaps it was his attempt at rationalization, but Merton viewed his love for M. not as a contradiction of his solitude but a mysterious part of it.
Of course the affair brought plenty of angst, fear, and weariness on both sides. Merton and M. tried to resist the craving and passionate attachment in the relationship, to keep their love as pure and chaste as possible. They told themselves and each other that their love was something to appreciate and rejoice in, not to be regretted, even though they knew, realistically, that a long-term relationship was impossible.
And there were plenty of obstacles. The abbot at the monastery, for one, found out about the affair and refused to allow any more correspondence between the lovers, though they still managed to stay in contact, but less frequently as the months progressed. M. told Merton she loved him and would never stop loving him, no matter what happened. Their only solace was that they might be united again in heaven.
Shortly before the affair began, Merton had gotten permission from the abbot to live alone in a hermitage on the property. Once, M. was looking at the Jubilee magazine in which an article about Merton appeared. The hospital librarian looked over her shoulder and commented on what a miserable life Merton must be leading.
Could it have been the solitude and loneliness of the hermetic life that led to the affair? Or was the affair prophetic? M. felt herself providentially drawn to Merton in the hospital, and Merton had had several visions of an archetypal beloved who resembled M. Or maybe it had to do with Merton’s need for female companionship and love, which had been lacking in his life. His mother died when he was a boy and he’d never had a deeply fulfilling and loving relationship with a woman. After receiving the care and attention from the nursing staff after his surgery, Merton writes, “I do feel a deep emotional need for feminine companionship and love, and seeing that I must irrevocably live without it ended by tearing me up more than the operation itself.”
Whatever the reason for the affair, there is no doubt Merton was deeply changed by M. He writes during the beginning of their relationship, “I feel I must fully surrender to it because it will change and heal my life in a way that I fear, but I think it is necessary – in a way that will force me first of all to receive an enormous amount of love (which to tell the truth I have often feared.)” Later he realizes that “the deepest capacities for human love in me have never even been tapped, that I too can love with an awful completeness. Responding to her has opened up the depths of my life in ways I can’t begin to understand or analyze now.”
The sentimentalist in me likes to think that Merton and M. were brought together as part of a divine plan. Merton sometimes referred to M. and her love as a gift. Perhaps he had been given this gift so that his faith could be deepened. (In mystical Islamic Sufism, which Merton studied and appreciated, the experience of human love, with its inherent pains and trials, is critical for the heart to open up and receive Divine love.)
In the end, Merton recommitted his life to God and solitude, following the directive on the sign over an entrance gate at the Abbey of Gethsemani: God Alone. He knew that the monastic life wasn’t perfect, full of illusions and petty politics, just like in the outside world. “Maybe the hermit life is another kind of defeat – but I certainly feel that here I am relatively more honest and more true than anywhere else and that here I am not being ‘had’ – and though I may be in many ways wrong, I am at least able honestly to try and cope with my wrongness here.”
Sometimes I wonder when and how M. found out about Merton’s death, how it might have felt to lose him all over again. How private and profound her grief must have been, since probably few people knew about her relationship with Merton.
Writer Kenny Cook suggests that all good writing should be written as love letters and given as gifts. In an effort to honor M. and the gift she gave Merton in his final years, I composed a song for her. (Lyrics and a link to the song are included below.)
(Special thanks to Paula Matthews, playing viola, and Fred Bogert of Briarpatch Audio Productions for their help in bringing the song to fruition.)
If what they say is true, if a love letter always arrives at its destination, then I hope my song might one day reach M., wherever she may be.
Audio "For M"
As much as I’d read about Merton, I didn’t learn about the affair until a couple of years ago. I was surprised to discover this “secret” side of Merton’s life, and even more surprised to find out that Merton hadn’t actually kept the affair so secret. He wrote about it candidly in one of his journals, and before he died in 1968, he gave permission for his private journals to be released twenty-five years after his death. “I have always wanted to be completely open, both about my mistakes and about my effort to make sense out of my life. The affair with M. is an important part of it -- and shows my limitations as well as a side of me that is – well, it needs to be known, too, for it is part of me.”
