All Theology is a Kind of Birthday: Merton 2015

All theology is a kind of birthday / Each one who is born / Comes into the world as a question/ For which old answers / Are not sufficient…

Tomorrow begins the International Thomas Merton Society’s 2015 centenary celebration of  Merton’s birthday. An eclectic gathering of folks from around the world – poets and artists, scholars and seekers – will converge on Bellarmine University in Louisville to celebrate Merton’s enduring legacy and witness to hope for the 21st century.

As the organizing committee noted in their call for papers, Merton’s life and writings “are not merely historically important, but offer a prophetic witness to a vision that points a way into the future. The centenary offers an opportunity to consider how we too might set aside easy answers and wrestle with the urgent questions of our day.”

The gathering takes its inspiration from a wonderfully provocative untitled poem in which Merton gestures to theology as “a kind of birthday.” Of course, as a theologian, I love this image. But the next line is no less important. Each person who is born “comes into the world as a question for which old answers are not sufficient.” Every person, Merton insists, is called by God into the journey of their own discovery.

Our task, Merton suggests, is to help one another in that discovery not by imposing “old answers” but by loving one another unconditionally. To love is to create the conditions for the possibility of freedom’s full emergence into itself as image and icon of God. Love does not impose uniformity or create carbon copies of itself by fiat. Love nurtures freedom in the beloved. Because love is free, love lets go and allows others to share in the delight and struggle of their own discovery, each person’s particular gifts nurtured and lifted up by the community.

 All theology is a kind of birthday / Each one who is born / Comes into the world as a question/ For which old answers / Are not sufficient…

May the Spirit of creativity and boldness that fired Merton’s religious imagination enliven our conversations this week! God ever desires to break into our darkening world – but will not do so without our consent – cannot do so fully without our full participation.

Let us choose to let God into the world today, this day, “as a question for which old answers are not sufficient.”

The conference proceedings are here.