The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton by Monica Weis, SSJ (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 313 The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton. By Monica Weis, SSJ. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011.ISBN978-0-8131-3004-0. Pp. xv + 197.$40.00. The publication of this new entrance to Thomas Merton studies comes at a most prescient moment in the swelling wave of ecocriticism, environmental criticism, and "green theory" in literary studies. A comprehensive study of Merton's passionate, ever-expanding ecological conscience and subsequent environmental vision, this volume joins Weis' earlier collaboration on and exploration of Merton's life as a Trappist monk and nature lover (Thomas Merton's Gethsemani: Landscapes ofParadise, 2005) in providing its readers with robust research and well-grounded argumentation for Merton's sacramental cosmology. The accompanying notes, bibliography, and index make this volume a Merton researcher's necessity. In its six chapters, Weis surveys the germination, gestation, and birthing of a vision that was gaining maturity, wisdom and prophetic force in many of Merton's writings before his untimely death. She concludes that "had Merton lived beyond December 1968, he probably would have written a series of cutting-edge essays on ecojustice to complement his profound, visionary statements on social justice" (154). Weis has chosen to make Merton's letter to Rachel Carson in response to his reading of Silent Spring (1962) the springboard for this exploration of Merton's environmental vision. Asserting that Carson's book is "[w]idely regarded as the most influential book in the last fiftyyears" ( 12), Weis finds in his letter that "he is sensing in Carson a kindred spirit" with whom he shares "profound insight into our responsibility for the Earth" (13). This strategy allowsWeisto center the letter as the nexus that empowers and directs the energy ofher explorations and argumentations, persuading readers of her claims and challenging them to join the mission. Indeed, Merton's impassioned letter seems an appropriate choice for the focal point of Weis' investigations; almost overwhelmed by the apocalyptic dimensions of our human destructiveness, he comes as close as he ever does to turning on his own species, calling our irresponsibility toward our own culture and environment an illness ("I almost said mental illness;' he notes)-"a dreadful hatred of life" (qtd. in Weis 13). It is only as Weis unpacks the factors leading Merton to such a conclusion that the reader comes to understand how fully Merton's own life was foregrounded and formed for such a moment as this pivotal letter pronounces. In each of the ensuing chapters, Weis begins by discussing the themes that she will explore therein; she then offers intensely researched evidence to support her contentions. As such, this book becomes an extended conversation with a plethora of correspondents, poems, journal entries, essays,books, reading notes, and critics seated at the reader's table. Fr. James Conner, OCSO, Abbey of Gethsemani, makes the initial introductions, reiterating the invitation and its coming rewards: "Thomas Merton can show us the way to return to the original stance regarding creation. Monica Weis can help us discover ... the way that we can imitate him in this conversion of heart" (xii). 314 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE In her opening chapter, "Encountering Rachel Carson;' Weis observes that Merton's reading of SilentSpringisof the same order as his famous epiphany in 1958 when, in Louisville's business district (on one of his earlier and rarer forays from the abbey), he has a sudden, cosmic realization that he is "intimately connected" to all other human beings. This moment is credited as the conception of his "turning toward the world" from his radical place of solitude, silence, and contemplation that his subsequent writings demonstrate in their wide-ranging concerns with war and peace, the ills of consumerism, and inter-religious dialogue. In tandem, Merton's response to Carson's book is to decry the hubris that motivates our destruction of the environment and call for the humility to reject such pride in order to reclaim an "interdependent vision" of ltfe.Weis'case is compellingly made since his letter to Carson is his first public declaration about "nonviolence to the environment" (19). From this point onward, Merton's commitment to individual contemplation would include his embrace of the "deep longing for belonging...