Samuel
Thanks to Contemplative Monk & Geoff Deering.
“Thomas Merton’s years spent at Gethsemani had a profound effect on his self-understanding and spiritual consciousness. He read extensively and kept several journals. His superior, Father Abbot Dom Frederic Dunne, took note of Merton’s intellect and talent for writing and encouraged him to follow his passion, saying it was within the will of God. Merton started translating religious texts and writing biographies of saints for the monastery.
A prolific writer, from 1947 until his untimely death in 1968, Thomas Merton wrote and published more than 70 books, 2,000 poems, and numerous essays, lectures and reviews. In 1948, Merton published The Seven Storey Mountain, his autobiography and the story of his early quest for faith in God that led to his conversion to Catholicism. The book’s title refers to the mountain of Purgatory in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The tome went on to receive critical and popular acclaim. During his years at the Gethsemani monastery, Merton also published several other works that reveal his growth from a passionate introvert to a more expansive intellectual.
His ongoing development also led him into the political arena, where he wrote about other faiths and took a nonviolence stance during the 1960s race riots and Vietnam War. He encouraged dialogue among people of different religions to achieve understanding. His positions on social activism and his broad views on religion led to severe criticism from some Catholics and non-Catholics, who questioned his true devotion and integrity…”
— biography dot com … See more
