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One of the most famous books ever written about a man's search for faith and peace. The Seven Storey Mountain tells of the growing restlessness of a brilliant and passionate young man, who at the age of twenty-six, takes vows in one of the most demanding Catholic orders--the Trappist monks. At the Abbey of Gethsemani, "the four walls of my new freedom," Thomas Merton struggles to withdraw from the world, but only after he has fully immersed himself in it. At the abbey, he wrote this extraordinary testament, a unique spiritual autobiography that has been recognized as one of the most influential religious works of our time. Translated into more than twenty languages, it has touched millions of lives. Originally published: New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948.

Begun five years after he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Sign of Jonas is an extraordinary view of Merton's life in a Trappist monastery, and it serves also as a spiritual log recording the deep meaning and increasing sureness he felt in his vocation: the growth of a mind that finds in its contracted physical world new intellectual and spiritual dimensions. First published in 1953.

In this series of notes, opinions, experiences, and reflections, Thomas Merton examines some of the most urgent questions of our age. With his characteristic forcefulness and candor, he brings the reader face-to-face with such provocative and controversial issues as the death of God, politics, modern life and values, and racial strife, issues that are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is Merton at his best, detached but not unpassionate, humorous yet sensitive, at all times alive and searching, with a gift for language which has made him one of the most widely read and influential spiritual writers of our time. First published in 1966.

Shortly after entering the monastic life in December 1941, a relatively unknown Trappist monk called Frater Louis-who would later be known to the world by his given name, Thomas Merton-began to pen biographical sketches of early Cistercian blessed and saints. These were initially collected, printed, and bound inexpensively, with no mention of the author, by the Abbey of Gethsemani. They are now published here for a wide audience for the first time. This work of the very young Merton perhaps takes on added significance when one considers the writing that lay just ahead of him at the time. In 1948, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was published and soon became an unexpected national bestseller. This long-awaited publication of In the Valley of Wormwood offers a window into Merton's thinking and his spiritual life just a few years before his phenomenal autobiography would see the light of day. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky. He was a renowned writer, theologian, poet, and social activist. Patrick Hart, OCSO, a native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1951 and served as secretary to Thomas Merton during the last year of his life. He has edited many books by and about Thomas Merton during the thirty-eight years since the latter's death on December 10, 1968. He has served on the board of directors for Cistercian Publications for the past thirty years.

Biography, 63 pages. First published in 1981.

Here is Thomas Merton's biography of Mother Berchmans (1876-1915), a Franch Trappistine. He had been inspired by her strength of spirit that enabled her to leave behind beloved home in France in order to help grow the struggling Our Lady of the Angels Abbey in Hakodate, Japan. Originally published in 1948 by The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee (title page verso).

Though she was previously little known outside of Cistercian history, Merton gives Lutgarde of Aywières (1182-1246) wider appreciation in his biography of this great saint and contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. (Back cover). First published in 1948.

Merton presents one of the most significant encyclical letters of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, together with an introduction to the life and teachings of the great mystic. "A study that will have to be on the shelves of all libraries and in the personal collections of all who are interested in spirituality" (Catholic World). Index. First published in 1954.

Merton defines Christian mysticism, especially as expressed by the Spanish Carmelite St. John of the Cross, and he offers the contemplative experience as an answer to the irreligion and barbarism of our times. For those...curious about mysticism...this is an excellent book (Catholic World). First published in 1951.

Bread in the Wilderness sets forth Merton's belief that "the Psalms acquire, for those who know how to enter into them, a surprising depth, a marvelous and inexhaustible actuality. They are bread, miraculously provided by Christ, to feed those who have followed Him into the wilderness." Merton's goal in this moving book is to help the reader enter into the Psalms: "The secret is placed in the hands of each Christian. It only needs to be discovered and fulfilled in our own lives." The new ND Classic edition of Bread in the Wilderness faithfully reproduces the beautiful, large-format original 1953 New Directions books, created by the celebrated designer Alvin Lustig and lavishly illustrated throughout with photographs of a remarkable medieval crucifix at Perpignan, France.

In this classic text, Thomas Merton offers valuable guidance for prayer. He brings together a wealth of meditative and mystical influences, from John of the Cross to Eastern desert monasticism, to create a spiritual path for today. Most important, he shows how the peace contacted through meditation should not be sought in order to evade the problems of contemporary life, but can instead be directed back out into the world to affect positive change. Contemplative Prayer is one of the most well-known works of spirituality of the last one hundred years, and it is a must-read for all seeking to live a life of purpose in today's world. In a moving and profound introduction, Thich Nhat Hanh offers his personal recollections of Merton and compares the contemplative traditions of East and West. First published in 1969.

"Reflecting Thomas Merton's lifelong examination of the relationship between the monastic, contemplative life and the need for spiritual expression in the secular world, these essays explore the coming together of the active and the contemplative life and the relationship of persons to social organizations. Ranging from an account of the Greek monastic community on Mount Athos to a look at the spiritually destructive power of racism, Merton's writing manages to be both lively and profound as he leads the reader through the hard questions of modern existence, bringing together traditional religious values with a concern for the spiritual needs of the present day.".--cover matter. Reprint. Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, ©1960.

Contains meditations on Christianity, about Christ himself living amongst men of goodwill, "I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. If anyone eat of this bread, he shall live forever." - John 6:51-52. First published in 1956

Thomas Merton was recognized as one of those rare Western minds that are entirely at home with the Zen experience. In this collection, he discusses diverse religious concepts-early monasticism, Russian Orthodox spirituality, the Shakers, and Zen Buddhism-with characteristic Western directness. Merton not only studied these religions from the outside but grasped them by empathy and living participation from within. "All these studies," wrote Merton, "are united by one central concern: to understand various ways in which men of different traditions have conceived the meaning and method of the 'way' which leads to the highest levels of religious or of metaphysical awareness." First published in 1967.

This edition is a much-enlarged and revised version of Seeds of Contemplation, one of the late Father Thomas Merton's most widely read and best-loved works. In its original form, the book was reprinted ten times in this country alone, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Chinese and Japanese. Christians and non-Christians alike have joined in praising it as a notable successor in the meditative tradition of St. John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the medieval mystics, while others have compared Merton's reflections with those of Thoreau. New Seeds of Contemplation seeks to awaken the dormant inner depths of the spirit so long neglected by Western man, to nurture a deeply contemplative and mystical dimension in our spiritual lives. For Father Merton, "Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love." First published in 1962.

In Bread in the Wilderness, Merton looked at the psalms as poetry; in this book he regards them as prayer. Guiding the reader through the more representative psalms, he explains why the Church also considers the psalms as the best way to praise God. First published in 1956.

