New Seeds 3: Seeds of Contemplation
This is part of an ongoing, occasional series of essays offering commentary on Thomas Merton’s classic book New Seeds of Contemplation (1961)
Background and Context
Chapter Three in New Seeds, “Seeds of Contemplation” (14–20), is, at least nominally, the first chapter to appear in the 1961 text that also appeared in the original Seeds of Contemplation (1949). I say “nominal” because the titles remain the same but the function and content vary between the two. In Seeds, the earlier version of this chapter functioned more like an introduction than a discrete chapter. In fact, it is not numbered, whereas every chapter that follows in the book is. That makes sense if one treated this section as introductory or as some kind of preface. Additionally, that the heading and the content speak directly to the title of the book, it follows that readers might expect a more expository presentation rather than a constructive, stand alone chapter.
The content of the original version in Seeds also differs from the significantly revised and expanded chapter that appears in New Seeds. In terms of simple word count, this same-titled section of Seeds lasts a mere three pages in the published edition, whereas the chapter in New Seeds weighs in at 6 and 1/2 pages. A substantial amount of material was added to the already twice-revised (from the 1948 original typescript; (1) the first printing of Seeds in March 1949 and (2) the “revised” edition of Seeds in seventh printing in December 1949) manuscript. Most of the revisions between the original Seeds and the “revised” edition were notably minor. Corrections, clarifications, minimal changes in word choice, and so on. But what we see in New Seeds is virtually a new text.
We can count among the consistencies between Seeds and New Seeds, beyond the retention of the original title, the introduction of the concept of the seeds and the discussion of contemplation as a means to align with the will of God. But even these two foci are substantially developed in New Seeds. For example, while the opening lines of the opening paragraph discussing the metaphor of seeds remains largely unchanged, Merton adds several paragraphs in New Seeds that build on the metaphor and make explicit scriptural connections (e.g., reference to the Parable of the Sower).
Even though scholars — and Merton himself — note a tonal shift between the two editions, the original three-page version in Seeds does not read as harsh or judgmental, curt or clinical, in the way that it is sometimes caricatured (especially in retrospect as read against New Seeds). The brevity is noticeable, and the examples are fewer and explication is lighter but, at the risk of being too cute with imagery, the “seed” we read in Seeds appears to have blossomed into a more hearty plant in New Seeds, by which I mean the theme grows in complexity and richness rather than shifts as if it were some kind of departure.
Commentary: “Seeds of Contemplation”
After two introductory chapters that laid out some preliminary parameters about contemplation, chapter three begins with a constructive reflection on the central metaphor of the book: “seeds.” Merton contends that every moment of our lives “plants something in [our] soul.” A reflection on our embodiment and historical situatedness, Merton presumes the universality of human openness to the transcendent, to what Christians call the God of Jesus Christ. Channeling the wisdom of the 4th Century Augustine of Hippo, who said that God is the one who is closer to us than ourselves and that our hearts are restless until they rest in God, Merton believes that God’s self-disclosure and invitation to response is always everywhere present. Like the Parable of the Sower in the gospels, God is steadily casting “seeds” our way, the question is whether or not they take root, are nurtured, and grow.
Because of the persistence of God and the omnipresence of this divine invitation, one of the things we need to attend to is our spiritual sight and our contemplative minds. It is not a matter of us going out to “find God,” but rather attune ourselves to the divine presence in our midst, even while our surroundings can be full of distractions. Merton writes: “The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God” (14). He later adds: “We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good. His inscrutable love seeks our awakening” (15).
While there is much more to lift up in this chapter, I want to focus my reflections on three themes Merton engages.
The first is the theme of idolatry. While Merton does not use that word explicitly, he does spend a good amount of time unpacking the subject as part of the problem for contemporary believers. He describes commonplace stereotypes that Christians harbor about God (“a domineering and insensible Father”), noting that this sort of imagining runs counter to revelation and what the tradition affirms about God. In a telling line, Merton writes: “So much depends on our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however pure and perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really is. Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him” (15).
Contemplation helps us to overcome this temptation to idolatry. It is about entering into the silence of “dialogue” with God, which Merton explains, “I do not mean continuous ‘talk’ or a frivolous conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice” (14). The question we are left to ponder is how do we form our understanding of God? Is it what God reveals to us or is it a false image we construct according to our desires or fears?
The second theme is what I like to call “becoming a living prayer.” Again, Merton doesn’t use this language explicitly, but it is reminiscent of a theme found within the Franciscan theological tradition that was so influential in his own spiritual life and theological outlook. In an extended meditation, Merton reflects on how God’s presence—nurtured in the budding seeds of contemplation—is found in the divine love offered to him at all times.
For it is God’s love that warms me in the sun and God’s love that sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that feeds me in the bread I eat and God that feeds me also by hunger and fasting. It is the love of God that sends the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the hot summer when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat: but it is God who breathes on me with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood. His love spreads the shade of the sycamore over my head and sends the water-boy along the edge of the wheat field with a bucket from the spring, while the laborers are resting and the mules stand under the tree (16–17).
Along with his opening reflection on “the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God,” passages such as this lend themselves to an interpretation that prayer, in the form of contemplation, is not something merely for isolated, discrete instances that accord with traditional times and spaces for meditation (such as at liturgy in a designated church), but also at all times and places. What is necessary is that we have “eyes to see and ears to hear” (Matt 13:9–16). In this way, the insights about contemplation—not merely contemplatio but also speculatio—that Bonaventure discussed in his medieval treatises beckon us out of our narrowly defined categories for when and where to find God in order to recognize the divine presence among and within us at all times and places.
Finally, Merton discusses God’s will as true freedom. Like the theologian Karl Rahner who often wrote about the direct and proportionate relationship between authentic human freedom and dependence on God, as opposed to the commonsense view of these as inversely related or even antithetical, Merton explains that our freedom and authenticity arises from our conformity to God’s will. “If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will would grow from my freedom, I would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy” (17). He continues:
My chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or life or money or rest or even things like virtue and wisdom—still less their opposites, pain, failure, sickness, death. But in all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: “Here is the thing God has willed for me. In this His love is found, and in accepting this I can give back HIs love to Him and give myself with it to Him. For in giving myself I shall find Him and He is life everlasting” (17–18).
Taken a step further, Merton asks “How am I to know the will of God?” and answers, in part, “For whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God. To consent to His will is, then, to consent to be true, or to speak truth, or at least to seek it” (18).
This failure to recognize authenticity, justice, and truth in conformity to God’s will impedes our ability to see and nourish the “seeds” of contemplation sown by God. “The mind that is the prisoner of conventional ideas, and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of an unfamiliar truth and a supernatural desire,” Merton writes. “For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and an opposite desire?” (16).
The metaphor of “seeds” may or may not be an appealing way of conceptualizing of God’s proximity to us at all times, calling us to follow God’s will and love one another as we have first been loved. But the core of Merton’s points about the consistency and gratuity of God’s love and gift of the divine self offer spiritual seekers much to consider, especially when reflecting on images of God, prayer at all times, and authentic human freedom.
Works Cited
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Daniel P. Horan, “Prayer in the Franciscan Tradition,” in Prayer in the Catholic Tradition: A Handbook of Practical Approaches, ed. Robert J. Wicks (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2016), 177–208.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1961).
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1978).
Daniel P. Horan, PhD, is a Franciscan friar, Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology and Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., and Affiliated Professor of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is a columnist for National Catholic Reporter, and the author of many books, including Engaging Thomas Merton: Spirituality, Justice, and Racism (2023) and A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege (2021). Follow him on Facebook.
