Items

• "Thomas Merton's MY ARGUMENT WITH THE GESTAPO:" ITMS Sixteenth General Meeting at Santa Clara University in California, June 27, 2019, by Ron Hansen.
  Ron Hansen is the author of screenplays, two collections of stories, a book of essays, and nine novels, the most recent being The Kid, which is based on the life of the outlaw William H. Bonney. Ron graduated from Creighton University in Omaha and went on to the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University where he was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellow. His novel Atticus was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Mariette in Ecstasy won the Gold Medal in Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. Ron’s writing has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University and a permanent deacon for the Diocese of San Jose.
• "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.
• What Are These Wounds? the life of a Cistercian mystic, Saint Lutgarde of Aywières, by Thomas Merton. Manuscript proof of the book's preface with handwritten corrections.
  Typed manuscript proof with handwritten corrections of Merton's book, What Are These Wounds? (likely an editor's corrections and not Merton's corrections).
• 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.
• Daniel Berrigan excerpt on religious vows and the relationship of sacraments to community life: from Merton Recordings #017 Tr-3 - Rev. Dan Berrigan S.J. "Poverty" (4:26-6:13)
• St. Robert of Molesme and the Foundation of Cîteaux. Extract from Thomas Merton's "Cistercian History. Notes."
  Handwritten notes by Thomas Merton on Citeaux and Saint Robert of Molesme likely used as an outline for teaching novices monastic history. This extract from a longer group of notes is Section 6 in "Cistercian History. Notes" from Merton Center Sub-Section E.1.
• The Annunciation excerpt from a manuscript of The Ascent to Truth
  Page 397 of a manuscript of "The Ascent to Truth" corresponding to page 317 of the first published edition by Harcourt Brace in 1951. The manuscript has a draft title of "The Ascent to Light."
• "The Awakening of a New Consciousness in Zen," paper by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, review by Thomas Merton.
• Journal for the Protection of All Beings, No. 1 (1961), cover and contents
  The first piece in the first issue of the journal is Thomas Merton's poem, "Chant To Be Used In Processions Around a Site With Furnaces." Other contributions by: Bertrand Russell, Gary Snyder, Kay Johnson, Antonin Artaud, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs (interviewed), Albert Camus, Michael McClure, James Mitchell, David Meltzer, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Norman Mailer.
• A page from the final manuscript of the book The Climate of Monastic Prayer (more widely known as Contemplative Prayer) written by Thomas Merton and published posthumously. The page begins Chapter XV in the manuscript and in the published edition.