Here this concern finds expression in poetic irony and in meditations intentionally dour. In these brief, challenging pieces, Father Merton does not offer consolation or easy remedies. He looks candidly and without illusions at the world of his time. Though he sees dark horizons, his ultimate answer is one of Christian hope. To vary the perspective, he writes in many forms, using parable and myth, the essay and the meditation, satire and manifesto, prose poetry and even adaptations from a medieval Arab mystic (Ibn Abbad) to humanize and dramatic his philosophical themes. The themes of Raids on the Unspeakable are as old as the myths of Prometheus and Atlas, and as timely as the human evils of today. They range from the "Message" written for an international congress of poets to the beautiful yet disturbing Christmas meditation, "The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room." And there are essays inspired by the world of three significant contemporary writers: Flannery O'Connor, the French novelist Julien Green, and the playwright Eugene Ionesco. A number of Father Merton's own drawings are also included in the book--not as "illustrations," but as "signatures" or :"abstract writings," which stand in their own right as another personal statement.

A New Directions Book. First published in 1949.

2013 Reprint of 1960 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This book contains a revised and considerably expanded version of material on spiritual direction and meditation which appeared in the Magazine "Sponsa Regis." The first part is addressed to the Christian who seeks a director or who has one, and who desires to take full advantage of his opportunities. The second part is made up of notes on mediation which were written as a kind of companion to "What is Contemplation?

Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu's writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name--Zen. The Chinese sage abounds in wit and paradox and shattering insights into the true ground of being. Thomas Merton, no stranger to Asian thought, brings a vivid, modern idiom to the timeless wisdom of Tao. "First published by New Directions as a New Directions paperbook (NDP276) in 1969. Reissued with a preface by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a New Directions paperbook (NDP1161) in 2010."

"Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite--one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ. First published in 1968.

The spiritual and psychological insights of these essays were nurtured in a monastic milieu, but their issues are universally human. Thomas Merton lays a foundation for personal growth and transformation through fidelity to "our own truth and inner being." His main focus is our desire and need to attain "a fully human and personal identity." This classic is a newly restored and corrected edition and the inaugural volume of Gethsemani Studies in Psychological and Religious Anthropology, a series of books that explores, through the twin perspectives of psychology and religion, the dynamics and depths of being fully human. "When I speak of the contemplative life I do not mean the institutional, cloistered life, . . . I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development . . . . Discovering the contemplative life is a new self-discovery. One might say it is the flowering of a deeper identity on an entirely different plane . . ." --Thomas Merton, from the book. First published in 1971.

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton's last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life. Never before published except as a series of articles (one per chapter) in an academic journal, this book on contemplation was revised by Merton shortly before his untimely death. The material bridges Merton's early work on Catholic monasticism, mysticism, and contemplation with his later writing on Eastern, especially Buddhist, traditions of meditation and spirituality. This book thus provides a comprehensive understanding of contemplation that draws on the best of Western and Eastern traditions. Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; it was the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now the Merton Legacy Trust and experts have determined that the book makes such a valuable contribution as his major comprehensive presentation of contemplation that they have allowed its publication.

Life and Holiness is Thomas Merton's classic text on incorporating spirituality into everyday life. Merton here makes clear that he was a monk who knew the world. Of course, Merton lived a secular life until he became a Trappist monk in his late twenties, but even in the monastery he was deeply engaged in the questions of his day. In this succinct and readily accessible work, he offers compelling thoughts on what it means to be holy in the face of the anxieties of the modern age. Originally published by: New York: Herder and Herder, 1963.

As novice master of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton presented weekly conferences to familiarize his charges with the meaning and purpose of the vows they aspired to undertake. In this setting, he offered a thorough exposition of the theological, canonical, and above all spiritual dimensions of the vows. Merton set the vows firmly in the context of the anthropological, moral, soteriological, and ecclesial dimensions of human, Christian, and monastic life. He addressed such classical themes of Christian morality as the nature of the human person and his acts; the importance of justice in relation to the Passion of Christ, to friendship and to love; and self-surrender as the key to grace, prayer and the vowed life. Merton's words on these topics clearly spring from a committed heart and often flow with the soaring intensity of style that we have come to expect in his more enthusiastic prose. The texts of these conferences represent the longest and most systematically organized of any of numerous series of conferences that Merton presented during the decade of his mastership. They may be the most directly pastoral work Merton ever wrote.

Written during the last decade of Merton's life, these articles reflect his mature thought on monastic life in community and in solitude. Appealing to the monastic dimension in all of us, his reflections have meaning for those living outside as well as inside monastery walls, fellow travelers on the same journey he took, aware of the fragility and imperfections, as well as the great potential for growth and love, within each human person.

The New Man shows Thomas Merton at the height of his powers and has as its theme the question of spiritual identity. What must we do to recover possession of our true selves? By way of an answer, Merton discusses how we have become strangers to ourselves by our dependence on outward identity and success, while our real need is for a concern with the image of God in ourselves. At a time of retrieval of our religious traditions, Merton's voice is both intelligent and spiritually compelling.Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentieth century. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968. First published in 1961.

This is a discussion about real things that are so solid that people tend to ignore them. It asserts and insists the great truth that life must have a meaning. Thomas Merton shows that meaning has to be worked out for each individual, in their own unique way. It is a book about aspiration, asceticism and above all sacrifice - of oneself and of one's domination of self. It is about the choice between life and death, people's last and most important decision. First published in 1955.

These essays remain extremely relevant in view of the ongoing liturgical renewal initiated by Vatican II. Originally published: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965. With a new foreword.

Thomas Merton's In Silentio.

Thomas Merton wrote The Silent Life a decade after he took orders. In his Prologue, Merton describes the book as "a meditation on the monastic life by one who, without any merit of his own, is privileged to know that life on the inside . . . who seeks only to speak as the mouthpiece of a tradition centuries old." It is a remarkable work-one that combines a lucid and informative description of the nature and forms of monasticism, communal and solitary, with a passionate defense of the contemplative's quest for God. The intense beauty of Merton's meditation, radiating from beneath its surface calm, makes The Silent Life a classic of its kind. First published in 1957.

Examines the meaning and purpose of spiritual direction. Also provides insights into how to meditate.

Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1958, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate." Thoughts in Solitude stands alongside The Seven Storey Mountain as one of Merton's most enduring and popular works. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentieth century. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968.

