"Desire for Solitude" (T. Merton):

A blessing for all who long for solitude.

Is it Fall already? Still life of solitude amidst creation. © A. Furchert 2024.

Friends,

Today was a hot day here in the American Midwest. I was looking for a shady place of quiet on my walk through St Paul, MN and I ended up at the Sisters of St. Joseph Monastery adjacent to St. Katherine’s University. An unexpected courtyard in the middle of the city, a bubbling fountain, a bench, and a place to fill my water bottle and my inner well. Students discussed homework quietly nearby, the noise mingling with the falling water.

All of this, the secluded space, the combination of cloister walls, greenery and water, of study and contemplation, reminded me why I have been attracted to cloistered spaces in the first place. And to my husband, who feels home in monastery courtyards, too. Thus our first date was not on the dance floor but at a church court yard. But that is another story.

So why I am struggling so often with the “cloister” part in my Cloister Notes to you?

I was still mulling over this question when my Chinese doctor poked needles in me at my acupuncture appointment in the city. Forced into solitude for a half hour laying on that flat and hard bed in the bare treatment room while listening to a beautiful intonation of Thomas Merton’s texts from my phone I suddenly saw the light. It came to me like a blue shimmering light behind my closed eyes, like the opening of a third eye:

My difficulty with the cloister in our blog’s name was that I thought too often I must write like the monastic that I am not.

Instead it was the cloistered space which was calling to me instead. It was calling me into solitude, a solitude Merton describes as his deepest longing.

And while the treatment room of my Chinese immigrant doctor in the American Midwest became my cloistered space, the words of Thomas Merton opened the gates to my “inner sanctuary:”

For myself I have only one desire,

the desire for solitude.

To disappear into God

to be submerged in God’s peace

to be lost in the secret of God’s face

to be lost in the secret of God’s face

to be One.

(T. Merton)

A leaf dancing in the waters. © A. Furchert, 2024.

My dear friend, in my struggle to grow into the Cloister name I had chosen years ago I finally had to declare defeat. The cloister name had chosen me!

It is I who need the cloister. It is I who need this sheltered space to find quiet and contemplation and a calm refuge from the buzzing of the world. It is I who need a cloistered space to breathe and to live and to feel my own heart beating.

This space is Cloister Notes because I need a cloistered space, this place away from worldly demands, where I can come home to myself and where I can find the voice to write my notes to you. And my longing is to create, for myself, this space for you, for us, where we can sit down - alone together (Bonhoeffer) - enjoy a moment of solitude, drink from the wisdom well that fills our inner self, or mingle in a quiet conversation about the deeper layers of our very existence.

And while I sit in such a moment of contemplation I can finally write to you, inviting you into the sacred moment of solitude and to disappear into Divine presence.

A deep porch in the south offers a place of solitude. © A. Furchert, 2024

My friend, in case you wondered, such monastic solitude is not loneliness. Instead it brings us into communion with all creation as our boundaries become porous and otherness disappears.

And so for today, this blessing comes to you from this cloistered space of my heart inviting you in.

Do sit with the words (and if you get the link to work with the music) of Merton’s insight.

Read them, slowly, aloud, read them with your inner eyes, listen to them with your inner ears.

Taste them and let them wash over you.

(Mid) weekly Blessing

For myself

I have only one desire,

the desire for solitude.

To disappear into God

to be submerged in God’s peace

to be lost in the secret of God’s face

to be lost in the secret of God’s face

to be.

One.

(T. Merton)

Peace and Blessings in your solitude, Almut

PS: As always, leave a heart or a note in the comments, e.g. a line which moved your heart, so we know you have been here.

I also would love to hear what you associate with the name “Cloister Notes.” Thank you 🙏.

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Thank you, thank you.

Going deeper

The desire to disappear is a well-known tension at the heart of Merton’s work and his spiritual life, a desire that was often in conflict with his vocation as a writer. In 1946, 20 years prior to his death, he wrote in The Sign of Jonas, “I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude—to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.” In Thoughts in Solitude, written from his first hermitage, St. Anne’s Toolshed, on the monastic property, and published in 1958: “As soon as you are really alone you are with God.” In 1964, while attending mass after meeting with Zen Buddhist D. T. Suzuki, he wrote in his journal with apparent satisfaction, “No one recognized me or discovered who I was. At least I think not.” In a 1967 recording, he says, “I am struck today I think, more and more, by the fundamental dishonesty about a lot of my clamor.”¹

1. quoted from: https://cassidyhall.com/2021/12/11/maybe-its-time-for-me-to-let-go-of-thomas-merton/