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The last divorce case that I handled was so upsetting to me that I walked out of that courtroom and never took another one.  I represented a mother with five children ranging in age from 2 to 15 whose husband had cheated on her and filed for divorce.  My client had asked her mother to come live with her and help with her children since the husband had already moved out to be with his new partner.  I had met the older two of her children, a son aged 12 and a daughter aged 15.  The daughter told me she wanted to grow up to be a lawyer and I encouraged her to do well in school and when the time came for her to apply to law school, I told her I would write her a glowing letter of recommendation.  She smiled a mile wide smile and thanked me.

When the day came for the judge to order that the couple was legally divorced a big surprise awaited us in court.  My client stood beside me in front of the judge and her “lawyer-to-be” daughter sat on the front row about ten feet from us.  The husband’s lawyer told the judge in a loud voice that child support should be lowered since his client was not the father of the 15-year-old girl who stared incredulously at the only father she had ever known.  I turned to look at her and saw her eyes fill with tears.  Then the sobbing began.  The mom left my side and ran to hug her daughter telling her, “Sweetie, he is your father, this is a lie so he can pay less money.”

The judge declared a recess for order to be restored in the courtroom.  I asked my client, “So is there any doubt that he is the girl’s father?” to which she said, “Absolutely not!”  A DNA test was ordered, a month went by, and the results came back that, as the mother had known, her husband was indeed the father of this devastated young girl. Someone has said that there are no winners in a divorce, and I believe that is true.

When the divorce was finally concluded and proper child support payments for all five of her children were ordered, my client told me that her daughter had been so hurt by her father’s rejection of her as his child that she cried herself to sleep for months and never wanted to see him again.  I stood in the courtroom hall talking to the husband’s attorney and found myself face to face with his client.  I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Sir, what you did to your daughter in that courtroom months ago was horrendous and in my opinion, you are a terrible father.  You need to get on your knees every night and pray that your daughter will forgive you and let you back in her life.”  He actually thanked me and then said, “You are right, I was so wrong.”

I cannot begin to imagine the pain of being “disowned” and “rejected” by one’s father.  It would take a God-sized miracle of reconciliation for this father and this daughter to have a healthy relationship.  How could one endure such pain?  Self-awareness is a hallmark of The Merton Prayer.  Indeed, the first three words of the prayer are so powerful since they establish “who I am” and “whose I am” – “My Lord God”.  The first-person possessive pronoun “my” means that I can “own” God, and the word “Lord” is a Greek word kurios which means “owner,” so that right off the bat in this prayer our identity is firmly established.  We both own, and are owned by, the almighty God who created the universe!  So for every disappointment in our earthly life we need not ever feel “disowned” or “rejected” since God “is ever with us and will never leave us to face our perils alone.”  I choose to focus on the sheer joy and love displayed by the Prodigal Son’s father who lovingly celebrated the return of his wayward son.  (Luke 15:11-32). I also choose to enjoy the joy which Mack received in the little book The Shack by Wm. Paul Young (Windblown Books, 2007), when God repeatedly tells him “I am so especially fond of you!”

Leave a comment, if you wish, as to how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

In the book I shared the story of how for over 30 years I had gained wonderful comfort by spending quiet, contemplative time sitting down front on the right side at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in the Chicago Loop and staring at the beautiful statue which was directly in front of me only a few feet away.  I thought it was Jesus holding a little child and I assumed the context was when he had scolded his disciples and had instructed them to “bring the little children to me” (Matthew 19:14). 

Why did this statue mean so much to me?  I am the third of four children.  My mother had endured a very troubled life and, before I was born, she had been hospitalized many times in a psychiatric unit which involved “shock therapy” (electric convulsive therapy, known commonly as ECT’s).  Compared to my father, she was very emotionally cold and distant to her children, at least she was to me.  I had a conversation with my mother when I was in my 40’s when I told her that her critical cold nature had hurt me greatly and her response totally took me by surprise.  She first apologized and then said, “you may have noticed there are no pictures of me snuggling with you or even holding you warmly” to which I immediately concurred. 

Then the surprise came.  She told me how one day she came home from the hospital and “I knew I was cured of my depression, and indeed, I never had another psych hospitalization again.”  Me: “Wow, that’s amazing, what happened?”  She: “I saw you, my three-year-old little Stevie, standing by your toy chest, and I walked over and picked you up and hugged you for the first time.  That feeling to me meant I was healed!”   I was aghast.  Had my mother really told me that for the first three years of my life she had never hugged me, not even once?  Yes, she had indeed said exactly that.  And had she told me that her first hug of me was confirmation to her that she was psychiatrically healed?  Yes, she had said that too. 