An examination of the roots of the Cistercian Order, founded in 1098, its development and waning, and the seventeenth-century reforms by the Abbé de Rancé, which began the second flowering that continues today. Throughout, Merton illuminates the purposes of monasticism. Index; photographs. First published in 1949.

In the fourth century, the wildernesses of Egypt and Palestine were inhabited by a strange breed of spiritual nonconformists: the first Christian hermits. Thomas Merton's affection for these "Desert Fathers" shines in this much-loved treasury of their acts and words of wisdom. His free translation from the Latin source Verba Senorium illuminates their radical lives with insight and humor and sets them in close relation to Zen recluses, Hindu renunciants, and all those who have ever fled conventional life in search of higher wisdom. First published in 1960.

Can faith and violence exist side by side? Do the "faithful" indulge in violence? Much more often than not, says Thomas Merton of the Abbey of Gethsemani, in this controversial work which was written in the Vietnam era and still proves relevant today. In Faith and Violence, Thomas Merton offers concrete and pungent social criticisms grounded in prophetic faith about such issues as Vietnam, racism, violence, and war. First published in 1968.

A posthumously published collection of Merton's essays and meditations centering on the need for love in learning to live. Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity. Edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart. First published in 1979.

A short but profound presentation of the demands and purposes of God's Word, it is written with such effective technique that the reader will be impelled to further study of the Bible.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and spiritual writer, was passionately devoted to the cause of peace. But the censors of his order blocked publication of this major work, a trenchant critique of nuclear war, the ideology of the cold war, and the idols of national security. Even when church teaching began to echo Merton's prophetic voice, this book, Peace in the Post-Christian Era, remained unpublished, circulated only in mimeograph form and virtually unknown beyond a circle of Merton scholars. Now in its original and complete form it appears at last. Writing at the height of the Cold War, Merton issues a passionate cry for sanity and a challenge to the idea that unthinkable violence can be squared with the Gospel of Christ. Forty years later, despite changing circumstances, his prophetic message remains eerily topical. At a time when the war on terrorism has replaced the struggle against communism, Merton's work continues to demonstrate the power and relevance of the gospel in answering the most urgent challenges of our time.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is one of the foremost spiritual thinkers of the twentieth century. Though he lived a mostly solitary existence as a Trappist monk, he had a dynamic impact on world affairs through his writing. An outspoken proponent of the antiwar and civil rights movements, he was both hailed as a prophet and castigated for his social criticism. He was also unique among religious leaders in his embrace of Eastern mysticism, positing it as complementary to the Western sacred tradition. Merton is the author of over forty books of poetry, essays, and religious writing, including Mystics and Zen Masters, and The Seven Story Mountain, for which he is best known. His work continues to be widely read to this day. Contents: Black revolution: Letters to a white liberal. The legend of Tucker Caliban.--The diaspora: The Christian in world crisis. The Christian in the diaspora. A tribute to Gandhi.--Letters in a time of crisis. First published in 1964.

The essays, talks and letters collected here, allied with a selection of Merton's photographs of a Shaker village, present a haunting evocation of a lost tradition. First published in 2003.

7 volumes.

The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume 1, 1939-1941. This is the first volume of Merton's journals, covering his time teaching at Columbia University and living at Greenwich Village, having just received his Master's degree. As the journal closes he heads for Gethsemane in Kentucky, to become a Trappist monk.

The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume 2, 1941-1952. "During his arduous days and nights in the silence of the monastery, the young Thomas Merton simultaneously advanced to priesthood and emerged as a surprising bestselling author when his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was published in 1948. Spanning the journal entries in an eleven-year period from December 12, 1941, to July 5, 1952, Entering the Silence unfolds Merton's budding literary career and the development of his spiritual ideas in a uniquely personal literary style that would propel his writings into the mainstream. As the demands of his literary success rose, so did the tensions between remaining an observant monk and a talented, prolific writer. Faithful to both of these passions, Merton struggled with the requirements of daily monastic life while he continued to grace the world with his fresh observations and profound insights."--book jacket.

The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume 3, 1952-1960. "By 1952, Thomas Merton's renown as the bestselling author of The Seven Storey Mountain was well established. During the years illuminated by this third volume of his private journals, Merton struggled to reconcile his celebrity with his desire for a life of hermetic silence and contemplation." "Already at the Abbey of Gethsemani for over a decade, Merton was beginning to grow impatient with the strictures and shortcomings of conventional monastic life. Here he chronicles the search for a more authentic experience of the divine and of community that led him to explore Zen, existentialism, and the exciting developments in Latin American Christianity and literature, which informed his own Catholic spirituality and his views of the great intellectual debates of his time." "Merton's private writing combines a poet's eye for the beauty of nature - in the woods and fields of the Abbey - as well as a fiction writer's instinct for the idiosyncracies of his brethren, the rhythms and tediums of regular observance, the strengths of the monastery and its weaknesses." "It is, however, Merton's restless, compelling, unvarnished reflections on the question of what it means to be a monk in his own time that gives this journal its most lasting value, paying homage to monasticism and instructing all who value the contemplative life."--book jacket

The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume 4, 1960-1963. The fourth volume of Thomas Merton's complete journals, one of his final literary legacies, springs from three hundred handwritten pages that capture - in candid, lively, deeply revealing passages -- the growing unrest of the 1960s, which Merton witnessed within himself as plainly as in the changing culture around him. In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and the irresistible pull of social concerns. Precisely when he longs for more solitude, and convinces himself he could not cut back on his writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about the contemporary culture ("the 'world' with its funny pants, of which I do not know the name, its sandals and sunglasses"), war, and the churches role in society. Thus despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his celebrity and growing concerns for social issues fuel his writings on civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with those who urge him to leave the moral issues to bishops and theologians. This pivotal volume in the Merton journals reveals a man at the height of a brilliant writing career, marking the fourteenth anniversary of his priesthood but yearning still for the key to true happiness and grace. Here, in his most private diaries, Merton is as intellectually curious, critical, and insightful as in his best-known public writings while he documents his movement from the cloister toward the world, from Novice Master to hermit, from ironic critic to joyous witness to the mystery of God's plan. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, writer and peace activist. His spiritual classics include New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sign of Jonas, Mystics and Zen Masters and The Seven Story Mountain

The Journal of Thomas Merton, volume 5, 1963-1965. "In the fifth volume of Thomas Merton's acclaimed journals, the renowned monk and writer immerses himself in the revolutionary ideas of the sixties and finally begins to live full-time at his own hermitage."--Page [4] of jacket. The sixties were a time of restlessness, inner turmoil, and exuberance for Merton during which he closely followed the careening development of political and social activism Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, the Vietnam war, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Volume 5 chronicles the approach of Merton's fiftieth birthday and marks his move to Mount Olivet, his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he was finally able to fully embrace the joys and challenges of solitary life. In the hermitage, one must pray of go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice . . . Solitude puts you with your back to the wall (or your face to it!), and this is good (13 October, 1964).

