The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals - Hardcover

Merton, Thomas; Hart OCSO, Patrick

4.27

350 ratings by Goodreads

9780745944357: The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745944353 ISBN 13: 9780745944357

Publisher: Lion Books, 2000

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This text uses edited features to tell Merton's life in his own words from 1939 to his death in 1968. His love of God, his struggles with the community life of his monastery and in particular with his Abbot, his religious writings and his love affair with a young nurse are recounted.;Merton lent his support to many reforming causes, one instance being the day Joan Baez tried to persuade him to leave the monastery and join her anti-war campaign. He describes falling in love, the letters, secret phone calls, clandestine meetings with "M" and the ending of their relationship to re-commit himself as a celibate monk.

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Review:

Thomas Merton is one of the world's most famous monks, but can a monk be famous and still be a monk? Merton is captivating because he is a contradiction. He wrestled with his vocation to be a Trappist monk, hidden in the Kentucky woods, and his call to be a writer. Voicing the struggle in his journal, Merton quotes the Chinese sage Chuang Tzu, "Who can free himself from achievement and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men...such is the perfect man."

Merton kept a journal from the age of 16, and this selection from its seven volumes shows him struggling almost daily with the clash between his monastic vocation and his desire to move on a bigger stage. Lovers of Merton will love this book; those who view him with more scepticism will find it hard not to be attracted by his clear style and pursuit of an innocent vision. Edited by Patrick Hart, a fellow monk at Merton's old monastery, and Jonathan Montaldo, the director of the Thomas Merton Centre, the book redacts Merton's journals to a fascinating chronicle of his life from just before he entered the monastery to the day of his death in an electrical accident in Bangkok. Eight pages of black and white photos capture the zest and spirituality of the man, while a complete index illustrates the wide range of his reading and friendships. Together with a handsome design and solid feel they make The Intimate Merton an excellent companion to Merton's classic autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain. --Dwight Longenecker

About the Author:

THOMAS MERTON (1915 - 1968) is one of the 20th century's great spiritual mystics. Through his books, poems and other writings he detailed his conversion from a hedonistic youth to Catholicisim in his 20s to his subsequent life as a Trappist monk and hermit. Throughout his life he maintained a passionate interest in the great causes of his day - social justice, anti-war campaign and inter-religious dialogue.

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