Response to Thomas Merton’s Letter

I have just read Thomas Merton’s letter to a young activist. Though I am far from a young activist, I found it interesting and have some responses to it. There us some good counsel here. There are however a few things that I would like to elaborate on.

Merton says, “do not depend on the hope of results”. Fair enough. Later he expands on this when he says, “One must have hope that what you do will have an impact, but to the extent that you depend on success, your capacity to persevere is undermined”.

Excellent. Right on! However, to the extent that we are confronted with so many, sometimes conflicting issues, we have to make choices as to which activities to engage in. If our time and energy decline (as mine are) there is even more need to choose wisely. Attempts to engage ourselves in everything urgent will soon exhaust us. And, talking about all the things that we could do does not equate with doing these things.

As wise as Merton’s counsel is, I suspect that there can be a subtle difference between the outlook of a meditative monk and one who is constantly surrounded by many worldly problems. I have experienced both the contemplative life and an active life.

Under contemplative life, I would include five years that I spent in seminary, studying theology. During that time, I spent quite a bit of time in prayer and meditative reflections.

Like yourselves, I have been active in social action protests in North America. I have worked in civil rights actions with ML King’s organization in Georgia. I have opposed the war in Vietnam, dropping out of university to do so. With my wife Fran, I have spent many years working on development in Africa. In my work as a water supply/sanitation engineer in many developing countries, I have often been surrounded by extreme poverty and sometimes violence. This would include DRCongo, Haiti and Gaza, as well as many other countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

So where am I now? I am taking a deep breath and stepping back from it all. I am happy to continue in the good work of justice and peace, but I will be getting more selective. That means:


-       I will spend less time in sessions where we talk about actions. What would happen if we only discussed actions that we are all willing to do? There may be less talking – and meetings may be shorter.

-       Activities where only the hard-core regulars turn up and talk to themselves are discouraging to me. Yes, we should not depend on seeing immediate results, but our actions should be directed at the roots of problems and have some reasonable hope of resolution.

-       Finally, and this may be the most important issue, where are the young in all of this? We are all getting older. Only an infusion of younger people will ensure that struggles for justice will continue. Failing the presence of the young, our efforts may be doomed to disappear!


For me it is time to act smarter. To do this we need a good theory. How about a clear vision of today’s economic reality, and the massive inequalities that are emerging?


We also need good workable practice. How about a new focusing of future actions that develop well planned, sensible group activities, wherein we publicly direct our actions to the source of problems facing us?