Jesus was killed as a disturber of the peace, in part at least because he refused to look on the external enemy, the Romans, as the problem and insisted that the internal injustice within their society was their true enemy. I feel renewed by this return of Thomas Merton to my thoughts, and I trust readers who are already familiar with his pugnacity and earthiness will enjoy revisiting him. The nut of ecology, its deepest secret, is its invitation to us to lose control, to serve rather than to rule, and to allow our own nature its freedom and unfolding—the hawk Merton observes, fl ying in freedom—to be religious in the belief that there is a God that we can never fully know or understand. When we stop regarding nature as our guide, we are left with human reason and ingenuity, which are insuffi cient for embracing the whole of existence. The goodwill, intelligence, and energy that have gone into such practices could be directed toward the world in which we live.
Based on the Matthew chapter 5, each Beatitude is examined, not as ‘cop-out words inviting us … Find all the books, read about the author and more.
Merton quotes John Chrysostom, as well from the lessons of St. Barnabas’ Day: “As long as we remain sheep, we overcome. I hope that this book will teach us that monasticism is not an anachronism in our time, but that as monasticism finds its identity in the context of modern life, transformed and renewed sometimes along the line of Merton’s suggestions, it will have a new flowering in some form. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. This is a later work of Merton's, and what comes across more than anything is his all too human moodiness. It is not a romantic set of ideas, it does not argue a naïve pacifism: if only everyone ate brown rice and didn’t carry guns, then we would have peace. All our political news and speeches sound like the howling of wolves, and never the bleat of sheep. I think the reason why Jesus’ own family thought he had gone mad was precisely because he took that future promise out of the realm of ideas and into the realm of present daily life. At times he seems to despair of the human condition. So we fear beauty.” Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there. I hope we can learn from his words how important it is not to confuse psychological problems with theological issues, and to see the relevance to families and individuals of bona fi de spiritual teachers. At the same time that he shows reverence for the world’s spiritual wisdom, he also teaches by example how to be a Christian, and indeed a Catholic, without becoming preoccupied and distracted by internal political matters of authority and ethical anxiety. File Size : 69.85 MB Merton’s passages in this collection alone show how to think theologically and religiously without ever losing sight of the value of all sources of religious wisdom.
And that truth sets us free. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. At first Merton shocked us by speaking to the world so effectively under a vow of silence. a) An open readiness to suffer evil oneself, to accept misunderstanding, abuse, violence, death itself. c) If non-violence becomes too much of a self-conscious game, it can lose the capacity for compassion and grief. We may not want to be plugged into electronic media and have our thoughts laundered daily with biased news, superfi cial commentary, and “lite” entertainment. He imagined neither a religion colluding with worldliness (where is contemptus mundi in that?) Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. File Size : 62.51 MB Read : 1249, Author : Elena Malits For example, he says, “We believe, not because we want to know, but because we want to be.” Steeped in the great spiritual literature of holy ignorance, Merton can urge us away from information for its own sake or from the illusion that we can know everything, and should, if we want to flourish. Paths are made by those who walk them. His allegiance to Catholicism and to his order comes through strong and constant in these passages, and yet the complexity of both enriches the texture of his loyalties and perhaps in a positive way complexifies the reader’s notions of both Catholicism and monastic life. Information has taken the place of wisdom and ruined education, and data collection has superseded refl ection. Formal religion is not the root problem, but a loss of religious sensibility, a recognition of the absolute importance of a holy life in a sacred world. Here is a man able and willing to be a neighbor and a guide. Unable to add item to Wish List. The mad conviction that the future can only grow out of the present by being anticipated in it, however partial and ambiguous that may be! Download : 993 Today there is much excited talk about an “information superhighway,” but both words are abhorrent to the soul. It was full of joy amid the anxiety of modern life, and it teemed with appreciation for many philosophies, theologies, and literatures. Format : PDF
“One has to be alone, under the sky, before everything falls into place and one finds his own place in the midst of it all.” One gets the impression reading these passages that Merton often had his head lift ed to the sky, an astrologer of a monkish sort, clothed with habit and boots, watching the auguries of the birds, the weather, and the seasons. ‘If you are struck on one cheek, turn the other’ is not a call to ignore violence, but a defiant: “Now that you have had your way, what now?”. File Size : 45.29 MB Each beatitude, it seems to me, contains a), b) Because the hunger is for what is right in an objective way it challenges those easy, noble phrases I mentioned before about defending democratic freedoms and human rights, when they are really. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is a collection of reflections on the world in the 1960s which illumine what is happening now. Marx’s words resonate: “The social principles of Christianity encourage dullness, lack of respect, submissiveness and self-abasement.”. But the myth generated by this book and the breadth of the author you feel as you move from Kentucky field to Th omistic philosophy are that of a real personality. It is a hunger to see the kingdom realised today, in this political and historical reality. But please keep singing. In this series of notes, opinions, and reflections kept since 1956, Thomas Merton examines some of the most urgent moral issues of the modern era. These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Download : 272
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Lateral thinking, creative imagination that the weak are not under a hopeless curse, and that the security of the powerful is in fact a myth. He came to find quiet. Maybe the problem is that nature is so much bigger than we are—“How absolutely central,” Merton writes, “is the truth that we are first of all part of nature”—and asks the impossible from us: reverence. When I was young I used to hear words like ‘meek’, ‘humble’, ‘poor in spirit’, ‘obedient’, in a pious and over-spiritual way. Dialogue with the world on reasonable terms doesn’t force religion on anyone, he said. They form a sort of opiate to enable people to cope pragmatically, with the harsh realities of the present. It asks us to be religious, dependent, respectful, cooperative. The beautiful kingfisher in dazzling flight rattles like a bird of ill omen. An amazing insight into global problems from a monk who spent his life in devotion to God.. It makes no difference if you live like a prince or a hermit; the point is whether or not you live out in your own life the unconscious and unconsidered principles of the society at large. Download : 881 a) The constant heartache to see justice and love and truth prevail. Emeritus Fellow of Christian Theology It becomes a self-forgetting joy in truth as such, wherever or whoever it comes from – even our adversary. Read : 784, Author : Gary Commins File Size : 76.57 MB Newman University. These interests, which cannot but be at the expense of other people’s lives, are made legitimate by our western ideology of the individual, and baptised by Christian moralism. Most of what we endeavour we do with four or five motivations at once. 1 post Articles; Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Written at the time of the Greenham Common Women’s protest against nuclear missiles, Tom argues that part of being a follower of Christ I to engage in a non-violent struggle for a just world. Download : 981 —DEUTERONOMY 5:15 My life is like the crane who cries a few times under the pine tree And like the silent light from the lamp in the bamboo grove —PO CHU-I. Download : 745 File Size : 49.68 MB Author : Thomas Merton a) A call to abandon the stupid self-image we have of being self-sufficient. Likewise the freedom of knowing our need and dependence is creative only if we are not secretly longing to control and manipulate others.