{"id":29479,"date":"2014-01-31T07:33:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T12:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=29479"},"modified":"2015-08-06T10:39:08","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T14:39:08","slug":"happy-birthday-thomas-merton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2014\/01\/happy-birthday-thomas-merton\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday, Thomas Merton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fr. Dan Horan<\/a><\/strong> notes that today would have been the great writer\u2019s 99th birthday, and quotes from Merton\u2019s journal on his last birthday, in 1968:<\/p>\n

Clear, thin new moon appearing and disappearing between slow slate blue clouds \u2013 and the living black skeletons of the trees against the evening sky. More artillery than usual whumping at [Fort] Knox. It is my fifty-third birthday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Merton noted his birth differently in\u00a0The Seven Storey Mountain<\/em>. He begins the story of his life this way:<\/p>\n

On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war , and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. \u00a0Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God bless you, Fr. Louis. \u00a0And thank you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Paying a visit to Thomas Merton\u2019s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemane in 2004.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Dan Horan notes that today would have been the great writer\u2019s 99th birthday, and quotes from Merton\u2019s journal on his last birthday, in 1968: Clear, thin new moon appearing and disappearing between slow slate blue clouds \u2013 and the living black skeletons of the trees against the evening sky. More artillery than usual whumping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":29480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thomas-merton"],"yoast_head":"\nHappy birthday, Thomas Merton<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fr. 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