Bøger af Thomas Merton

First published in 2003 and now available in paperback to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Thomas Merton's birth, When the Trees Say Nothing has sold more than 60,000 copies and continually inspires readers with its unique collection of Merton's luminous writings on nature, arranged for reflection and meditation.Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, author, poet, social commentator, and perhaps the most influential and widely published spiritual writer of the twentieth century. In When the Trees Say Nothing, editor Kathleen Deignan sheds new light on Merton by focusing on a neglected theme of his writing: the natural world as a manifestation of the divine.Drawing from Merton's voluminous writing on nature, Deignan has thematically assembled a collection of lucid, poetic reflections. Chapters on the four elements, the seasons, the Earth and its creatures, and the sun, moon, and stars provide brief passages from his diverse works that reveal the presence of God in creation.

"Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite-one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.

This is a new release of the original 1950 edition.

In this third volume of papers from Thomas Merton¿s conferences during his decade (1955-1965) as novice master at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani, his insight into the liturgical pattern of the Christian year and beyond is presented in fresh detail. Merton¿s own commitment to this central dimension of Christian life is clear, and nowhere more so than in his work introducing students to the patterns that would mark their lives as monks.Though dating from the period just before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, Merton's commentaries remain pertinent. The thoroughly annotated text is preceded by an extensive introduction situating this material in the context of Merton's lifelong writing on liturgy. Moreover, as his former student Br. Paul Quenon notes in his foreword, this context is one deeply rooted in Merton¿s understanding of Scripture. ¿These notes . . . take us into one man's lifetime of reflection and seasoned experience of the Church Year.¿

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Previously unpublished material from world-renowned Trappist monk and author, Thomas Merton, featuring the final conference talks given in the United States before his untimely death. In May and October of 1968, Thomas Merton offered two extended conferences at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey, a Cistercian women's community in Northern California. Comprising over twenty-six hours of previously unpublished material, Thomas Merton in California covers a variety of topics including ecology and consciousness, yoga and Hinduism, Native American ritual and rites of passage, Sufi spirituality, and inter-religious dialogue, along with extended discussions on prayer and the contemplative life. The material presented in these talks reveals Merton's wide-ranging intellectual and spiritual pursuits in the final year of his life, and fills a long-standing lacuna around Merton's visits to Redwoods Monastery, forming a necessary bridge to the Asian journey that was to come. Practical and applicable, as well as searching and inspired, Thomas Merton in California is essential for Merton readers and scholars, and all those interested in deepening their spiritual lives.

"Kontemplasjon er det høyeste uttrykket for menneskets intellektuelle og spirituelle liv. Det er selve livet: helt våkent, helt aktivt, helt levende. Det er åndelig undring. Det er umiddelbar ærefrykt for livets hellighet, for væren." (kap 1. Hva er kontemplasjon?) FRIHETENS FRØ henvender seg til alle åndelig søkende, og “innbyr til en reise mot noe som er så stort og annerledes at våre forestillinger ikke strekker til”, som Jan Schumacher skriver i forordet. Veien går gjennom vårt sanne selv og erfaringen av Gud som kjærlighet og treenighet, til den store, kosmiske dansen. Boken er et av Mertons mest kjente verker, og et betydelig bidrag til den katolske visdomslitteraturen i fotsporene til Johannes av Korset og middelalderens mystikere. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) var katolikk og munk ved cistercienserklosteret Gethsemani i Kentucky, USA, og han regnes som en av de betydeligste amerikanske tenkerne og forfatterne i det 20. århundret. Hans selvbiografi Seven Story Mountain var et forbilde for beat-generasjonen og har blitt en elsket klassiker. Til tross for sin avskjermede klostertilværelse var Merton dypt engasjert i kampen mot Vietnam-krigen og for borgerrettighetsbevegelsen. Gjennom sitt virke førte han en utstrakt korrespondanse med samtidens religiøse ledere, noe som åpnet for en rik utveksling mellom de ulike kontemplative tradisjonene. Hos Merton finner vi en åpen, udogmatisk kristendom som konsentrerer seg om menneskets indre liv og alle tings hellighet.

