“Nhat Hanh Is My Brother”
Dear Friends, I invite you to a second “Merton Hour” to consider Thomas Merton’s short intervention on behalf of Thich Nhat Hanh in 1966. We will read together “Nhat Hanh Is My Brother,” discuss in…
Tag: Thomas Merton
A Merton Hour
Please join us for a “Merton Hour” for thoughtful discussions about the impact Thomas Merton and his writings have had on us and the world we live in. On Sunday 20 February Ben Burkemper will…
Keeping Our Mouths Shut, Our Minds at Peace
Some decades back New Directions published a series of slim Wisdom books that can still serve as an engaging introduction to several religious traditions. Earlier this year, I enjoyed Stephen Clissold’s The Wisdom of St…
Righteous, Remorseful Jews
As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago. For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…
Merton’s Journal
Calcutta is shocking because it is all of a sudden a totally different kind of madness, the reverse of that other madness, the mad rationality of affluence and overpopulation. America seems to make sense,…
Political Holiness
Pedro Casaldáliga & José-Maria Vigil, Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation Those who struggle for utopia, for radical change, saints marked by the liberating spirit, are all of a piece; they carry faithfulness from the…
Slowing Down
Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: Finding Balance in a Hurried World This book reminds me of something Thomas Merton believed: “The spiritual life is simple, but not easy.” Even though many people in the U.S….
Share the Wealth with Jack McAtee: In But Not of The World
During this discussion we will try to make sense of these wild, strange, sad, wonderful, and terrifying times that we currently have the opportunity to live through. I’ll take a critical view on the current…
“Doing Your Best Is the Surest Way to Remind Those around You to Do Their Best”
Today in Intercultural Studies class I shared some famous passages from the manual Thich Nhat Hanh wrote for Vietnamese social workers back in the 1970s. If you are familiar with this Zen Master, you may…
The Future Belongs to South America
Jessie Sandova, From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal (Counterpoint Press, 2017) I had initial high hopes for reading the correspondence of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal. I started…