The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume 6, 1966-1967. Having embraced a life of solitude in his own hermitage, Thomas Merton finds his faith tested beyond his imagination when a visit to the hospital leads to a clandestine affair of the heart. Jolted out of his comfortable routine, Merton is forced to reassess his need for love and his commitment to celibacy and the monastic vocation.This astonishing volume traces Merton's struggle to reconcile his unexpected love with his sacred vows while continuing to grapple with the burning social issues of the day - including racial conflicts, the war in Vietnam, and the Arab-Israeli conflict - visiting and corresponding with high-profile friends like Thich Nhat Hanh and Joan Baez, and further developing his writing career. Revealing Merton to be 'very human' in his chronicles of the ecstasy and torment of being in love, Learning to Love comes full circle as Merton recommits himself completely and more deeply to his vocation even as he recognizes 'my need for love, my loneliness, my inner division, the struggle in which solitude is at once a problem and a 'solution'. And perhaps not a perfect solution either' (11 May, 1967).

The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 7, 1967-1968. The seventh and final volume of Thomas Merton's journals finds him exploring new territory, both spiritual and geographic, in the last great journey prior to his untimely death. Traveling in the United States and the Far East, Merton enjoys a new freedom that brings with it a rich mix of solitude, spirited friendship, and interaction with monks of other traditions. In his last days in the United States, Merton continues to follow the tumultuous events closing the 1960s, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Meanwhile, with the blessing of his new abbot, Merton travels to monasteries in New Mexico and among the redwoods of Northern California, keeping his journal all the while. When Merton wins approval to participate in a meeting of monastic superiors of the Far East in Bangkok, Thailand, his life enters its most thrilling period. Arriving in Calcutta, Merton is heartbroken by the poverty of the many beggars; in New Delhi and Dharamsala, he makes contact with local Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama. Recognizing each other as kindred spirits, Merton and the Dalai Lama speak from the heart like old friends.

"The moment of takeoff was ecstatic...joy. We left the ground--I with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering..." With these words, dated October 15. 1968, the late Father Thomas Merton recorded the beginning of his fateful journey to the Orient. His travels led him from Bangkok, through India to Ceylon, and back again to Bangkok for his scheduled talk at a conference of Asian monastic orders. There he unequivocally reaffirmed his Christian vocation. His last journal entry was made on December 8, 1968, two days before his untimely, accidental death. Amply illustrated with photographs he himself took along the way and fully indexed, the book also contains a glossary of Asian religious terms, a preface by the Indian scholar Amiya Chakravarty, a foreword and postscript by Brother Patrick Hart of the Abbey of Gethsemani, as well as several appendices, among them the text of Merton's final address. First published in 1973.

"Could it ever possibly mean that I might some day become a monk in this monastery?" The young man who wrote these words in his journal on April 12, 1941, was a recent Columbia graduate and Catholic convert. The Secular Journal, in which Thomas Merton recorded his private thoughts between the age of twenty-four and twenty-six, starts in a furnished room on Perry Street, Greenwich Village; moves to Cuba in the spring of 1940; returns to New York, St. Bonaventure College, and Harlem, and reaches a climax at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky during Holy Week, 1941. This journal offers us a picture of Merton's lively and perceptive appreciation of the secular world as well as his ongoing examination of his commitment to the religious, which culminates in the final entry, "I shall speak to one of the Friars." (Back cover). First published in 1959.

"Published for the first time in book form, this collection of 111 letters from Thomas Merton to friends, activists, artists, and intellectuals was written between October 1961 and October 1962. As the world seemed to tumble toward a nuclear apocalypse, Merton sought to create a community of concern that might raise a moral counterweight to the forces of fear and destruction."--Jacket.

Evelyn Waugh, at the start of Thomas Merton's monastic career, advised him to "write serious letters", and also urged him to make an art of it. This advice flowered in the sixties, especially after his monastic superiors ordered him to cease publishing anything on war and peace. "Monk concerned with peace. Bad image", Merton seethed in a letter, and launched his series of privately circulated mimeographed "Cold War Letters", one-third of which are published for the first time in this book. The Hidden Ground of Love is a rich collection of Merton's letters in a period of his greatest concern about religion's seeming powerlessness against global violence and nuclear war. Though the book concentrates primarily on the last decade of his 27 years as a Trappist, it opens with a few early letters to Catherine Doherty before he became a monk. His extraordinary growth as a mystic and religious thinker, deeply concerned about the materialistic world's drift toward the abyss, is revealed in these pages. First published in 1985.

Poet, social justice activist, and theologian Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. In his short lifetime, he penned over seventy books and maintained a brisk correspondence with a variety of colleagues around the globe. However, many Merton scholars and fans remain unaware of the significant body of letters that the Trappist monk exchanged with Victor and Carolyn Hammer. Unable to leave his home at the Abbey of Gethsemani except on special occasions, Merton developed a unique friendship with this couple from nearby Lexington, Kentucky. In this volume, the editors have collected the complete correspondence between Merton and the Hammers for the first time. The letters, arranged chronologically, vividly demonstrate a blossoming intellectual camaraderie, from professional discussions of printing costs to richly articulated explorations of religion and aesthetics. They also provide a unique opportunity to understand Merton's evolving philosophies, as his requests for books from Carolyn reflect his reading interests during the thirteen years spanned by their correspondence. Often profound, and at times humorous, the letters in this volume reveal a rare friendship and offer new insights into the creative intellect of Thomas Merton."

The letters between Thomas Merton and Jonathan Greene.

Thomas Merton was one of the most prolific and provocative letter writers of the twentieth century. His letters (those written both by him and to him), archived at the Thomas Merton Studies Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, number more than ten thousand. For Merton, letters were not just a vehicle for exchanging information, but his primary means for initiating, maintaining, and deepening relationships. In this expert distillation of Thomas Merton's letters, we are offered a unique lens through which to relive the spiritual and social upheavals of the twentieth century, while encountering wisdom that is still relevant for our world today. Available now in paperback, this book is ideal for parish book groups, retreats, spiritual direction, and as a resource for training lay leaders.