I’m sure there are those who, after learning about the affair, might be appalled, that the man whom some consider one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the twentieth century, the poster boy for Catholic contemplative life, who had even earned the deep respect of the Dalai Lama, had “broken” his vows and explored this type of relationship with a woman—and alas, a woman more than twenty years his junior. But learning about the affair only made me like Merton more. It reminded me that even the most spiritually enlightened have the same fears and desires and internal struggles as the rest of us. They, too, go through periods of darkness and despair, temptation, and profound loneliness.
But what I found most intriguing about the affair was the woman with whom Merton fell in love. The journal in which Merton writes about the affair was published in its entirety in 1997 as Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. Editor of Learning to Love, Christine Bochen, writes in her introduction, “It seems important to acknowledge that the account that we read here is Merton’s: it reflects his recollection and is shaped by the meaning he finds in and gives to this relationship. Merton shapes the narrative. M. has no voice of her own here. She remains an anonymous figure in this volume, deliberately identified by the editor as M. (though Merton used her name), not to diminish her but to acknowledge the privacy that is her due. “
I think it was those words “M. has no voice of her own here” that first made me think of writing about M.’s story. I wanted to hear her side, give her a voice. How did the affair change her? The trajectory of her life? And what kind of woman was she, to have won the heart of the Thomas Merton? What was it like to have loved and been loved by him? To have caused him to second guess his vocation and consider leaving the monastery altogether?
From what I can gather, M. is still living and would now be in her late sixties or early seventies. For a time, I considered writing a fictional version of the relationship, told from her perspective. However, after consulting lawyers and other sources, I discovered I could run into some legal problems. And I wasn’t compelled to change the characters, to write about any monk or any young woman. The story is special because it is Thomas Merton and it is the M I came to know and admire through his journal. And I wanted to respect not only M.’s privacy but also the mystery of the love she and Merton shared.
Though it isn’t disclosed in the published version of the journal whether the affair was consummated, Merton and M. had an undeniably strong emotional, spiritual, and physical connection. They communicated primarily through letters. Merton wrote love poems as well as an entire diary he gave to M. entitled A Midsummer Diary for M. He sneaked phone calls to her in the Cellarer’s office at the monastery when no one was around. They had dates at the Luau Room at the Louisville Airport and lunched downtown at the old Cunningham’s. M. even came to visit Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani where they shared a picnic lunch and hugged and kissed and kept repeating to each other, “Thank God this at least is real.”
Merton loved the simplicity, child-like innocence, and openness of M.’s love. He writes, “Her love and her heart are a revelation of a most perfectly tuned and fashioned personality, a lovely womanly nature, and an almost unbounded affection, all of which she has given to me. I can only regard this as a kind of miracle in my life.” Perhaps it was his attempt at rationalization, but Merton viewed his love for M. not as a contradiction of his solitude but a mysterious part of it.
Of course the affair brought plenty of angst, fear, and weariness on both sides. Merton and M. tried to resist the craving and passionate attachment in the relationship, to keep their love as pure and chaste as possible. They told themselves and each other that their love was something to appreciate and rejoice in, not to be regretted, even though they knew, realistically, that a long-term relationship was impossible.
And there were plenty of obstacles. The abbot at the monastery, for one, found out about the affair and refused to allow any more correspondence between the lovers, though they still managed to stay in contact, but less frequently as the months progressed. M. told Merton she loved him and would never stop loving him, no matter what happened. Their only solace was that they might be united again in heaven.
Shortly before the affair began, Merton had gotten permission from the abbot to live alone in a hermitage on the property. Once, M. was looking at the Jubilee magazine in which an article about Merton appeared. The hospital librarian looked over her shoulder and commented on what a miserable life Merton must be leading.
