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  Sr. Elena Malits, CSC, a 2019 interview by Jonathan Montaldo

  In 2019, Jonathan Montaldo interviewed Sr. M. Elena Malits, CSC. Sr. Elena passed away on March 10, 2022. She was professor emerita in Religious Studies at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and was teaching a course on film to students at the time of recording in 2019. In the area of Thomas Merton studies, she is well-known for her book The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton's Transforming Journey. At the time of recording of the interview, the 2021 biennial conference of the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS) was planned for Saint Mary's College and titled, "Thou Inward Stranger." The 2021 conference was held online due to COVID-19. (The 2023 conference, "Sophia Comes Forth, Reaching," will be held at Saint Mary's June 22-25, 2023: merton.org/2023.)
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  Jonathan Montaldo - Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Exercises for Entering the School of Our Lives. Presented for the Tuesdays with Merton Series, December 8, 2020.

  The volume Monastic Observances includes Merton's notes for teaching prayer. He inspired his novices to apprehend their lives as "schools of wisdom". He mentored a contemplative re-translation of their historical and inner experiences as exercises designing their truest selves. Merton's writing contains his own spiritual exercises for his continuing education in the school of a Divine Providence. Exercises in his journals can mentor re-translations of our own lives, producing conscious epiphanies of the graced interdependence of "all things" that continually conspire to propel our loving the world of our relationships that create our "one, wild and precious" lives (Mary Oliver). Jonathan Montaldo served as director of the Thomas Merton Center and as president of the ITMS. As associate director for the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living, he directed its retreat center Bethany Spring. He co-created Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton and co-edited The Intimate Merton. Other renditions of Merton’s writing include A Year with Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence, and Choosing to Love the World. He narrated five Merton audiobooks. A co-general editor for Fons Vitae’s Thomas Merton & series, he presents retreats based upon Merton’s legacy for mentoring our spiritual formations.