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The Secular Bookhouse by Thomas Merton, a manuscript originally drafted as "Me and the Secular Bookhouse" and published with revisions as "My Visits to the Secular Bookhouse"

This draft of a piece later published as "My Visits to the Secular Bookhouse" was contributed by Merton to the Staff Log, an employee publication of the Louisville Free Public Library. Merton writes in gratitude for Louisville's library and librarians and in praise of librarians in general, also giving insights into some of his varied interests in literature and music.
Thomas Merton—Ashes To Ashes My Dream, by Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Article from The Catholic Worker, Vol. 60, No. 08 (December 1993).
"The Gate of Heaven Is Everywhere"—ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 28, 2019, by Robert Ellsberg.

Robert Ellsberg is the Publisher of Orbis Books and the author, most recently, of A Living Gospel: Reading God’s Story in Holy Lives. His other award-winning books include Blessed Among Us: Saintly Lives for Every Day, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time, and The Saints’ Guide to Happiness. He served as managing editor of The Catholic Worker for two years during the last years of Dorothy Day, and he has dedicated himself to editing her work and promoting her mission. He has edited Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, and All the Way to Heaven: Selected Letters of Dorothy Day. In addition he has edited anthologies of Thich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, Flannery O’Connor, Charles de Foucauld, and Pope Francis. For the past four years he has written a daily entry on saints for Give Us This Day.
"Madness and Meaning: Thomas Merton and the Sixties"—ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 27, 2019, by Joseph Quinn Raab.

Joseph Quinn Raab is professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Siena Heights University. He received a Ph. D. in theology from the University of St. Michael’s College, at the University of Toronto (2000). He is co-editor of The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality and Social Concerns. Thomas Merton produced his most poignant social critiques in the nineteen sixties. With Foucault’s Madness and Civilization in 1961 and Hannah Arendt’s Eichman in Jerusalem in 1963, the problem of what madness means was in the public discourse. This paper explores the problem of “madness” in the final years of Merton’s life and considers their continued relevance in our own mad world.
“From the Inner Frontier to the Last Frontier: Thomas Merton’s 1968 Alaska Journey"—ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 27, 2019, by Kathleen Tarr.

Kathleen Tarr is the author of We Are All Poets Here (2018). She earned her MFA at the University of Pittsburgh and serves on the board of the Alaska Humanities Forum. In 1968, Merton spent 17 days in the land of tundra, glaciers, rain forests, and sacred and majestic mountains—Alaska. An intimate interpretation will be offered about Merton’s short, yet profound, sojourn north. New spiritual insights and physical details will deepen our understanding of this mostly overlooked aspect of Merton’s biography.
"Direct Transmission of Faith"—ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 28, 2019, by Rose Marie Berger.

An advocacy journalist who reports on the intersection of faith, politics, and culture, Rose Marie Berger is a senior associate editor and poetry editor for Sojourners magazine. She has traveled in several conflict zones to report on peacemaking and currently is active in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, which formed in 2016 following a landmark April meeting in Rome on Catholics and nonviolence. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Religion News Service, U.S. Catholic, Huffington Post, The Merton Seasonal, as well as in the collections Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry, Watershed Discipleship, Unsettling the Word, and Choosing Peace: The Catholic Church Returns to Gospel Nonviolence. She has most recently published her first poetry collection, Bending the Arch. A native of the West Coast, Rose was raised in the American River watershed, in traditional Miwok territory in California. For more than 30 years (and six presidential administrations), Rose has lived in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the Anacostia watershed, in traditional Piscataway territory.
"The Reality of Personal Relationships Saves Everything:" Presidential Address—ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 27, 2019, by Mark C. Meade.

Mark C. Meade is the Assistant Director of the Thomas Merton Center in Louisville, Kentucky, and 2017-2019 President of the International Thomas Merton Society. Since coming to the Merton Center in 2003, he has created online finding aids to the Merton Collection, which include a full index of over 20,000 letters and nearly 40,000 manuscripts and published materials by and about Merton. He has delivered lectures on Thomas Merton in the United States, England, and Argentina. His essays on Merton have been published in the United States and Spain. His satirical essay on Merton appears in We Are Already One: Thomas Merton’s Message of Hope. His poems, essays, and reviews have been published in The Merton Seasonal and The Merton Annual. Mark is active in the movement to abolish the death penalty in Kentucky. He has lectured and published papers on Merton's reflections on Albert Camus and both writers' opposition to the death penalty. He has contributed articles on visiting Kentucky's death row to Fellowship magazine and U.S. Catholic.
1962-07-09: Postcard to Merton from "Zahn, Gordon Charles, 1918-2007." Photograph of Sankt Radegund cemetery in Austria with grave of Franz Jägerstätter circled in pen by Gordon Zahn sent to Thomas Merton, 1962 July 9.

Thomas Merton asked Gordon Zahn if he had a photograph of the grave of Franz Jägerstätter. Zahn sent Merton a photograph with the grave marked in pen. Blessed Franz Jägerstätter was an Austrian, Catholic lay person, and conscientious objector during the Second World War. The Nazi regime denied him an alternative to armed combat. He was imprisoned and executed in 1943.
Excerpt from "The (Almost) Final Days of Thomas Merton: A Conversation with Harold Talbott." Interview conducted by Bonnie B. Thurston.

Harold Talbott describes how he came to know both Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama. After having met Merton 10 years earlier at Gethsemani Abbey, Talbot met Merton again in New Delhi and brought Merton to meet the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala. Bonnie Thurston interviews Harold Talbott.
James Finley - Thomas Merton Salute for Merton Centennial, an excerpt from Morgan Atkinson's film, "The Many Storeys and Last Days of Thomas Merton"