UNITED STATES AUTHOR · BIBLE · SPIRITUAL LIFE
M. Basil Pennington
Also known as: Basil Pennington, M. Basil, OCSO Pennington
Father M. Basil Pennington (1931-2005) died June 3 of injuries sustained in an automobile accident 67 days earlier. Educated at Catholic schools, he entered the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly known as the Trappists, in 1951 at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. He was consecrated as a monk in 1956 and ordained as a priest in 1957. He later studied in Rome at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas and Gregorian University, obtaining a licentiate in theology and another degree in canon law. Pennington was a friend of Thomas Merton and was present at the Second Vatican Council. During the 1970s, his interest in Eastern and Russian Orthodoxy led him to accept an unprecedented invitation to Mount Athos in Greece. He also took a six-week pilgrimage to India where he received darshan from Mother Teresa and Father Bede Griffiths. These interfaith adventures resulted in books. Over his long and illustrious life he wrote 57 books and 1,000 thousand articles. Pennington was a co-founder of the centering prayer movement and a gifted writer on the spiritual practice of lectio divina. Throughout the 1980s, he lectured around the world and gave spiritual guidance in monasteries from Europe to the Philippines. In February 2000, Pennington was elected abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, but he returned to St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer in July of 2002. He was buried there on June 10, 2005.
Bernard's sermon On Conversion was given in 1140 in Paris, as a public discourse.
— from Correspondence, 1975
Most acclaimed
The Song of songs
This elliptical story of nineteenth-century shtetl Europe is narrated by Shimek whose older brother drowned, leaving an orphaned daughter. This baby niece - Buzie - who is raised as Shimek's sister, becomes at first an audience for his magical tales; then his companion on journeys through Edenic woods and fields; and, at last, the love of his life. This love, first frustrated by Shimek's inability to speak his heart, is finally and ironically shattered on a fine point of Jewish tradition: Though an uncle may marry his niece, Shimek and Buzie have been raised as brother and sister. Shimek's tribute from the Biblical Song of Songs - "my sister, my bride" - becomes a mocking taboo. . Told in four parts, gorgeously written and translated, framed by the periodic cycle of the natural world, and magically decorated with a dozen specially commissioned paintings, this edition of The Song of Songs brings to compassionate life two of the most memorable star-crossed lovers in modern literature.
Psalms
"This text introduces the book of Psalms and provides an exposition of each psalm with attention to genre, liturgical connections, societal issues, and the psalm,♯s̥ place in the book of Psalms as a whole. The treatments of the psalms feature a close look at particular issues raised by the text and the encounters between the world of the psalm and the world of contemporary readers. The exposition of each psalm provides a reader,♯s̥ guide to the text in conversation with relevant theological issues"--
Correspondence
1975
""I am leaving to Tahiti where I shall hope to end my days. My art...I regard as no more than a tender shoot, though one that I hope to develop into a wild and primitive growth.... The European Gauguin has ceased to exist and nobody will ever see any of his works here again."" "With these words, Paul Gauguin set off on a voyage that would not only irrevocably change his own life and work, but also the entire course of modern art. This volume combines for the first time the artist's public expressions of his world - his paintings - with his private correspondence - to his estranged wife, his agent, and his illustrious contemporaries such as Strindberg and van Gogh. Gauguin vividly describes his creative movements as well as the details of his daily life, most poignantly his consuming worries about health and finances." "The book is illustrated throughout with many of Gauguin's most ambitious and beautiful canvases. Watercolors and pencil sketches illuminate the early stages of these major works, and illustrated journal pages and rare vintage photographs reveal the people and places he knew." "An invaluable insight into Gauguin's life, this volume is equally important for its determined look at the transgressive spirit of those artists who challenge the conventions of their time to create an art of the future."--BOOK JACKET.