A wonderful telling of Merton’s story. Thank you. You guys talk good. New Seeds was an important guide to me in my earlier years. I found myself checking it out from the library just a couple months ago! (and if I knew that Joan Baez at Gethsemane story, I had forgotten it .)
“I evolved with Merton as he evolves,” Nick says. Merton seems to find me, too, at many turns.
When I had a three-year identity crisis, my counselor suggested I read some Christian mystics, and I started into Merton (like Nick and Pete) with New Seeds and the nature of the false persona whom God cannot know. I read a number of other authors during my crisis, of course, but Merton—because of his relatability, I think, and which you explore here—was my chief companion.
When I started teaching English and composition, Merton showed up in the form of Echoing Silence (a sampling of his journal entries about the writing vocation, and a play, I think, on Entering the Silence) and the 500-plus-paged The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton.
When I wanted broaden my spiritual horizons (with a guide adjacent to my own tradition), Zen and the Birds of Appetite.
When I began discovering the world of faith’s political dynamics, Faith and Violence, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, etc.
I even read Woods, Shore, Desert, his journal about his travels in New Mexico and California, last year before my first trip to California since I was a child.
Maybe some of these pieces can be said to, in general, fall in a certain order. Merton seems to track a perhaps not-uncommon Western spiritual path that begins (but never moves away from) authenticity and an interiority one can live with, to an understanding other faith traditions as a means of deepening (or perhaps deviating from) one’s own, to a fuller faith that doesn’t refuse the world but seeks to work out one’s place in the world.
Despite all of this, I’ve never read a Merton bio, and I’ve certainly never heard him in the context of the last century’s “lost prophets,” a context that helps to make this podcast such a source of hope.
(I love Lax’s poetry and have read James Harford’s Merton and Friends: a Joint Biography of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice, which I think people might enjoy.)
The whole episode was just a joy. But I’d like to offer a few specific points of gratitude:
Pete gave me the best explanation for the place of solitude in protest. I also love his warning about, barring a contemplative practice, the kind of self-congratulation that can lead smaller alternative communities to arrive at a status quo similar to (indeed, unconsciously replicating) the one that they tried to leave in the first place.
Elias on that book we read in our youth and didn’t quite understand but find that our journey can be framed in part on how we continue to process that book. (Poll the audience! One book only, and no fair citing Scripture.)
Pete: What is “mutual obedience” [Benedict] if not equality, if not democracy?
Nick’s description of Merton’s journal entries about his possible affair with the nurse as “weirdly endearing” — yes! I found myself those entries rooting for them as a couple even as I hoped he would maintain his vows. 
John Main’s idea of monastic centers in cities close to the poor. I didn’t know anything about this. Apropos to Main’s visit to Gethsemani, Main’s idea seems like an extension of Merton’s wish to make contemplation available to all. So often, “all“ plays out as the American white middle class. Why can’t the people who maintain buildings and change my hotel sheets have sabbatical years?
Anyway, thank you so much for this discussion and for booking another fascinating guest.
A wonderful telling of Merton’s story. Thank you. You guys talk good. New Seeds was an important guide to me in my earlier years. I found myself checking it out from the library just a couple months ago! (and if I knew that Joan Baez at Gethsemane story, I had forgotten it .)
“I evolved with Merton as he evolves,” Nick says. Merton seems to find me, too, at many turns.
When I had a three-year identity crisis, my counselor suggested I read some Christian mystics, and I started into Merton (like Nick and Pete) with New Seeds and the nature of the false persona whom God cannot know. I read a number of other authors during my crisis, of course, but Merton—because of his relatability, I think, and which you explore here—was my chief companion.
When I started teaching English and composition, Merton showed up in the form of Echoing Silence (a sampling of his journal entries about the writing vocation, and a play, I think, on Entering the Silence) and the 500-plus-paged The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton.
When I wanted broaden my spiritual horizons (with a guide adjacent to my own tradition), Zen and the Birds of Appetite.
When I began discovering the world of faith’s political dynamics, Faith and Violence, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, etc.
I even read Woods, Shore, Desert, his journal about his travels in New Mexico and California, last year before my first trip to California since I was a child.
Maybe some of these pieces can be said to, in general, fall in a certain order. Merton seems to track a perhaps not-uncommon Western spiritual path that begins (but never moves away from) authenticity and an interiority one can live with, to an understanding other faith traditions as a means of deepening (or perhaps deviating from) one’s own, to a fuller faith that doesn’t refuse the world but seeks to work out one’s place in the world.
Despite all of this, I’ve never read a Merton bio, and I’ve certainly never heard him in the context of the last century’s “lost prophets,” a context that helps to make this podcast such a source of hope.
(I love Lax’s poetry and have read James Harford’s Merton and Friends: a Joint Biography of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice, which I think people might enjoy.)
The whole episode was just a joy. But I’d like to offer a few specific points of gratitude:
Pete gave me the best explanation for the place of solitude in protest. I also love his warning about, barring a contemplative practice, the kind of self-congratulation that can lead smaller alternative communities to arrive at a status quo similar to (indeed, unconsciously replicating) the one that they tried to leave in the first place.
Elias on that book we read in our youth and didn’t quite understand but find that our journey can be framed in part on how we continue to process that book. (Poll the audience! One book only, and no fair citing Scripture.)
Pete: What is “mutual obedience” [Benedict] if not equality, if not democracy?
Nick’s description of Merton’s journal entries about his possible affair with the nurse as “weirdly endearing” — yes! I found myself those entries rooting for them as a couple even as I hoped he would maintain his vows. 
John Main’s idea of monastic centers in cities close to the poor. I didn’t know anything about this. Apropos to Main’s visit to Gethsemani, Main’s idea seems like an extension of Merton’s wish to make contemplation available to all. So often, “all“ plays out as the American white middle class. Why can’t the people who maintain buildings and change my hotel sheets have sabbatical years?
Anyway, thank you so much for this discussion and for booking another fascinating guest.