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How I First Met Thomas Merton

ROBERT M. SHEPHERD

I HAD long been an admirer of Thomas Merton, the cele¬
brated Trappist monk. I'd read his The Seven Storey Moun¬
tain some years before at a difficult point in my life and it had
touched me deeply. Later, I had made two or three retreats at
Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown, Kentucky, where Merton
lived and wrote, but by that time, the demands upon his time by
visitors, potential converts to the order and the novitiates all but
excluded his seeing an unknown admirer who "just wanted to
meet him."

I remember my second retreat at the Abbey, made late in the
winter of 1964-65. I had finally met Dan AValsh, Merton's former
teacher from Columbia University, who was then teaching at
Gethsemani and was soon to become a priest hiinself. He seemed
amused and touched by my intense desire to meet Merton, but was
unable to arrange a meeting for me. He did show me a photograph
of the man, something I had not seen up to that time. He also
pointed out his seat in chapel to me, even though Merton was not
in it, but before my retreat was finished I managed to catch a
glimpse of him, by leaning over the balcony railing at the back of
the nave, and straining my eyes to see.

This had to satisfy ine for awhile. I continued to read Merton's
writings and to discuss him wlienever possible with anyone who

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