THOMAS MERTON 50TH ANNIVERSARY 1968-2018
A DAY WITH THOMAS MERTON AND FRIENDS
November 17, 2018
Presented by Baldwin Wallace University and the Cleveland
Chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society, with a grant from the
International Thomas Merton Society
Direct this info to all young adult groups, family members, high schools and colleges, churches and social service venues of which you are in touch. The day, including lunch, is free! We received a grant from the International Thomas Merton Society to assist the program.
Please help us advertise this wonderful Merton intergenerational interchange! See web link above.
Thomas Merton & the Rule of St. Benedict
September 26, 2018
Luke Timothy Johnson writes:
I have read Thomas Merton off and on since I was thirteen, and over those sixty years have gone through stages of admiration, emulation, disenchantment, and rediscovery. Like many other readers, I have been impressed by the importance of mercy in his writings. Where did this emphasis come from?
I have read Thomas Merton off and on since I was thirteen, and over those sixty years have gone through stages of admiration, emulation, disenchantment, and rediscovery. Like many other readers, I have been impressed by the importance of mercy in his writings. Where did this emphasis come from?
The Monk, Poet, and Social Critic’s Spiritual
Writings
By The Editors
January 31, 2018
Ambiguities in the Secular
By Thomas Merton
June 3, 1966
Is the world a problem? I type the question. I am
tempted to type it over again, with asterisks between the letters, the way
H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n used to type his name in the New Yorker twenty years ago.
And as far as I am concerned that would dispose of the question. But Commonweal
is doubtless too concerned about the question to accept this: a blank page with
"Is the world a problem" running down the middle, full of asterisks.
So I have to be serious too, and develop it. It is, you see, a topic. And a topical
topic.
Maybe I can spell this topic out coherently,
admitting that there are still cogent reasons why the question should be asked
and answered. Perhaps, too, I am personally involved in the absurdity of the
question. Due to a book I wrote thirty years ago, I have myself become a sort
of stereotype of the world-denying contemplative—the man who spurned New York,
spat on Chicago, and tromped on Louisville, heading for the woods with Thoreau
in one pocket, John of the Cross in another, and holding the Bible open at the
Apocalypse. This stereotype is probably my own fault, and it is something I
have to try to demolish on occasion. This is one of the occasions.
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