Part 3: Chapter 1, Magnetic North Summary and Analysis

When Merton finally found the courage to start to tell people that he wanted to be a priest, he went to talk to Dan Walsh about it. Walsh was another professor who Merton respected. They discussed several orders and decided that the Franciscans may be the most suitable for Merton (partly because of the ease of their order). But Walsh mentioned, off-hand, that he had made a pilgrimage to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky called Our Lady of Gethsemani. "What I needed was solitude," Merton wrote. "I needed a Rule that was almost entirely aimed at detaching me from the world and uniting me with God".

By now, Merton was taking communion daily and God had become the central focus of his thoughts. He applied to the novitiate at the monastery of St. Francis of...