Tuesdays with Merton Podcast

Anne Pearson is a Junior at Bellarmine University majoring in clinical psychology and political science and minoring in criminal justice studies. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking and engaging in bipartisan discussion with industry executives through the National Millennial Community. She presented “Thomas Merton, Black Lives Matter, and White Passivity” for Bellarmine University’s third annual TEDx event “What in the World?” on February 6, 2021. The video of the entire event is available at: www.bellarmine.edu/TEDx.

During these turbulent, uncertain times of pandemics – corona virus, racism, unbridled individualism – and, thankfully, of moral reckoning, Thomas Merton offers a welcome and much needed message of hope.  He reminds us that we are “created for JOY.”  In this presentation, we will consider how Merton experienced and envisioned joy, particularly the joy of being human and the joy of friendship.  For Merton, joy is both promise and vocation.  How, then inspired by Merton, might we learn to delight in the “immense joy” of being human and “together  . . . travel our own road to joy”? Christine M. Bochen, professor emerita of religious studies at Nazareth College, Rochester, New York and a founding member and past president of the International Thomas Merton Society, has taught courses, given retreats, and spoken on Merton in a variety of venues in the United States, Canada, and abroad.  Christine is co-author, with William H. Shannon and Patrick F. O’Connell, of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia; editor of Courage for Truth, Learning to Love, and Thomas Merton: Essential Writings; and co-editor, with William H. Shannon, of Cold War Letters and Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters. 

This is a Tuesdays with Merton Bonus episode from the archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Dr. M. Shawn Copeland, is professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College. It was the seventh annual Thomas Merton Center Black History Month Lecture, taped live February 26, 2013 at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.  

In our time together I will share aspects of Merton’s life and teachings that had a profound and lasting effect in my own life and in my attempts to pass on to others what Thomas Merton has passed on to me. These foundational aspects of Merton’s life and teachings include our own unfolding life with all its blessings and broken edges embodying the presence of God that protects us from nothing even as it unexplainably sustains us in all things, as well as Merton’s vision of the hidden wholeness where everything connects as realized in the con­templative depths of the world’s great religions and in all of life. Dr. James Finley received spiritual guidance from Thomas Merton as a novice at the Abbey of Gethse­mani. He is a contemplative teacher and writer and a retired clinical psychologist. He leads the weekly podcast “Turning to the Mystics” in his role as core teacher in the Living School for Action and Contemplation founded by Father Richard Rohr. James is the author of Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, The Contemplative Heart, and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.

Exercises in Merton's journals can mentor our lives, producing epiphanies of the graced interdependence of all things. Jonathan Montaldo served as director of the Merton Center and as ITMS president. He co-edited The Intimate Merton. Renditions of Merton’s writing include A Year with Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence, and Choosing to Love the World. A co-general editor for Fons Vitae’s Merton series, he presents Merton retreats.

Through image, word, and poetry, this presentation explores Merton's encounter with the biblical Wisdom tradition, the remembrance of God in a feminine key. How should the remembrance of God as Wisdom-Sophia shape the crises of our times? Christopher Pramuk is the author of Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton, and At Play in Creation: Merton's Awakening to the Feminine Divine. He holds the University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination at Regis University.

William Shannon described Merton’s correspondence with Etta Gullick as “the most charming set of all,” yet, she is little known in the U.S. After briefly introducing Gullick, we will consider her exchange with Merton on contemplative prayer. Bonnie Thurston resigned a Chair and Professorship in New Testament to live quietly in her home state of West Virginia. She has written a dissertation, over 50 essays, and books on Merton.

Merton's writings share important challenges to racism with the BLM movement to contemporary women and men of good will, especially those who are white. Daniel Horan, OFM is the Scotus Chair of Spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and the author of 12 books including The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton and the forthcoming Striving Toward Authenticity: Engaging Thomas Merton on Race, Justice, and Spirituality.