Parker Palmer, whose own life is so full of creative contradictions, has found in Merton a brother whose inconsistencies and irregularities invite us to enter them deeply and to discover there, beyond all contradictions, the One who cannot be caught, grasped, or understood but only intuited and recognized with a smile. Parker Palmer knows Merton well because he has an affinity with him. Parker has done many things people do who want to “make it” in the world. But somewhere and somehow he became as crazy as Merton. Parker must have loved Merton as much as he studied him, and must have understood Merton long before he had worked his way through Merton’s bibliography. This essay is short, fresh, and obviously written with a twinkle in the eye. And the greatest surprise of all is that it not only leads us closer to the spirit of Merton, but closer to Him in whose service Merton juggled contradiction and paradox.
Parker Palmer, whose own life is so full of creative contradictions, has found in Merton a brother whose inconsistencies and irregularities invite us to enter them deeply and to discover there, beyond all contradictions, the One who cannot be caught, grasped, or understood but only intuited and recognized with a smile. Parker Palmer knows Merton well because he has an affinity with him. Parker has done many things people do who want to “make it” in the world. But somewhere and somehow he became as crazy as Merton. Parker must have loved Merton as much as he studied him, and must have understood Merton long before he had worked his way through Merton’s bibliography. This essay is short, fresh, and obviously written with a twinkle in the eye. And the greatest surprise of all is that it not only leads us closer to the spirit of Merton, but closer to Him in whose service Merton juggled contradiction and paradox.
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