Thomas Merton may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a best-selling author. Cloistered in a remote Kentucky monastery, Merton struggled as a young man to reconcile the contemplative life he sought as a monk and his very public passion for writing. Publisher James Laughlin saw Merton's talent and played the muse, encouraging him with the poems, essays, and diaries of other writers and publishing nearly everything Merton sent in return.Ironically, the very society Merton rejected upon entering the monastery embraced his work, bringing him publishing success only dreamed of by more eager authors. Soon Merton discovered he had a podium, a voice, and a responsibility that weighed as heavily on him as his previous quest for silence. Laughlin's encouragement remained constant throughout, as political ally, publishing adviser, and supporting friend.Nearly thirty years of rich correspondence documents this strong literary and personal relationship and traces the remarkable development of Merton's vision: from an early focus on matters internal and religious, to a tremendous world view encompassing issues of race, politics, war, and the spiritual decay of modern society.

"This, the last journal-writing Thomas Merton ever approved for publication, details his departure from the Trappist Abbey at Gethsemani in 1968, and his subsequent journey through the American West. As The Seven Storey Mountain detailed the thoughts and fears of an aspirant to the monastic life, the never-before-published Woods, Shore, Desert is almost a canticle of a mature Religious, remarkable in its frankness and self-questioning. Recalling sources as diverse as Hegel, Unamuno, and the Astavakra Gita, Merton magically weaves his impressions of the rare and the mundane. And throughout the book, his thoughts are preoccupied by the lovely and vibrant land about him... I dream every night of the West"--Back cover. First published in 1982.

The journal kept by Merton during 1964 and 1965, containing his daily meditations during the crucial and difficult period in which the permission he had awaited so long -- to live alone in his hermitage -- was finally given. These pages reveal his reflections as a hermit on the joys and dangers of a life of solitude in the woods.

Poems. The spiritual predicament of modern man depicted in a meditative study by the author of "The Seven Storey Mountain."

Poems; 60 pages. First published in 1968.

In 1944, New Directions brought out Thomas Merton's first book of verse. By the time of his tragic, untimely death in 1968, Father Louis (as he was known at the Trappist monastery where he lived for twenty-seven years) had published upwards of fifty books and pamphlets, including several more collections of poetry. All of these poems have been assembled in a single, definitive volume (first published by New Directions in 1977) which includes much additional unpublished or uncollected material drawn from the archive of the Merton Studies Center at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, or supplied by the poet's friends and associates. Brought together in The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton are: Early Poems (1940-42, published posthumously in 1971), Thirty Poems (1944), A Man in the Divided Sea (1946), Figures for an Apocalypse (1947), The Tear of the Blind Lions (1949), The Strange Islands (1957), Original Child Bomb (1962), Emblems of a Season of Fun (1963), Cables to Ace (1968), and The Geography of Lograire (completed in 1968 and published posthumously). These are followed by Sensation Time at the Home and Other New Poems, a book which Merton completed shortly before his death. There are also sections of uncollected poems, humorous verse, poems written in French, with some English translations, Merton's translations of poetry from various languages, drafts and fragments, and a selection of concrete poems. With the availability of The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton as a New Directions paperbook, an ever wider audience may more fully appreciate the impressive range of the poet's technique, the scope of his concerns, and the humaneness of his vision. First published in 1977.

Poems; 149 pages.

It was completed in the summer of 1968, a few months before he set out from Our Lady of Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky on the Asian journey from which he did not return. The text is as he left it. It lacks that final editing that he would have done in proof, but it is substantially a completed, self-contained work. Lograire, as with William Carlos Williams's Paterson, is first of all a country of the imagination, but it is also a person--Merton himself--for its "geography" is the map, the inner choreography, of his mind. The charting in the poem is his search for self-location: where, and even how, does a man find himself in the geography of all men? Sections of personal experience are set against passages re-imagined from anthropological and historical texts, material that Merton chose for its character of myth to illustrate the general experience of mankind. The myths of Lograire form a mosaic of African legends, Mixtecart motifs and Mayan religious customs, the pantheism of the fanatical Ranters in 17th-century England, the records of an early arctic expedition and of Ibn Battuta, the 14th-century Arab traveler, the Cargo Cults of Melanesia and the Ghost Dances of the American Indians. "A poet," Merton wrote in his prefatory note to Lograire, "spends his life attempting to build or to dream the world in which he lives. But more than that he realizes that this world is at once his and everybody's. It grows out of a common participation which is nevertheless recorded in authentically personal images. I have without scruple mixed what is my own experience with what is almost everybody else's." Many modern poets have used history and myth in their work; what sets The Geography of Lograire apart is the invention of Merton's method--his process for elevating fact to the level of myth. It is a complex technique of fractured syntax, multiple meanings; the distortion of dream, irony and parody.

Poetry. "With simplicity, eloquence, and power Thomas Merton explores the mystery of the Risen Christ. Previously unpublished, this piece captures both the author's energy and his vision of an authentic Christianity." --book jacket

A new, broad, comprehensive view of the innovative poetry of the late, great Trappist monk and religious philosopher Thomas Merton. Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social critic the late Thomas Merton was all these things. Until now, no selection from his great body of poetry has afforded a comprehensive view of his varied and largely innovative work.In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton is not only double the size of Merton's earlier Selected Poems (1967), it also arranges his poetry thematically and chronologically, so that readers can follow the poet's multifarious interrelated lines of thought as well as his poetic development over the decades, from his college days in the 1930s to his untimely accidental death in Bangkok in 1968 during his personal Eastern pilgrimage. The selections are grouped under eight thematic headings"Geography's Landscapes," "Poems from the Monastery," "Poems of the Sacred," "Songs of Contemplation," "History's Voices: Past and Present," "Engaging the World," "On Being Human," "Merton and Other Languages."

A collection of poems including those published in 1944 in the author's "Thirty poems."

Poems; with an introduction by Mark van Doren. First published in 1959.

Poems; 102 pages.

Poems; 102 pages.

Poems; 32 pages.

Poems; 29 pages.

