Merton By Those Who Knew Him Best

What if we truly belong to each other? What if we are all walking around shining like the sun? Mystic, monk, and activist Thomas Merton asked those questions in the twentieth century. Writer Sophfronia Scott is asking them today. In The Seeker and the Monk, Scott mines the extensive private journals of one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past for guidance on how to live in these fraught times. As a Black woman who is not Catholic, Scott both learns from and pushes back against Merton, holding spirited, and intimate conversations on race, ambition, faith, activism, nature, prayer, friendship, and love. She asks: What is the connection between contemplation and action? Is there ever such a thing as a wrong answer to a spiritual question? How do we care about the brutality in the world while not becoming overwhelmed by it? By engaging in this lively discourse, readers will gain a steady sense of how to dwell more deeply within--and even to love--this despairing and radiant world.

"A biography of Trappist monk Thomas Merton, tracing his life from his birth in France in 1915, through his years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, to his death in Bangkok in 1968, and revealing details about his religious beliefs and challenges." --Descripción del editor.

"This is quintessential Merton."--The Catholic Review.

'This Lenten devotional is unlike any I've seen. It's not about giving up something trivial for a few weeks. It's about getting free of the "false self" that alienates us from ourselves, each other, and God. Nobody understood that transformation better than Thomas Merton - and nobody understands Merton better than Robert Inchausti.' Parker J. Palmer, writer, speaker and author of On the Brink of Everything The Way of Thomas Merton guides you through the major themes of Merton's work and shows how his advice can help you to overcome the obstacles that modern life presents for spiritual development. For Merton, the spiritual life is a journey from the false to the true self - a journey that all followers of Jesus must take - and this book will help you to love and nurture your true self as you journey through Lent and beyond. 'While no one can take your journey for you, Inchausti's poetically insightful reflection on Thomas Merton's life of deep inquiry opens a window through which you may discover your own unique pathway home.' Ward Mailliard, Co-founder of the Mount Madonna Center, Watsonville, California

From the time they first met as undergraduates at Columbia College in New York City in the mid-1930s, the noted editor Robert Giroux (1914–2008) and the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton (1915–1968) became friends. The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton capture their personal and professional relationship, extending from the time of the publication of Merton's 1948 best-selling spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, until a few months before Merton's untimely death in December 1968. As editor-in-chief at Harcourt, Brace & Company and then at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Giroux not only edited twenty-six of Merton's books but served as an adviser to Merton as he dealt with unexpected problems with his religious superiors at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, as well as those in France and Italy. These letters, arranged chronologically, offer invaluable insights into the publishing process that brought some of Merton's most important writings to his readers. Patrick Samway, S.J., had unparalleled access not only to the materials assembled here but to Giroux's unpublished talks about Merton, which he uses to his advantage, especially in his beautifully crafted introduction that interweaves the stories of both men with a chronicle of their personal and collaborative relationship. The result is a rich and rewarding volume, which shows how Giroux helped Merton to become one of the greatest spiritual writers of the twentieth century.

Thomas Merton was arguably the twentieth century's most widely published and widely read spiritual writer. This book explores Merton's prophetic writings and experience as they offer guidance for those seeking to experience God, to simplify their lives, to live more humanly, and to shape Christian community in the face of alienation, consumerism, noise, and technology. The book includes parts of three previously unpublished conference contributions by Merton on technology. Exploring Merton's thoughts on monastic renewal, prayer, radical simplicity, ecology, technology, war, peace and interfaith dialogue, Dekar reminds us why Merton was so influential and why he continues to be so.

This diary of a monastic life is “a continuation of The Seven Storey Mountain . . . Astonishing” (Commonweal). Chronicling six years of Thomas Merton’s life in a Trappist monastery, The Sign of Jonas takes us through his day-to-day experiences at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, where he lived in silence and prayer for much of his life. Concluding with the account of Merton’s ordination as a priest, this diary documents his growing acceptance of his vocation—and the greater meaning he found within his private world of contemplation. “This book is made unmistakably real and almost, at times, unbearably poignant by the fact that the exuberance of youth so often wells up through it with rapture, impatience, and even bluster.” —TheNew York Times “A stirring book—the most readable and on the whole, most illuminating of the author’s writings.” —Catholic World