Merton's humanity can be discovered and accessed by reading many of his journals and letters that have been published before and after his death. It set me on a whole new level of "awe." I still pick that book up every now and then, because it never fails to stir me, to reignite my spiritual hungers, thirsts – to fan my dulled embers into flame. It took God out of the air, out of the "up there" and suddenly a "relationship" with God seemed to truly possible.
That was a vivid, understandable, "feelable" line about God that I had never come across in spiritual books. The experimental “awareness” of the presence of God is just as truly a created thing as a glass of beer” (Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pages 35 &37, emphasis added). The sense of interior peace is no less created than a bottle of wine. But recollection is just as much a creature as an automobile. “Sometimes contemplatives think that the whole end and essence of their life is to be found in recollection and interior peace and the presence of God. In one of the early editions of the book he had a phrase that completely woke me up to a totally new kind of spiritual awareness. During my formation years for the priesthood I reread it every year for eight years straight. His book, New Seeds of Contemplation, had a strong impact on my own spirituality. His ideas resonate in many of us because his spirituality courses in and through our own flesh and blood. His spiritual writings are very "incarnational" – filled with common sense. I believe much of his popularity can be attributed to the humanity evident in his work. Interest in his work has played an important part in the rise of spiritual exploration during the last decades. There are a number of Merton study centers and groups throughout the United States. Merton's influence has grown since his death in 1968. The magazine, National Review, featured the book in its list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century. It had a tremendous impact and was responsible for a great number of World War II Veterans, college students and other youths entering monasteries across the U.S.
His most popular book was his bestselling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). Merton wrote 70 books on a wide range of topics: spirituality, monasticism, prayer, contemplation, comparative religion – especially Eastern and Christian – social justice, civil rights, nuclear arms, pacifism, as well as collections of poetry. He is considered a major 20th century Catholic spiritual writer, thinker, and even a "mystic", by some.
This year is the 100 anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, ordained a priest in 1949, died Dec.
0 kommentar(er)