Cassian and the Fathersis the initial volume in the series of Novitiate Conferences of Thomas Merton, the classes he presented to young men beginning their monastic life at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. They contain Merton's insights on important Patristic and monastic figures preceding the time of St. Benedict, above all John Cassian, the most significant bridge between the early desert fathers and the development of monastic life in the West, and they reveal the continuing relevance of their teachings for contemporary monastics and other Christians. Much of the value and interest of Cassian and the Fathers,as of the novitiate conferences in general, lies in the light it casts on Merton himself as teacher, novice master and monk. These notes provide a privileged standpoint for observing Merton functioning as an integral and important member of his monastic community. The 'public' Merton has long been visible in his works written for publication, and has more recently been complemented by the 'interpersonal' Merton disclosed in his correspondence and the 'intimate' Merton revealed in his complete journals. While the novitiate conferences may not equal in significance these other sources, they do allow access to yet another stratum of Merton's wide-ranging and immensely productive engagement with his world from the distinctive standpoint he had chosen within a tradition dating back more than sixteen centuries. While these lectures need to be used critically and carefully in evaluating Merton's own perspectives and commitments, nevertheless they do need to be used. The dialectical relationship between Merton's private and more public statements, including those made to his novice classes, makes possible a more complex and thus a richer picture of his monastic identity and so of his personal identity. In learning about Cassian and the Fathers from Merton, one learns as well about Merton as monk, as heir to the great monastic teachers, and as teacher of a new generation of monks, an easily overlooked and undervalued, yet integral, even central component of his vocation for more than half his monastic life. Thus the publication of the novitiate conferences will fill a significant lacuna in Merton studies and contribute to a balanced, holistic comprehension and appreciation of Thomas Merton's life and work. This edition includes an extensive introduction situating these conferences and Merton's years as novice master in the context of his broader life as monk and writer, an extensively annotated edition of the text of the conferences based on Merton's own typescript, and helpful appendices indicating changes Merton made to his text, correlating the written text with taped versions of the actual classes, and providing suggestions for further reading both in Merton's other works and in more recent studies of the figures he discusses here.

Consists of the original prefaces, in English, which were translated into the various languages. Preface to the French edition of Exile ends in glory.--Preface to the French edition of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.--Preface to the French edition of The ascent to truth.--Preface to the Argentine edition of The complete works of Thomas Merton.--Preface to the Japanese edition of The seven storey mountain.--Preface to the French edition of The black revolution.--Preface to the Japanese edition of Seeds of contemplation.--Preface to the Korean edition of Life and holiness.--Preface to the Spanish edition of Seeds of destruction.--Preface to the Japanese edition of Thoughts in solitude.--Preface to the Vietnamese edition of No man is an island.--Preface to the Japanese edition of The new man.

This thoughtful collection of Merton's essays on various Native American cultures provides a valuable window on Merton's important work raising consciousness about the key social justice issues confronting the world in his later years--issues that continue to have a profound impact on our world today. With references to the civil rights movement and the United States war in Vietnam, Merton draws parallels from history and the modern world to show the deep-rooted nature of society's injustice. In 'Ishi Means Man', Merton's commitment to interreligious, intercultural understanding is the powerful overarching theme that continues to inspire. (Back cover). First published in 1976.

Although it first appeared after his death in 1968, he had arranged for its publication, written a foreword for it, and was delighted with the prospect of its at last becoming a part of his published works. My Argument with the Gestapo tells of the adventures of a young man, clearly identified by the name Thomas Merton, who travels from America to Europe to report on the war with Germany from the viewpoint of a poet. He hates the war, yet is driven to come to terms with it. There is a pervading sense of dreamworld or hallucination, heightened by the device of passages written in a macaronic language, invented from multilingual roots, to satirize and parody political propaganda speeches dealing with the war. A work of imagination (Merton did not in fact return to England after the start of World War II in Europe), it nevertheless contains much that is autobiographical and revealing of the young Merton. Most clearly visible are the seeds of his never-forsaken concern with peace and nonviolence and his abhorrence of war. Indeed, his outspoken criticism of Britain at a time when all the emphasis was on 'the brave little island standing alone' foreshadows his devotion to truth as he saw it, no matter what the cost. And students of Merton will find scenes in the book that are straight autobiography, amplifying and perhaps filling in gaps in what later was to be the beginning of Merton's great literary success, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).

A one-volume anthology of the spiritual writings of the greatest spiritual master the American Catholic church has produced in this century. The selections, which are substantial in length, provide a generous sampling of Merton's vast output. Includes excerpts from "Seven Storey Mountain", "Conjectures of a guilty bystander" and many other works including a chronology of Merton's life.

"With a substantial introduction Thomas Merton includes a broad range of Merton's writings, including his letters, and highlights his threefold call: to prayer, to compassion, and to unity. It offers the essential writings of one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time."--book jacket.

This volume provides a broad cross-section of Merton's work as an essayist, collecting pieces that are characteristic examples of his astonishing output and the fantastic breadth of his interests. The essays range from the wisdom of the desert fathers to the novels of Faulkner and Camus, from interreligious dialogue to racial justice.

A Thomas Merton Reader provides a complete view of Merton, in all his aspects: contemplative, spiritual writer, poet, peacemaker, and social critic. In this closely knit volume are significant selections not only from his major works but from some lesser-known, yet equally valuable, writings as well. Presented here is a living Thomas Merton, expounding through prose and poetry on an abundance of important themes -- war, love, peace, Eastern thought and spirituality, monastic life, art, contemplation, and solitude. M. Scott Peck puts the writings included here into the context of Merton's life. First published in 1962.

Thomas Merton discusses Blake, Joyce, Pasternak, Faulkner, Styron, O'Connor, Camus, symbolism, creativity, alienation, contemplation, and freedom. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) entered the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, following his conversion to Catholicism and was ordained in 1949. During the 1960s, he was increasingly drawn into a dialogue between Eastern and Western religions and was actively engaged with domestic issues of war and racism.

When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life - including a very promising literary career. He sent his journals, a novel-in-progress, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe keeping, fully expecting to write little, if anything, ever again. It was a relatively short-lived resolution, for Merton almost immediately found himself being assigned writing tasks by his Abbot - one of which was the autobiographical essay that blossomed into his international best-seller THE SEVEN STORY MOUNTAIN. That book made him famous overnight, and for a time he struggled with the notion that the vocation of the monk and the vocation of the writer were incompatible. Monasticism called for complete surrender to the absolute, whereas writing demanded a tactical withdrawal from experience in order to record it. He eventually came to accept his dual vocation as two sides of the same spiritual coin and used it as a source of creative tension the rest of his life. Merton's thoughts on writing have never been compiled into a single volume until now. Robert Inchausti has mined the vast Merton literature to discover what he had to say on a whole spectrum of literary topics, including writing as a spiritual calling, the role of the Christian writer in a secular society, the joys and mysteries of poetry, and evaluations of his own literary work. Also included are fascinating glimpses of his take on a range of other writers, including Henry David Thoreau, Flannery O'Connor, Dylan Thomas, Albert Camus, James Joyce, and even Henry Miller, along with many others.

