Beginning with a chapter called “The Forest is my Bride”, Deignan focuses on Merton’s marriage to the forest which is a rich and often over-looked theme in the spiritual stories of modem times. Doesn’t Merton write first of the search of his soul for God in The Seven Storey Mountain? It seems like a parody of Augustine’s confessions. In subsequent writings, Merton explores routes to recover paradise, and finds God ever present in nature near Gethsemani which he loves so intently. “The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.”

“I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of bed in the middle of the night because it is imperative that I hear the silence of the night, alone, and, with my face on the floor, say psalms, alone, in the silence of the night.” Didn’t Merton spend all of his monastic life listening to the heartbeat of creation, to the sweet songs of living things?

Deignan follows Merton through the seasons, tracing the face of God in the elements, the firmament, living creatures, festivals, presences, sanctuary, and Sophia. He sees God in the oaks, in the cornfields, in the field mice, in the changes of seasons, in the hot dry wind where there is no rain as well as in the rain storms. In the short excerpts Merton often ends with “Sense of God all day.” True to his Cistercian call to be obedient, he listened with the ear of his heart to the still, small voice of God speaking in all things.

(Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman, O.P. for this review.)

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