Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom- The Journal of Thomas Merton, Vol. 6 - Hardcover

Merton, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060654848 ISBN 13: 9780060654849

Publisher: Harper San Francisco, 1997

Synopsis

Depicts the author's struggle with love and his recommittment to the monastic life through a greater understanding of both worldly and spiritual love

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is widely regarded as one of the most influential spiritual writers of modern times. He was a Trappist monk, writer, and peace and civil rights activist. His bestselling books include The Seven-Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Mystics and Zen Masters.

Review

"It is said that when Emily Dickinson sent her first submission of poems to the essayist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she included a question for Higginson: "Do these verses breathe?" Higginson's response was presumably affirmative. I imagine a similar question posed by Merton: "Does my journal breathe?" To which I heartily respond, "Yes." -- Anna J. Brown America

"What one finds in Mertons' writings...is this discharge of the authentic self....What shines through in his writings and he never seemed to stop writing... is the luminous humanity of a devotion to the journey." -- Toronta Globe and Mail

"Delightful . . . brilliant social, political and personal commentaries." -- New York Times Book Review

"It has often been said that the world-renowned Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton was a man of paradox. . . . Now, [this] volume of Merton's journals adds greater detail to another, and perhaps his most surprising, paradox: that this monk and Roman Catholic priest had what he called an 'affair' with a student nurse in Louisville over six months in 1966." -- Lexington Herald Leader

"When all the journals are published, it is likely that they will take a place with the famous journals of Henry David Thoreau, G. M. Hopkins, Edmund Wilson, and perhaps be seen as an American version of St. Augustine's Confessions." -- Catholic News Service

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper San Francisco
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060654848
• ISBN 13: 9780060654849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382
• Editor: Bochen Christine M.