Читать книгу Thomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution онлайн
6 страница из 65
Introduction
What is man, that you make so much of him
And that you set your heart on him,
Visit him every morning
And test him every moment?
Job 7:17
Some contemporary thinkers have expressed their uneasiness about the absolute absence of new ideas to change the world. Even if there are dispersed tendencies and incipient movements, we still find ourselves trapped within the current complexity and do not know how to respond when confronted with it.
One of the main merits of Thomas Merton’s literary project is that it can greatly contribute to untie the knots and dilemmas of personal and social conflicts by liberating us from the dream of fictitious individualism and, therefore, untapping possibilities for an authentic communal experience rooted in “the hidden ground of love.”1 The relevance of his message has been recently underlined by Pope Francis in his address to the Congress of the United States, when he mentions Thomas Merton, together with three other American – Abraham Lincoln, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King –, and refers to him as “a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.”2