To say these revelations were significant for me would be the understatement of the century.  The implications of “my first mother-hug” stunned me and led to not a few sessions with my own therapist as I navigated the pain that divorce had brought to me.  Feeling abandoned has been my greatest wound as an adult.  Hospitals hire surrogate baby holders to come hold infants in the nursery where the mother has died or is not available.  The first three years of an infant’s life are crucial for bonding between mother/child and creating safety for the child.  I see this so strongly played out in how my first grandchild, Aria Marie, is being held and loved and snuggled on by her mother Juliana and her grandma, my wife Miran!

This statue at St. Peter’s had played a huge role in the healing of my “abandonment wound.”  The Catholics reading this now already know what I am going to reveal.  Miran accompanied me to mass at St. Peter’s a few years ago and I was excited to show her my source of healing: “Honey, here’s the statue of Jesus holding the child that helped me so much” to which she said, “Sweetheart, that is NOT Jesus holding a child, that is Joseph holding Jesus.” 

Of course!  It made perfect sense!  Immediately, my mind ran back decades to when my father had held me tenderly, he being a big-time hugger and very affectionate with his kids.  One memory of his warmth to me took place also down front in a church building, also on the right side!  When I was a little child, I had laid down in the pew and put my head on my daddy’s knee while he patted my head and stroked my hair throughout the church service.  

The Merton Prayer always evokes my healing memory of being held by my earthly father, which always leads me to enjoy being held by my Heavenly Father who has promised to be “ever with me and will never leave me to face my perils alone.”  The blessings of having very deep wounds healed had come to me from an inanimate marble statue, without my even knowing who was holding whom! 

Leave a comment, if you wish, as to how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

As I look back on my life from the vantage of 2022, I actually can see The Merton Prayer flooding my life decades before I had ever met Merton or read his prayer.  On December 1, 1969, I stood in front of a television set in the student lounge at my college while all of us young men were glued to little blue ping pong balls which popped up with calendar dates that determined our Draft Lottery number.  It was the first ever draft lottery and the whole nation was watching.  One of my best friends saw his birthday get #7 which meant he was off to the military, no doubt about that at all.  When it came to February 21^st, they opened up the little plastic ball and announced my draft number:  363.  I was dumbfounded.  The people in the lounge all applauded for my good fortune.

            I called my parents and heard my mother’s soft cry of relief, and then my ever-witty father said, “Why son, those Viet Cong will have to invade Frankfort, Kentucky, before you get called up!”  He was right.  I was not ever called into the military, and I never enlisted voluntarily.  But many of my high school classmates were indeed called into the war in Viet Nam.  And some of them were maimed for life in combat, and some were killed. 

            I have spent not an insignificant amount of time in my life coping with “survivor’s guilt” – a psychological condition which brought me to my emotional knees simultaneously in tears and thanks.  The military was not a road that I journeyed onto.  Was my incredibly high draft number just dumb luck, or was it the work of a providential God who did not want me to go down that road?  The Merton Prayer gives me assurance that if I have a desire to please God in everything I do He will lead me on the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  That helps a little bit for me to cope with the events in the student lounge in 1969.  However, I confess that I still have sadness for my classmates six decades later, and I sometimes actually wish that I too had gone to Viet Nam to serve my country, whether surviving or not.

Leave a comment, if you wish, as to how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting TheMertonPrayer.com!

In the 1990’s I first read the one-page chapter in “Thoughts in Solitude” by Thomas Merton (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux Publishing, 1956, p. 79) which contained his prayer known the world over as The Merton Prayer.  I was blown away by the sheer honesty and vulnerability of this prayer.  It grabbed my heart like nothing else I had ever read, and I could not stop saying this prayer any time I connected with God.  Quickly I memorized it and prayed it every day, often many times each day.  It brought me peace in connecting with God — no matter what was going on in my life.  Deaths of family members, unexpected career changes, cancer, divorce, no matter what life threw at me this prayer took away my fear and allowed me to focus on a real connection with “My Lord God”.

In 2014 a fellow attorney shared with me how important the “I don’t know where I’m going” prayer had been in his life.  It was then that I realized I was not alone in my connection with The Merton Prayer.  I searched the voluminous literature about Thomas Merton and found that no author had taken a deep dive (or even a shallow dive) into this amazing prayer.  I determined to give this prayer the attention it deserves in hopes of helping God-seekers have a more authentic prayer life.  That’s why I wrote this book!

Leave a comment, if you wish, as to how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting TheMertonPrayer.com!