Dialogue toward Purity of Heart

by Mary Margaret Funk, OSB 

Using a literary device of dialogue Sister Meg Funk provides us with a sustained conversation with Father Thomas Merton. As Father Merton has in print actual pages and pages of commentary and dialogue with religious practitioners of other faith traditions there is ample material to be faithful to his written word. In a new book, Merton and Sufism, The Untold Story just published in 1999 by FonsVitae of Louisville Sister Meg found the term, 'le pointe vierge'. It is this concept that is taken seriously by the two monastics.

Both Father Merton and Sister Meg discuss the meaning of 'le point vierge' from the Sufl point of view and bring to light their personal experience to see if purity of heart and 'le point vierge' is the same thing. More than matching terms this dialogue paper is about taking a light from the Sufi tradition and bringing contemplative moments to a larger context that shapes and reshapes life for all its living.

When Father Merton speaks of his experience at 4th and Walnut Sister Meg shares a moment of 'truth' before exams at Catholic University. How does one describe those times of 'never-before-realizations' but something you knew about all along? In the continued dialogue Merton and Meg take on the language that describes a virginal point or a place only in the heart of hearts that is already pure and is the dwelling place of God. There is goodness not available to effort and an effort not worthy of the Truth.

But alas, after many 'gifted' moments these two monastics report that they have not changed consciousness. Dread and hypocrisy cover over the moment. Immediacy is lost. Memory remains. Both Sister Meg and Father Merton enter into another layer of dialogue: a level of 'shared-truth' where there's no contrived meanings about life just the experience of living it.