Thomas Merton (1915—1968), American monk and author, was also a photographer, an observer of the inner nature of life as seen with the eyes of the heart. As one of Merton’s friends, a photographer, John Howard Griffin, writes, “Merton’s approach to photography, and one of the reasons his photography is truly personal, lay in his use of his lenses primarily as contemplative instruments” (from John Howard Griffin & Thomas Merton, “A Hidden Wholeness: the Visual World of Thomas Merton”, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 3). Merton’s photography sought to capture the “play of light, the ambience, and the inner life of the things he photographed” (Griffin, 4). Merton loved the silence surrounding the art of contemplative photography. “He struggled toward an expression of silence through the visual image, in photographs that communicated the essence of silence without any implied sounds” (Griffin, 4). In selecting images, Merton cared little for traditional aspects of photography such as photo journalism, composition or capturing a moment of significant time. “He selected only the frames that expressed his contemplative vision....He worked for photographic images which, when viewed without haste or pressure, might accomplish the slow work of communicating ‘a hidden wholeness’” (Griffin, 4). Here’s Merton in his own words:
There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, ‘Natura naturans’. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and of joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being … (Thomas Merton, ‘Hagia Sophia’)
Consider one form of photography as an invitation into the inner landscape of the soul to gaze upon the “unseen roots of all created being”. One of the gifts a contemplative photographer offers is to see the illumination within the frame, using the camera lens “primarily as a contemplative instrument”. Much as icons and rose windows have been used within ancient church buildings (including for the current challenge "churches"), contemplative photography can become a way to see into the hidden wholeness of things. To accomplish this does not come naturally to humans, but comes to us as a gift, much like waiting for the moment of illumination to fill a scene before clicking the shutter. We invite you to come visit a contemplative photography blog (see Cannon Beach Log), including essays on the soul by  charliebakerand nature photographs by zoomdak.
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