This volume gathers together twelve essays that Thomas Merton wrote for various journals between 1947 and 1952, the years that saw the publication of his best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, his ordination to the priesthood, and his initial appointment as spiritual and intellectual guide of the young monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani. The essays, most of which have never been reprinted, focus above all on aspects of the contemplative life but also consider the spiritual dimensions of literature and the social implications of Christian life. Issued to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, this collection brings to fruition at long last Merton's own original plan of publishing these essays as a group and so makes available a previously little recognized and underutilized resource for understanding and appreciating a crucial transitional phase in his life as both monk and writer.

Nature was always vital in Thomas Merton's life, from the long hours he spent as a child watching his father paint landscapes in the fresh air, to his final years of solitude in the hermitage at Our Lady of Gethsemani, where he contemplated and wrote about the beauty of his surroundings. Throughout his life, Merton's study of the natural world shaped his spirituality in profound ways, and he was one of the first writers to raise concern about ecological issues that have become critical in recent years. In The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton, author Monica Weis suggests that Merton's interest in nature, which developed significantly during his years at the Abbey of Gethsemani, laid the foundation for his growing environmental consciousness. Tracing Merton's awareness of the natural world from his childhood to the final years of his life, Weis explores his deepening sense of place and desire for solitude, his love and responsibility for all living things, and his evolving ecological awareness.

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire.The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their story-a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them-the School of the Holy Ghost-and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common." A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change-to save-our lives.

Biography. First published in 1972.

Originally published fifteen years ago, Merton: A Biography sold 25,000 copies before being taken out of print. For Liguori's reissue, Furlong provides a new introduction, additional material, & a new index to the original edition. Through his work as a spiritual leader, social activist, internationally acclaimed writer, & teacher, Thomas Merton deepened the spiritual life of Christians & non-Christians throughout the world. With great sensitivity & openness, author Monica Furlong meticulously details the life of this incredible man - from his boyhood in France & England, his years at Gethsemani, to his premature death in the Orient. Merton: A Biography illustrates the human side to this twentieth-century prophet. While being one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time, he was also a man, struggling to understand his own spirituality & wrestling with self-doubt & guilt. His struggle to do the right thing is portrayed through his painful psychological development, the adamant social stances he took with controversial movements, & his confrontations with authority. What emerges is a man in search of spiritual enlightenment determined to live a virtuous life. Though Merton never strived to become the great leader he was, he attracted an enormous international following that thrives today.

A biography of the Catholic priest who wrote "The Seven Storey Mountain."

For twenty-seven years, renowned and beloved monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968) belonged to Our Lady of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery established in 1848 amid the hills and valleys near Bardstown, Kentucky. In Thomas Merton's Gethsemani, dramatic black-and-white photographs by Harry L. Hinkle and artful text by Merton scholar Monica Weis converge in a unique experience for lovers of Merton. Hinkle was allowed unprecedented access to many areas inside the monastery and on its grounds that are generally restricted. His photographs invite the reader to experience the various knobs, lakes, woods, and hermitages Merton sought out for times of solitude and contemplation and for reading and writing. These unique images, each accompanied by a passage from Merton's writings, evoke personal reflection and a deeper understanding of how and why Merton came to recognize himself as a part of his Kentucky landscape. Woven throughout the book, Weis's text explores Merton's fascination with nature not only at Gethsemani, but during his early childhood, throughout his spiritual conversion to Roman Catholicism, and while a member of the Trappist community. She examines how Merton's lifelong interaction with nature subtly revealed and informed his profound spiritual experiences and his writing about contemplation. Thomas Merton's Gethsemani replicates Merton's path on his solitary hikes in the woods and conveys the wonder of the landscapes that inspired him.

Biography. Winner of the Religious Book Award of the Catholic Press Association for 1974.

"Here is a significant study of the world's most outspoken monk since Martin Luther and the most conspicuous recluse since Simeon Stylites."

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Roman Catholic priest, a Trappist monk, a social activist, and a poet. Author of the celebrated autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton has been described as the most important American religious writer of the past hundred years. One of the notable characteristics of Merton's writing, both in poetry and in prose, was his seamless intermingling of religious and Romantic elements, an intermingling that, because of his gifts as a writer and because of his enormous influence, has had the effect of making widespread a distinctive form of religious thought and expression. In Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination, Ross Labrie reveals the breadth of Merton's intellectual reach by taking an original and systematic look at Merton's thought, which is generally regarded as eclectic and unsystematic. What captured Merton's attention about Romanticism and mysticism and what held his attention virtually all his life was his consciousness of the ontological significance of unity and wholeness. Even though he was far from being a systematic thinker, Merton's writings form a coherent whole when considered from the point of view of his emphasis on unity and wholeness. Labrie skillfully examines Merton's letters, journals, and individual works to show the full expanse of his contribution. By using insights from the Romantic literary tradition and from the mystical tradition, the author is able to make sense of Merton's writings from all periods of his life. Although Labrie covers such sweeping topics as consciousness, self, being, nature, time, myth, culture, and individuation, remaining focused on Merton's specific, unique contributions in each area. This thought-provoking work, which takes into account material from the recent full publication of Merton's journals and from his Columbia University notebooks on Romanticism, not only shows Merton's intellectual growth but provides a look at his expansive interests as well. Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination will make a significant contribution to Merton studies.

How did Thomas Merton become Thomas Merton? Starting out from any one of his earlier major life moments--wealthy orphan boy, big man on campus, fervent Roman Catholic convert, new and obedient monk--we find ourselves asking how by his life's end he had grown from who he was then into a transcultural and transreligious spiritual teacher read by millions. This book takes another such starting point: his attempt in the mid-1950s to move from his abbey of Gethsemani, in Kentucky--a place that had become, in his view, noisy beyond bearing--to an Italian monastery, Camaldoli, which he idealized as a place of monastic peace. The ultimate irony: Camaldoli at that time, bucolic and peaceful outwardly, was inwardly riven by a pre-Vatican II culture war; whereas Gethsemani, which he tried so hard to leave, became, when he was given his hermitage there in 1965, his place to recover Eden. In walking with Merton on this journey, and reading the letters he wrote and received at the time, we find ourselves asking, as he did, with so much energy and honesty, the deep questions that we may well need to answer in our own lives.

To understand the life and thought of Thomas Merton, one must understand him as a monk. After introducing his vocation and entrance into the Trappist order, this book highlights some of his basic spiritual presuppositions. Relying primarily on Merton's writing, Bonnie B. Thurston surveys his thought on fundamental aspects of monastic formation and spirituality, particularly obedience, silence, solitude, and prayer. She also addresses some of the temptations and popular misunderstandings surrounding monastic life. Accessible and conversational in style, the book suggests how monastic spirituality is relevant, not only for all Christians, but also for serious spiritual seekers.

