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,…
Tag: Thomas Merton
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…
One Thing Leads to Another
Z studied with meIn a Social Justice class fall 2007 I learned that semesterHow much Z loved poetry They kept a notebook of new wordsThey’d come across and then make the words a part of…
Share the Wealth with Ben and Liz Burkemper: The Hidden Ground of Love: Exploring the Writings of Thomas Merton
Ben and Liz Burkemper, father and daughter, are fascinated by the figure of Thomas Merton — a prolific writer, Trappist monk, poet, prophet, peace and civil rights activist, theologian, and mystic. Fresh from the latest…
Liz, Here’s Another Work to Add to the Wisdom Literature List
But the whole teaching, the “way” contained in these anecdotes, poems, and meditations, is characteristic of a certain mentality found everywhere in the world, a certain taste for simplicity, for humility, self-effacement, silence, and in…
On Loyola’s Fridge
–Thomas Merton, HHDL Loyola Walter’s apartment Clifton, Cincinnati, Ohio