Could it have been the solitude and loneliness of the hermetic life that led to the affair? Or was the affair prophetic? M. felt herself providentially drawn to Merton in the hospital, and Merton had had several visions of an archetypal beloved who resembled M. Or maybe it had to do with Merton’s need for female companionship and love, which had been lacking in his life. His mother died when he was a boy and he’d never had a deeply fulfilling and loving relationship with a woman. After receiving the care and attention from the nursing staff after his surgery, Merton writes, “I do feel a deep emotional need for feminine companionship and love, and seeing that I must irrevocably live without it ended by tearing me up more than the operation itself.”
Whatever the reason for the affair, there is no doubt Merton was deeply changed by M. He writes during the beginning of their relationship, “I feel I must fully surrender to it because it will change and heal my life in a way that I fear, but I think it is necessary – in a way that will force me first of all to receive an enormous amount of love (which to tell the truth I have often feared.)” Later he realizes that “the deepest capacities for human love in me have never even been tapped, that I too can love with an awful completeness. Responding to her has opened up the depths of my life in ways I can’t begin to understand or analyze now.”
The sentimentalist in me likes to think that Merton and M. were brought together as part of a divine plan. Merton sometimes referred to M. and her love as a gift. Perhaps he had been given this gift so that his faith could be deepened. (In mystical Islamic Sufism, which Merton studied and appreciated, the experience of human love, with its inherent pains and trials, is critical for the heart to open up and receive Divine love.)
In the end, Merton recommitted his life to God and solitude, following the directive on the sign over an entrance gate at the Abbey of Gethsemani: God Alone. He knew that the monastic life wasn’t perfect, full of illusions and petty politics, just like in the outside world. “Maybe the hermit life is another kind of defeat – but I certainly feel that here I am relatively more honest and more true than anywhere else and that here I am not being ‘had’ – and though I may be in many ways wrong, I am at least able honestly to try and cope with my wrongness here.”
Sometimes I wonder when and how M. found out about Merton’s death, how it might have felt to lose him all over again. How private and profound her grief must have been, since probably few people knew about her relationship with Merton.
Writer Kenny Cook suggests that all good writing should be written as love letters and given as gifts. In an effort to honor M. and the gift she gave Merton in his final years, I composed a song for her. (Lyrics and a link to the song are included below.)
(Special thanks to Paula Matthews, playing viola, and Fred Bogert of Briarpatch Audio Productions for their help in bringing the song to fruition.)
If what they say is true, if a love letter always arrives at its destination, then I hope my song might one day reach M., wherever she may be.
Audio "For M"
Song lyrics, “For M”
She came to him
Like the girl in his dreams
Dark hair, gray eyes
He knew that she held the key
No more sorrow
No more loneliness
At the airport in the rain
Drinking brandy and soda
And watching the planes
Poems and letters
Secret phone calls at night
The world called wrong
What they knew was right
What they knew was right
She saw into his soul
Gave him the love
He’d never known
But he, he was not hers, hers alone
Fighting the fear of it ending
Letting love do its mending
They knew from the start it could never last
Love burns pure
When the flames have passed
When the flames pass
Oh and she saw into his soul
Gave him the love
He’d never known
But he, he was not hers, hers alone
Fighting the fear of it ending
Letting love do its mending
They took a chance, they risked it all
Just now, just here, no fear, a gift from above
Just now, just here, no fear
A gift from above
She came to him
Like the girl in his dreams
Dark hair, gray eyes
He knew that she held the key
No more sorrow
No more loneliness
At the airport in the rain
Drinking brandy and soda
And watching the planes
Poems and letters
Secret phone calls at night
The world called wrong
What they knew was right
What they knew was right
She saw into his soul
Gave him the love
He’d never known
But he, he was not hers, hers alone
Fighting the fear of it ending
Letting love do its mending
They knew from the start it could never last
Love burns pure
When the flames have passed
When the flames pass
Oh and she saw into his soul
Gave him the love
He’d never known
But he, he was not hers, hers alone
Fighting the fear of it ending
Letting love do its mending
They took a chance, they risked it all
Just now, just here, no fear, a gift from above
Just now, just here, no fear
A gift from above
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