Finding the Sacred in Everything: Thomas Merton’s Vision for Modern Life

I want to share with you the blog post I wrote after reading a post by a professor I had in graduate school and have come to respect over the years. His blog was about the meaning of “Spirituality,” and I agree with him that the word is often used, as he said, “a weasel word.” (You can find his blog posting here: https://www.westarinstitute.org/blog/about-spirituality) Merton, the monk who spent years in monastic silence but who has so much to say to our noisy, distracted world, made a profound impression on me at the early age of eighteen. (That is a story for later that involves a 1960 Olds 98). Thomas Merton understood something we desperately need to hear: that everything—yes, everything—can become a window into the Divine if we learn how to truly see.

The Journey from False to True

Merton talks about something we all experience but rarely name: the “false self.” You know this self—it’s the one built from other people’s expectations, from your résumé, from your social media persona, from all the roles you play and the fears you carry. It’s exhausting.

Contemplation, for Merton, is the journey from that false self to your true self—the person you actually are, rooted in the Divine, loved beyond measure. And here’s the beautiful part: this isn’t some technique you master or spiritual achievement you unlock. It’s an awakening. It’s learning to see reality as it truly is: held in love, sustained by Mystery.

There’s this famous moment in Merton’s life at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville. He’s standing there watching ordinary people go about their day—shopping, walking, talking—and suddenly he sees them as they really are: shining like the sun, beautiful beyond words. That’s contemplation, opening your eyes. That’s what happens when you stop living in your head and start living in reality.

When Words Point Beyond Themselves

Now, Merton was a writer, and he had this fascinating relationship with language. He knew that words can never fully capture the Divine—the Divine is too big, too mysterious, too beyond our concepts. But he also knew that words, when they come from silence and return to silence, can hint at that Mystery. They can point the way.

Think of his writing as creating an opening, a space where you might catch a glimpse of something greater. He’s not handing you religious ideas to memorize. He’s inviting you into an experience, a taste of the Divine. That’s what makes his work theopoetic—it’s theology that breathes, that sings, that knows its own limitations.

The key is the silence around the words. Have you noticed how the most important things are often said in the pauses? Merton understood that. The Divine speaks in the silence between our words, in the gaps we usually rush to fill.

Technology: Gift or Distraction?

Here’s where Merton gets really relevant for us. He didn’t hate technology—he saw it as a gift of human intelligence, something that should serve the common good. But he was deeply concerned about what happens when we lose wisdom, when efficiency becomes our only value, when we’re constantly distracted and moving too fast to think.

Sound familiar?

He worried that a purely technological mindset—constantly optimizing, always controlling, always rushing—distorts who we are as humans. It shrinks our inner life. It makes contemplation nearly impossible because we’re constantly somewhere else, always half-present, always checking our phones.

And now, with artificial intelligence and autonomous systems everywhere, his warning feels prophetic. We need a spirituality that can resist dehumanizing trends, that reclaims silence and attention, that insists on reverence for each person and for the natural world. Not anti-science, but discerning: always asking whether our technologies serve human dignity, build community, and help us love better.

Art, Poetry, Films—All Pathways

Here’s something I find liberating about Merton: he didn’t see art and literature as distractions from the contemplative life. They’re not entertainment you indulge in before getting back to “real” prayer. No—they’re spaces where truth shows up, often more honestly than in “religious” talk. If you know what I mean.

A good novel can be a parable of spiritual struggle. A poem can reveal glimpses of the Divine in ways that doctrine never could. Even film—with its frames, cuts, and sequences—can teach us contemplative seeing if we engage it with open hearts.

Merton was not a fan of “pious art” that tries to package the sacred in neat little boxes. Real art leaves you with questions, with wonder, with a more profound knowledge of yourself. It doesn’t close things down; it opens them up. That’s when art becomes contemplative.

Living This Vision

So what does this mean for us? Merton shows us that contemplation isn’t about withdrawing from the world. It’s about engaging the world differently—with what he called “contemplation in action.” Prayer and solidarity. Silence and justice. Inner peace and active resistance to whatever diminishes human dignity.

You don’t have to become a monk. Not that it is a bad thing, you don’t have to retreat to a monastery. But you need to reclaim some silence in your life. You should step away from the constant noise and distraction long enough to remember who you truly are. You should look at the ordinary people around you and see them shining like the sun.

Everything can be a metaphor for the Divine when we experience it through freedom, silence, and love. Your work. Your relationships. The book you’re reading. The movie you watch tonight. The sunset. The stranger’s face. It’s all transparent to Mystery if you have eyes to see.

Conclusion: An Invitation to See

Friends, we live in an age that’s drowning in information but starving for wisdom, constantly connected but profoundly lonely, endlessly busy but rarely present. I spent a career in “Silicon Valley,” and yeah, I contributed to the good, the bad, and the ugly we are experiencing today. Mea culpa. Merton invites us into something different—not an escape, but a deeper engagement. Not more religious talk, but a genuine encounter with the Divine that pulses through everything in the cosmos.

The contemplative life isn’t reserved for monks behind monastery walls. It’s available to you, right here, right now. It begins when you stop running, when you create space for silence, when you dare to look honestly at yourself and the world around you.

Start small. Find five minutes of silence today. Read a poem slowly. Watch a film with full attention. Look at someone—really look—and see their sacred dignity. Let words arise from silence and return to it. Ask whether your technologies are serving love or blocking it. (I have started doing this, and wow, you will be surprised~the focus is on love)

The true self you’re seeking is already there, waiting beneath all the noise and roles and fears. The Divine you long for is already present in this moment, in this place, in these ordinary lives around you. Merton invites you to wake up and see.

The question isn’t whether the sacred is present. The question is: are you ready to perceive it?

Welcome to the contemplative life. Welcome to seeing with new eyes. Welcome home to your true self.

Let us pause together in silence.