Thomas Merton’s Mystical Vision in Louisville

Thomas Merton, mystical vision

Marker in downtown Louisville marking Merton's insight (Lori Erickson photo)

Merton’s famous revelation in downtown Louisville is described this way in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:


Merton’s biographer William H. Shannon says that by the time of this experience in 1958, Merton had become a very different kind of monk than when he entered the monastery in 1941.  “One of the things going on in him was the maturing realization, born of this contemplation, that it is not possible to leave the world in any real sense,” he writes.  “There is simply no place else to go…The experience challenged the concept of a separate ‘holy’ existence lived in a monastery. He experienced the glorious destiny that comes simply from being a human person and from being united with, not separated from, the rest of the human race.”

That experience in Louisville happened in the middle of an ordinary day, when Merton was running errands for the monastery.  And when you visit that spot today, it still seems like an ordinary sort of place, until you know the story of what happened there.

But consider this:  when I visited that spot, I wasn’t alone in remembering Merton.  An older man and a young woman were there as well, and as I approached them I overheard him telling her the story of what had happened there, his voice barely audible above the sound of cars.  It made me happy to see that I was not the only pilgrim that day at the busy intersection in Louisville.  Merton’s words still echo there, even after all the intervening years.


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