Thomas Merton presented numerous sets of conferences during his decade (1955-1965) as novice master at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani. The two courses included in this volume - a thorough examination of the book of Genesis that began in mid-1956 and concluded on the Feast of Pentecost in 1957, and a series of classes on the book of Exodus from 1957 and 1958 - are here presented for the first time in a critical edition accompanied by extensive annotation and a comprehensive introduction. These courses comprise the only major surviving teaching notes on particular books of Scripture dating from the years when Merton was in charge of the novitiate. They provide direct access to his views on the intellectual and spiritual contexts in which they should be understood. As biblical scholar Pauline Viviano writes in her preface, ¿this edition of Thomas Merton¿s class notes brings us into the workings of a great spiritual leader¿s mind as he reflects upon Scripture. . . . all who are on a spiritual journey can gain from his insights and the lessons he draws.¿

In "Bread in the Wilderness," Merton looks at the psalms as poetry; in this book he regards them as prayer. Guiding the reader through the more representative psalms, he explains why the Church also considers the psalms as the best way to praise God. According to Merton: "To put it very plainly, the Church loves the Psalms because in them she sings of her experience of God, of her union with the Incarnate Word, of her contemplation of God in the Mystery of Christ....If we really come to know and love the Psalms, we will enter into the Church's own experience of divine things. We will begin to know God as we ought.

Come into the Silence is an easy-to-use devotional for all those seeking peace, stillness, and solitude in a busy and noisy world. Part of the bestselling Great Spiritual Teachers series, this book invites you into the contemplative life through the words of Thomas Merton, one of the most popular spiritual masters of the twentieth century. In his journals, letters, and spiritual writings such as New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton explored the tension between the human longing for both connection and solitude. Merton, a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani, offered a model of contemplative life that allowed him to be deeply engaged with pressing issues of the time, including the nonviolent civil rights movement. Requiring only a few minutes each day, Come into the Silence helps you realize how God sees you and to embrace his divine vision of you and each person you encounter. This devotional also allows you to reflect deeply on the fundamental longings for meaning, belonging, and intimacy as well as the call to service and social justice in your life. Each book in the Great Spiritual Teachers series provides a month of daily readings from one of Christianity's most beloved spiritual guides. For each day there is a brief and accessible morning meditation drawn from the mystic's writings, a simple mantra for use throughout the day, and a night prayer to focus one's thoughts as the day ends. These easy-to-use books are the perfect prayer companion for busy people who want to root their spiritual practice in the solid ground of these great spiritual teachers.

Begun five years after he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Sign of Jonas is an extraordinary view of Merton's life in a Trappist monastery, and it serves also as a spiritual log recording the deep meaning and increasing sureness he felt in his vocation: the growth of a mind that finds in its contracted physical world new intellectual and spiritual dimensions.

Date of original copyright is 1948. "Introduction" and "Note to the reader" have copyright dates of 1998. "Foreword" has copright date of 2017.

2014 Reprint of 1956 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In "Bread in the Wilderness," Merton looks at the psalms as poetry; in this book he regards them as prayer. Guiding the reader through the more representative psalms, he explains why the Church also considers the psalms as the best way to praise God. According to Merton:"To put it very plainly, the Church loves the Psalms because in them she sings of her experience of God, of her union with the Incarnate Word, of her contemplation of God in the Mystery of Christ....If we really come to know and love the Psalms, we will enter into the Church's own experience of divine things. We will begin to know God as we ought." (pg.9)

