While the nearby beach drew thousands, 18 people gathered this week in a Loyola Marymount University classroom to plumb the lessons of a charismatic Trappist monk who died almost 40 years ago.
Led by scholar and Anglican priest Donald Grayston, the group met to study Thomas Merton -- writer, contemplative and one of the few religious superstars of the 20th century. Called "Thomas Merton: Catholic Monk, Interfaith Pioneer," the four-day course explored the legacy of a religious thinker who was admired by popes and the Beat Poets, who shuddered at the prospect of war, and who studied Gandhi and Buddhism as well as Scripture.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday July 19, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
Thomas Merton -- An article in Saturday's California section about a Loyola Marymount University course on monk and writer Thomas Merton incorrectly identified a New York City tavern he frequented as the Black Horse Tavern. It was the White Horse Tavern.
Although Merton spent most of his adult life at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, silent except for prayer and the clamor of making cheese, the monk spoke to millions through his prose and poetry.
Written at the direction of his abbot, Merton's 1948 autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain," sold 600,000 copies in its first year, making it one of the most popular accounts of a spiritual journey since John Bunyan's 1678 "The Pilgrim's Progress." And in Merton's lifetime, abruptly ended in 1968 when he was accidentally electrocuted in Thailand, he was that rare religious figure who was also a cultural icon, much as his friend the Dalai Lama is today.
But that was then.
"I had never heard of him," said student Karen Pavic-Zabinski. The 55-year-old psychiatric nurse, a graduate student in theology at Loyola Marymount, signed up for the course after she heard Grayston speak in another class.
"It really appealed to me to have a specialist in Merton be my mentor in Merton," the Valencia woman said.
Newly smitten, she has been reading as many of Merton's multitude of books as she can. In them, she sees evidence of at least one mental breakdown, shortly after his ordination in 1949, followed by a spiritual recovery.
"The theme that has emerged in all his writing," she said, "is that vulnerability is a precursor to enlightenment."
Past president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada, vice president of the international group and author of three books on Merton, Grayston agreed: "That period is Merton's crucifixion and his resurrection."
Grayston, 65, was 15 and perusing the shelves of his local Vancouver, Canada, library when the hopsacking cover of Merton's "Seeds of Contemplation" caught his eye. Grayston had just discovered that there were Anglican monks and nuns. The book's cover looked and felt like the coarse robe of a monk and appealed to his "medieval, romantic bent," he said.
