Thomas Merton's words of hope for young activists
Merton’s reply was the most helpful letter I’ve ever received:
Dear Jim,
Thanks for the letter and for the awful, and illuminating, enclosure [about the civilian casualties in Vietnam]. I can well understand your sense of desperation. And the “bleak mood.” And also I am glad that you wrote about it. As you say, there are no clear answers, and you ca... See more
Dear Jim,
Thanks for the letter and for the awful, and illuminating, enclosure [about the civilian casualties in Vietnam]. I can well understand your sense of desperation. And the “bleak mood.” And also I am glad that you wrote about it. As you say, there are no clear answers, and you ca... See more
Thomas Merton’s Letter to a Young Activist – Jim and Nancy Forest
As I began, the words of the abolitionist William Wilberforce ran through my mind: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”[1] In 1789, filled with passion over the evil of slavery and an unflinching commitment to see it end, he had risen in the British Parliament and described in unwavering graphic detai
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He was not asking young people to accept any challenge he had not accepted, take any risk he had not taken, or bear any burden he had not borne; he was, instead, asking them to pursue, with courage, the instinct for the heroic and the noble that was their human birthright, even in a world of sin and evil.