Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

These letters, arranged chronologically, offer invaluable insights into the publishing process that brought some of Merton's most important writings to his readers.

In this volume, editors F. Douglas Scutchfield and Paul Evans Holbrook Jr. have collected the trio's complete correspondence for the first time.

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God. 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."

Author Jim Forest is a founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship and former General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

While one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time, Merton was also a man, struggling to understand his own spirituality & wrestling with self-doubt & guilt. His struggle to do the right thing is portrayed through his painful psychological development, the adamant social stances he took with controversial movements, and his confrontations with authority. What emerges is a man in search of spiritual enlightenment determined to live a virtuous life.

Silent Lamp is the name given to Merton two years before he died by the Chinese philosopher John Wu--and a perfect metaphor for the healing light that still spreads from his life and work to people everywhere.

Taking up where Merton's own Seven Storey Mountain ends, this penetrating biography by Lawrence Cunningham explores Merton's monastic life and his subsequent growth into a modern-day spiritual master. Though the basic story of Thomas Merton's life may be well known, the details of his spiritual development are less familiar. Cunningham shows that Merton's prolific writings and his continuing influence can only be understood against the background of his contemplative experience as a Trappist monk.

Reprint of volume 18 of the Cistercian Studies Series, under the title, Merton's Theology of Prayer.

Presents Thomas Merton as the quintessential American outsider who defines himself in opposition to the world and then discovers a way back into dialogue with that world and compassion for it.