The Bluegrass Files series, book 1. Murder/mystery set in Lexington, KY. Young PI, Sonia Vitale, joins forces with ex-Marine, ex-NCIS PI, Brad Dunham, to investigate a suspicious suicide and break up a drug ring.

The Bluegrass Files series, book 2. Private investigator Sonia Vitale and her partner are asked to find a missing young woman who is connected to the Thoroughbred Racehorse industry. Along the way, they also solve a financial crime and trap a cheating husband who has a dark secret.

The Bluegrass Files series, book 3. Bourbon, Bullets, and Blood! Sonia Vitale and her partner, Jet - two young, female private investigators in Lexington, Kentucky - find their resources stretched when they are asked to solve a crime of vengeance that threatens to disrupt one of the most iconic industries in the Bluegrass - the distilling of bourbon. Turning to one steadfast ally and three unexpected sources, they struggle to overcome mortal attacks as they work within an incredibly short time-frame to bring the perpetrator to justice. Little do they know that one of the people they turn to for help has a dark history and an agenda of their own.

The Bluegrass Files series, book 4. Chilling Action . . . Unrestrained Greed! Private investigator Sonia Vitale and her team race to solve a murder and rescue a romantic rival. Along the way, they stumble upon a plan that could put thousands of people at risk. When someone from Sonia's previous life asks her to investigate a murder, she comes face to face with an unbelievable challenge-a re-examination of her own identity. While her partner, Jet, and the other members of the team try to close several other cases, Sonia's fiancée becomes entangled in a dangerous and mystifying deception.

The Bluegrass Files series, book 5. When private investigator Sonia Vitale and her new husband embark on their long-awaited honeymoon, things go horribly wrong. Faced with a choice between turning to the authorities and taking matters into their own hands, Sonia has to choose between loyalty and good sense. While her partner, Jet, tries to close other cases, Sonia discovers there may be darkness in her own soul. Come along for the ride as Sonia chases a mystery more dangerous than any she's faced before, one that takes her on a journey into the deepest recesses of the heart .

What do you believe? Is there a God? Does he or she speak to us - through us? If so, would anyone listen? A female Navajo college student, Abby Duncan, finds herself in a lecture about the First Crusade. Disturbed by the killing of people in the name of God, she challenges the professor. Shortly, a young reporter questions her own beliefs. As she responds, she is unaware these are the first steps on a dangerous journey to the discovery of not only what she believes, but who and what she is. Along the way, Abby raises questions that shed light on what God wants of us and what he or she might feel about the religious practices that ostensibly lead us into a relationship with the divine-as well as the way our beliefs are used to promote the aspirations of individuals as well as political entities.

Any student of American history knows of Washington, Jefferson, and the other statesmen who penned the documents that form the legal foundations of our nation, but many other great minds contributed to the development of the young republic's judicial system -- figures such as William Littell, Ben Monroe, and John J. Marshall. These men, some of Kentucky's earliest law reporters, are the forgotten trailblazers who helped establish the foundation of the state's court system. In Writing the Legal Record: Law Reporters in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky, Kurt X. Metzmeier provides portraits of the men whose important yet understudied contributions helped create a new common law inspired by English legal traditions but fully grounded in the decisions of American judges. He profiles individuals such as James Hughes, a Revolutionary War veteran who worked as a legislator to reform confusing property laws inherited from Virginia. Also featured is George M. Bibb, a prominent U.S. senator and the secretary of the treasury under President John Tyler. To shed light on the pioneering individuals responsible for collecting and publishing the early opinions of Kentucky's highest court, Metzmeier reviews nearly a century of debate over politics, institutional change, human rights, and war. Embodied in the stories of these early reporters are the rich history of the Commonwealth, the essence of its legal system, and the origins of a legal print culture in America.

Kentucky Constitution; Kentucky Judicial System; Kentucky Statutory Authority; Local Legislation, Kentucky Legislative Process & History; Case Law Research, Administrative Law; Legal Ethics Research; Treatises & Practice Books; Electronic Resources; Legal History Resources; Citation.

Kentucky Legal Research has been written to help beginning legal researchers develop an understanding of basic skills and techniques for finding Kentucky and federal law, and to provide experienced researchers with a convenient, comprehensive reference guide to Kentucky legal resources.
Kentucky Legal Research can be used as a textbook for teaching both first-year and advanced legal research courses, and in paralegal instruction. It is written in clear language with a process-oriented approach designed to make complex procedures accessible to readers. The first chapter discusses the research process and the rudiments of legal analysis. Following chapters discuss the state constitution, researching judicial opinions in law reporters, statutory research, finding the legislative history of statutes, and administrative law. The book concludes with chapters on court rules, updating with citators, secondary sources, and online legal research. There is an appendix that briefly discusses legal citation under Kentucky rules and customs, the Bluebook, and the ALWD manual.
This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.

Fifth edition.
From the cover of the fourth volume: "Volumes I and III of the Kentucky Legal Ethics Deskbook went to print in December 2015. The Supreme Court published the amendments contained herein shortly thereafter in the November/December issue of Bench & Bar, Vol. 79, No. 6. The amendments are in effect as of January 1, 2016."

Thesis/dissertation, manuscript.
The emergence of an independent neutralist Africa changed the dynamics of the cold war. The military-strategic orientation of the United States and Soviet Union had little relevance to underdeveloped Africa. Following the death of Joseph Stalin, the USSR began to discard the ideological impediments which had hampered their relations with neutralist Africa, but the United States under the Eisenhower Administration continued to oppose the neutralist doctrine. John F. Kennedy came to office determined to bring a new dynamism to United States foreign policy towards Africa. He declared a new tolerance of neutralism. The decision whether to give foreign aid to Kwame Nkrumah's Volta River project became a test case for the Kennedy administration's new policy toward the neutralist states of Africa. The decision to support the project was a concrete manifestation of that policy. For Kennedy's purposes, it mattered little whether the project failed or succeeded. What was important was that the United States was visibly competing for the trust of neutralist Africa.

Government publication. "Prepared and compiled by R.C.P. Thomas, City Attorney."

Sound Recording. CD, 75 min. Recorded at the 96th AALL annual meeting, July 13-16, 2003, in Seattle, Washington.

Sound recording, audiocassette: analog. Recorded at the 92nd AALL annual meeting on July 19, 1999, in Washington, D.C. 1999 American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting.

"A historical perspective on the reform of Kentucky's court system since the passage of the Constitutional amendment in 1976"--Jacket.