The diverse contributors to this issue of Plough Quarterly focus on what it means to be a peacemaker. Peacemaking, they show, is a riskier and more ambitious undertaking than we may have imagined. Today we must wage peace where thousands of children are being murdered by militias or forced to fight as soldiers. We need peacemakers in divided cities from Paris to Baltimore, peacemakers in a culture with little tolerance for Christian witness, and peacemakers in churches riven by ideological fights and petty grudges, not to mention making peace with our spouses, and with ourselves. Hear from active peacemakers on the frontlines of these battles and explore insights on peacemaking from Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Badshah Khan, Jeannette Rankin, Charles Spurgeon, André Trocmé, Peace Pilgrim, Albert Schweitzer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Eberhard Arnold. And as always, Plough Quarterly includes world-class art by the likes of Marc Chagall, Egon Schiele, Lisa Toth, Carl Larsson, Ben Shahn, Mikalojus Konstantinas ¿iurlionis, Paul Klee, Antonello da Messina, and others.Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus¿ message into practice and find common cause with others.

Thomas Merton may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a best-selling author. Cloistered in a remote Kentucky monastery, Merton struggled as a young man to reconcile the contemplative life he sought as a monk and his very public passion for writing. Publisher James Laughlin saw Merton's talent and played the muse, encouraging him with the poems, essays, and diaries of other writers and publishing nearly everything Merton sent in return.Ironically, the very society Merton rejected upon entering the monastery embraced his work, bringing him publishing success only dreamed of by more eager authors. Soon Merton discovered he had a podium, a voice, and a responsibility that weighed as heavily on him as his previous quest for silence. Laughlin's encouragement remained constant throughout, as political ally, publishing adviser, and supporting friend.Nearly thirty years of rich correspondence documents this strong literary and personal relationship and traces the remarkable development of Merton's vision: from an early focus on matters internal and religious, to a tremendous world view encompassing issues of race, politics, war, and the spiritual decay of modern society.

The best-known Cistercian of the twentieth century reflects on the teaching and life of the most renowned Cistercian of the twelfth century. Three essays written in the 1950s explore the relation of contemplation and action in the monastic vocation and in the life of Christians.

Cassian and the Fathers is the initial volume in the series of Novitiate Conferences of Thomas Merton, the classes he presented to young men beginning their monastic life at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. They contain Merton's insights on important Patristic and monastic figures preceding the time of St. Benedict, above all John Cassian, the most significant bridge between the early desert fathers and the development of monastic life in the West, and they reveal the continuing relevance of their teachings for contemporary monastics and other Christians. Much of the value of interest of Cassian and the Fathers, as of the novitiate conferences in general, lies in the light it casts on Merton himself as teacher, novice master and monk. These notes provide a privileged standpoint for observing Merton functioning as an integral and important member of his monastic community. The 'public' Merton has long been visible in his works written for publication, and has more recently been complemented by the 'interpersonal' Merton disclosed in his correspondence and the 'intimate' Merton revealed in his complete journals. This edition includes an extensive introduction situating these conferences and Merton's years as novice master in the context of his broader life as monk and writer, an extensively annotated edition of the text of the conferences based on Merton's own typescript, and helpful appendices indicating changes Merton made to his text, correlating the written text with taped versions of the actual classes, and providing suggestions for further reading both in Merton's other works and in more recent studies of the figures he discusses here.

A 365 daily with inspirational and provocative selections from the journals of Thomas Merton combined with drawings and photographs by Merton.This volume of daily inspiration from Thomas Merton draws from Merton's journals and papers to present, each day, a seasonally appropriate and thought-provoking insight or observation.Each month will begin with one of Merton's delightful pen-and-ink drawings or one of his elegant black-and-white photographs.

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton's last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life. Never before published except as a series of articles (one per chapter) in an academic journal, this book on contemplation was revised by Merton shortly before his untimely death. The material bridges Merton's early work on Catholic monasticism, mysticism, and contemplation with his later writing on Eastern, especially Buddhist, traditions of meditation and spirituality. This book thus provides a comprehensive understanding of contemplation that draws on the best of Western and Eastern traditions. Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; it was the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now the Merton Legacy Trust and experts have determined that the book makes such a valuable contribution as his major comprehensive presentation of contemplation that they have allowed its publication.