Thomas Merton in Pictures
From the archives of the Thomas Merton Center.
Used with permission of the Merton Legacy Trust. | Thomas Merton (1915–1968)Includes the names: Thomas Merton, Tomasz Merton, Thomas Merton, Merton Thomas, Thomas Merton, Thomas Mereton, Thomas S Merton, Thomas tr. Merton, Thomas Merton, SJ, Thomas Merton OCSO ... (see complete list), Thomas OSCO Merton, Thomas Merton OCSO, Father Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton & others, トマス マートン, Томас Мертон, Thomas; Translator Merton, By (author) Thomas Merton, Fr. Thomas Merton C.S.S.O., [Thomas Merton - translator]., Introduction By Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton, Thomas. (Robert E. Daggy). Ed. Merton, Thomas Merton, en religion le Père Louis, Thomas Merton Edited By Naomi Burton Stone and Bro 28,752 (36,926) | 355 | 592 | (3.97) | 84 | 0 | Born in France, Thomas Merton was the son of an American artist and poet and her New Zealander husband, a painter. Merton lost both parents before he had finished high school, and his younger brother was killed in World War II. Something of the ephemeral character of human endeavor marked all his works, deepening the pathos of his writings and drawing him close to Eastern, especially Buddhist, forms of monasticism. After an initial education in the United States, France, and England, he completed his undergraduate degree at Columbia University. His parents, nominally friends, had given him little religious guidance, and in 1938, he converted to Roman Catholicism. The following year he received an M.A. from Columbia University and in 1941, he entered Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, where he remained until a short time before his death. His working life was spent as a Trappist monk. At Gethsemani, he wrote his famous autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain" (1948); there he labored and prayed through the days and years of a constant regimen that began with daily prayer at 2:00 a.m. As his contemplative life developed, he still maintained contact with the outside world, his many books and articles increasing steadily as the years went by. Reading them, it is hard to think of him as only a "guilty bystander," to use the title of one of his many collections of essays. He was vehement in his opposition to the Vietnam War, to the nuclear arms race, to racial oppression. Having received permission to leave his monastery, he went on a journey to confer with mystics of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. He was accidentally electrocuted in a hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 10, 1968. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from The Seven Storey Mountain … (more) |
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Thomas Merton has 1 past event. (show)  Book Discussion Group: June The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie"The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God. In the mid-twentieth century, four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their story - a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them - the School of the Holy Ghost - and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common."
A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change - to save - our lives." --- This title is the choice for Salzmann Library's June Book Discussion Group.
If you are interested in learning more about this book, reading works by the aforementioned authors, or reading more about them, we currently have a display featuring our book club pick.
Read On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge, or Thomas Merton's famous book The Seven Story Mountain. If you prefer biographies, we have Flannery by Brad Gooch and many others. Then come to the library to discuss and learn more about these four authors and their works.
We look forward to seeing you! (SalzmannStaff)… (more)
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Canonical name | | Legal name | | Other names | | Date of birth | | Date of death | | Burial location | | Gender | | Nationality | | Country (for map) | | Birthplace | | Place of death | | Cause of death | | Places of residence | | Education | | Occupations | | Relationships | | Organizations | | Awards and honors | | Agents | | Short biography | | Disambiguation notice | | | Improve this authorCombine/separate worksAuthor divisionThomas Merton is currently considered a "single author." If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author. IncludesThomas Merton is composed of 27 names. You can examine and separate out names. Combine with…
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