Thomas Merton

This book is a collection of excerpts from Thomas Merton's writings, arranged in four parts so as to parallel the journey of a seeking soul in the modern world. "Real and False Selves" distinguishes between our real selves, a deep religious mystery known entirely only to God, and the identities we take on in order to function in society. "The World We Live In" provides a spiritual context to modern life, moving from a stark rejection of its empty promises to a deep compassion for its tragic limitations. "Antidotes to Illusion" reflects on contemplative practices that can serve as the allies of our "real selves" in the battle against illusion: silence, solitude, meditation, prayer, charity, and faith. "Love in Action" explores the role of the contemplative in the modern age and the challenges and pitfalls of living a life of active love. Merton critiques a society driven by technology and rampant acquisition, the politics of "good versus evil," and the self-deluding complacency of the spiritual "lifestyle."--Publisher's description.

In this thoroughly revised edition of a classic in spirituality, Walter Brueggemann guides the reader into a thoughtful and moving encounter with the Psalms. This new edition includes a revised text, new notes, and new bibliography.The movement and meeting of God with us is indeed a speech-event in which new humanness is evoked among us. Being attentive to language means cultivating the candid imagination to bring our own experience to the Psalms and permitting it to be disciplined by the speech of the Psalms. And, conversely, it means letting the Psalms address us and having that language reshape our sensitivities and fill our minds with new pictures and images that may redirect our lives.

Merton's pilgrimage to Asia, reaching out in ecumenism to Islam, Zen, Sufism, and Buddhism, but not breaking from his Christian roots.

Free renderings of selections from the works of Chuang-tzŭ, taken from various translations.

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.

Narrative of slave life, mainly in Missouri.

A final work by the late Trappist monk and civil activist draws connections between his earlier and later writings while drawing on Christian and Eastern traditions to consider the meaning of daily contemplation and th heart of monastic and religious experience.

Thomas Merton must have seemed an unlikely candidate for best-selling author. Cloistered in a remote Kentucky monastery, Merton struggled as a young man to reconcile his intrinsic desire to write with his chosen life as a Trappist monk. James Laughlin encountered Merton's work early, when it was still firmly rooted in religious theme and form. Although he had created the New Directions Publishing Corporation as a means of participating in the fledgling modernist literary movement, Laughlin recognized in Merton's poetry a profound voice that even the strictest self-censorship could not hide. He encouraged the young monk to follow his poetic instincts and was richly rewarded. Merton developed into one of Laughlin's most daring authors, revealing in poems and essays a tremendous world view encompassing issues of race, politics, war, and the spiritual decay of modern society. Nearly thirty years of lively correspondence documents this remarkable literary and personal relationship. The different perspectives of Merton and Laughlin produce a fascinating portrait of the times, and their letters open an important window into the life and mind of Thomas Merton.

Includes excerpts from "Seven storey mountain", "Conjectures of a guilty bystander" and many other works including a chronology of Merton's life.