Items

• Michael W. Higgins - Merton and David Jones: Visionaries Both. Presented for the Tuesdays with Merton Series, May 11 , 2021.
  Merton Was in Love With Wales — its poetry, its Celtic sensibility, its ravishing beauty and rich history. Although he came to the art of David Jones rather late in his life, he understood implicitly what Jones was doing as a visionary. There are some striking things that they were doing in parallel unaware of each other, probing the past, resurrecting forgotten cultural memories, attending to the power of ritual and sacrament, aching for unity and harmony. This session will explore some of these creative and spiritual convergences. Dr. Michael W. Higgins is a university president, biographer, journalist, scholar, and media commentator. His book on Cardinal Newman will appear in the Spring of 2021 and his book on Pope Francis in 2023. Past publications on Merton include: Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton; Faithful Visionary; The Unquiet Monk; and Thomas Merton: Pilgrim in Process (ed).
• Kathleen N. Deignan, CND - Overshadowed: Thomas Merton and The Cloud of Unknowing. Presented for the Tuesdays with Merton Series, April 13, 2021.
  Every wisdom tradition describes in its own way a cloud of unknowing that veils the utterly ineffable source and force coursing through this universe as its very life. With paradoxical lucidity on matters of darkness and unknowing, Thomas Merton shared his experience of being "overshadowed" by the Cloud of enveloping Mystery. His desire to live into its Presence has become a well-scripted legacy of post-modern spiritual emergence, written in an idiom that continues to speak cogently to the spiritual pilgrims of the second millennium. This session explores Merton's "familiarity" with the anonymous 14th century master of The Cloud, and his own transmission of its still emerging wisdom. Dr. Kathleen Noone Deignan of the Congregation of Notre Dame is founding director of the Deignan Institute for Earth and Spirit at Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, where she was Professor of Religious Studies for 40 years while guiding The Merton Contemplative Initiative and co-convening The Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue. Past President of the International Thomas Merton Society, she is a regular presenter at its meetings. Her book-length publications include When the Trees Say Nothing: Thomas Merton’s Writings on Nature and Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours, including an audio-book that includes her sacred songs and psalmody.
• 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.)
• Finding Aid for Thomas Merton Correspondence with "Shipps, Howard Fenimore"
• 1954-02-14: Letter to Thomas Merton from Sr. Thérèse de l'Enfant Jesus et de l'Immaculée, M.C.D.
• 1968-03-12: Letter to Thomas Merton from Jean Sulzberger
  Jean Sulzberger writes on behalf of Time-Life Books in New York and asks for a copy of Thomas Merton's literary magazine, Monks Pond.
• 1953-12-04: Letter to Thomas Merton from Fr. Nivard Kinsella, O.C.S.O.
  Kinsella, though expressing positive feedback overall with Merton's book The Ascent to Truth, takes issue with an assertion about modern Thomists (or would like to know Merton's source for his claim) and finds Merton's presentation of "acquired contemplation" and "infused contemplation" to be confusing.
• 1967-05-13: Letter to Thomas Merton from Dorothy Dohen
  Ivan Illich / Merton's essay, "The English Mystics," in Mystics and Zen Masters - Julian of Norwich / distrust of mysticism - Vatican II - Daniel Callahan's article, "The Renewal Mess" / questions Merton omitting the Spanish mystics - connection between St. John of the Cross and Zen
• 1967-04-29: Letter from Thomas Merton to Dorothy Dohen
  Merton sends an "anti-poem about the bomb" (likely "Original Child Bomb") and a copy of his book Mystics and Zen Masters, especially thinking Dohen would appreciate his essay "From Pilgrimage to Crusade."
• 1967-04-12: Letter to Thomas Merton from Dorothy Dohen