Soul searchers: two documentaries examine the lives of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen

Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen: two spiritual giants of the 20th century, both wounded, both seeking to unmask a false self and find God, and now each the subject of a documentary recently available on DVD.

Director Morgan Atkinson of Louisville adds to his resume of documentaries that look at his local region with "Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton." But the story does not confine itself to Kentucky's Gethsemant Abbey. The documentary begins with Merton's debauched days in New York and ends with his death in Thailand as he was beginning to study more deeply the monasticism of other faiths, including Buddhism.

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Merton's story is bookended by inherently dramatic material. First, the spoiled hedonist is saved from a nervous breakdown by Catholicism and then renounces the world to become a Trappist monk, entering the monastery with a sense of self-disgust at the sex, alcohol and destructiveness of his former life: "It is time to stop being sick and really get well," he says. His love affair in middle age with a nurse is handled without sensationalism--and without, it is noted but not explained, any perspective from the woman herself.

But "Soul Searching" succeeds in making all the seasons of Merton's life just as compelling. His "evolutionary conversion" led him to retreat from the world, to seek solitude, only to grow back into it, through his experience as the monastery's master of novices, through his correspondence with readers worldwide and through his growing role as spiritual leader to the peace movement. What Merton came to learn is that "we need all of humanity, otherwise we don't get God," says theologian Anthony Padovano, who is interviewed in the film.

Like Merton, Henri Nouwen wanted to get past his false self and find the true self--the beloved of God. While "Journey of the Heart: The Life of Henri Nouwen" lacks the narrative flow of the Merton documentary, it gives a vivid picture of Fr. Nouwen's personality, at once childlike and driven.

The most powerful part of the documentary, which is directed by Karen Pascal, comes when Fr. Nouwen leaves his academic life at Harvard University, with its atmosphere of intellectualism and fierce competition, to live in the Daybreak L'Arche Community in Toronto with the mentally disabled. There, Fr. Nouwen was assigned to care for Adam, one of the most handicapped core members of the community--frustrating, slow-moving work for the excitable, never-stopping Dutch-born priest.

"He kept saying, 'I don't know why I have to do this,'" says St. Joseph Sr. Sue Mosteller of Daybreak. "And the answer was always the same: So that you'll get to know Adam."

"He could do everything to infuriate you," L'Arche founder Jean Vanier says. Henri Nouwen was "incredibly needy, incredibly beautiful, incredibly intelligent, incredibly kind, incredibly good. He had all this excess in him.... He gave out so much, his need was so great and we couldn't always fulfill his needs."

The experience of living with powerless people, the documentary says, moved into Fr. Nouwen's heart the ideas he had long written and taught. And for a man who suffered from depression and a sometimes debilitating self-rejection, he found grounding in the company of Daybreak's members, who were not concerned about his towering reputation as a spiritual writer but "loved him, just because." The documentary is truly touching in its clips of Henri Nouwen's life in the community and in interviews with Daybreak members today remembering his friendship.

Related Web sites

"Journey of the Heart: The Life of Henri Nouwen" www.henrinouwen.org www.windborneproductions.org

"Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton" www.morganatkinson.com

[Teresa Malcolm is an NCR staff writer. Her e-mail address is tmalcolm@ncronline.org.]

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