Tuesdays with Merton Podcast
Religion & Spirituality Podcas
This podcast brings you the audio of the Tuesdays with Merton webinar series presented by the International Thomas Merton Society and the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union. Each episode features noted speakers and scholars on the life, legacy, and writings of the Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and social critic, Thomas Merton. The webinar is live on the second Tuesday of each month: http://merton.org/ITMS/TWM/. The audio of each month's live presentation is posted here shortly afterward.
Location:
United States
Description:
This podcast brings you the audio of the Tuesdays with Merton webinar series presented by the International Thomas Merton Society and the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union. Each episode features noted speakers and scholars on the life, legacy, and writings of the Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and social critic, Thomas Merton. The webinar is live on the second Tuesday of each month: http://merton.org/ITMS/TWM/. The audio of each month's live presentation is posted here shortly afterward.
Language:
English
Episodes
David Golemboski - People that God Has Brought together: Thomas Merton on the Hope of Political Community Beyond Nationalism
12/15/2022
Recent Years have seen, around the world, a resurgence of political movements and leaders appealing to nationalist ideologies. These movements appeal to the desire for unity and shared identity but have an ugly history of exclusion, xenophobia, and bigotry. This presentation looks to Thomas Merton – particularly some lesser-known writings on German theologian Eberhard Arnold – for insights on the search for political community rooted not in division and exclusion but in charity and...
Duration:01:02:19
2022-11-08 - Partners in the General Dance of the Spirit: Thomas Merton and Ilia Delio Evolving into the Grandeur of God
11/9/2022
Merton and Delio are restless in spirit. They embraced the ongoing work of the Spirit in their lives as the evolutionary reality that continually called them out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. They accepted the awkwardness of learning how to dance in the Spirit in order to move with rhythm, rather than move through routine. To discover and live in the rhythm of the Spirit is to experience vibrancy – energy, strength and resiliency. And the Spirit invites us all: find a partner and...
Duration:01:01:17
2022-10-11 - Julianne Wallace - Of Messengers of Peace: A Liturgy for Our World in the Voices of Merton and Francis
10/12/2022
JULIANNE E. WALLACE
Of Messengers of Peace: A Liturgy for Our World in the Voices of Merton and Francis
Please join us for a special Tuesdays with Merton as we gather to celebrate a liturgy for peace. This service, integrating music, readings, poetry, and reflections from the wisdom of Thomas Merton and St. Francis of Assisi, will provide a moment of reflection during times where peace often seems just out of reach. We invite you to be renewed and nourished in the wisdom of Merton and...
Duration:01:01:14
Daniel P. Horan, OFM - True and False Love: Thomas Merton’s Spirituality of the Restless
9/14/2022
Saint Augustine famously wrote that, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." This summarizes well what we might call a spirituality of divine love and the human longing for relationship. This Tuesdays with Merton presentation explores Thomas Merton's own contributions toward developing a spirituality of love, which surfaces as a recurring theme in his writing from his earliest journal entries and books until his untimely death. Drawing...
Duration:00:56:10
Malgorzata Poks - The Geography of Lograire as Thomas Merton’s Ultimate Autobiography
6/15/2022
Thomas Merton’s famous autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) was the product of a young mind devastated by ambivalence and thirsting for certainty. Twenty years after its publication Merton felt dissatisfied with that book’s moral rigidity and finality of opinions, with his evasions and half-conscious posturing. The Geography of Lograire (1969), his mature auto¬biography, enacts the master theme of Merton’s writing – the search for the authentic self – as a constant process of...
Duration:00:58:10
Gordon Oyer - Re-Visioning a Fragmented World: Learnings through Merton’s Letters on Social Change
5/11/2022
Beyond his prolific publications, we know Thomas Merton for his vast, diverse readings and massive output of correspondence. This session explores perspectives on peace, race, and ecology that Merton shared in his apostolate of letters. It connects these views with reading materials that informed his thought and helped address his recipients’ immediate concerns about those social dilemmas. It also highlights how his responses spoke beyond their immediate context and, as Daniel Berrigan...
Duration:00:58:51
Deborah Kehoe: Thomas Merton and Southern Writing
4/13/2022
Thomas Merton’s appreciation for the work of notable literary artists of the southern United States and Global South is well-documented throughout his writing. Using the broadest of criteria, Merton, by virtue of having found his only stable earthly home in the hills of Kentucky, can also be identified as a “southern writer,” in whose works evidence of a deep affinity with the voices of the expansive South can be heard. In this talk, I hope to explore some of the classical and contemporary...
Duration:00:55:14
BONUS episode: Sr. Elena Malits, CSC, an interview by Jonathan Montaldo
3/14/2022
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...
Duration:00:58:53
Gregory K. Hillis: What Does Thomas Merton Have to Tell Us About Catholic Identity?
3/9/2022
Gregory K. Hillis
What Does Thomas Merton Have to Tell Us About Catholic Identity?
March 8, 2022
Since His Death in 1968, Merton’s Catholic identity has been regularly questioned, both by those who doubt the authenticity of his Catholicism given his commitment to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and by those who admire Merton because they see him as an aberration who rebelled against his Catholicism. In my presentation, I want to talk about how thoroughly immersed Merton was in...
Duration:00:56:35
2022-02-08 - Steven P. Millies: Our Crisis of Authority and Thomas Merton
2/9/2022
Steven P. Millies
Our Crisis of Authority and Thomas Merton
February 8, 2022
The Polarizing Conflicts that divide the Catholic Church and social life are widely recognized but poorly understood. Thomas Merton understood what we face as a crisis of authority that has far-flung implications and whose fullest dimensions have come into view only in decades since he died. We will explore the crisis of authority as we now experience it in 2022, and we will look to Merton for wisdom...
Duration:01:00:05
Doug Hertler - Merton, You and Me: The Reality of Life in the Paschal Mystery
1/12/2022
Surrounded by suffering and death, we believe in redemption and new life. Besieged by every form of war, we hope for peace and the coming of God’s Kingdom. Where is war present in your life? Is it only experienced “out there,” or can it be found “in here” as well? Have you identified an enemy to destroy? Are you sure that enemy is not yourself? Excerpts from Doug’s play “Merton and Me – A Living Trinity” and these words of Thomas Merton will guide our reflection: “Life and death are at war...
Duration:01:04:10
Paul Pearson - ”I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.” The Humor (and Humanity) of Thomas Merton
12/15/2021
Over the years many of Thomas Merton’s visitors and friends commented on his sense of humour. With the seriousness of his writings this humour can all too easily be overlooked. This presentation will explore Merton’s sense of humour from his pre-monastic cartoons, through his correspondence, journal entries and recordings, to the stories told by his friends and brothers. Merton’s sense of humor was a way for him to critique the world, humorously warning readers of our propensity to “wear our...
Duration:01:06:11
Paul Pearson - ”I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.” The Humor (and Humanity) of Thomas Merton
12/15/2021
Over the years many of Thomas Merton’s visitors and friends commented on his sense of humour. With the seriousness of his writings this humour can all too easily be overlooked. This presentation will explore Merton’s sense of humour from his pre-monastic cartoons, through his correspondence, journal entries and recordings, to the stories told by his friends and brothers. Merton’s sense of humor was a way for him to critique the world, humorously warning readers of our propensity to “wear our...
Duration:01:10:21
Kathleen Tarr - From the Inner Frontier to the Last Frontier: Thomas Merton‘s Alaska Journey
11/10/2021
Thomas Merton's journey to Alaska, a sojourn of seventeen days, has been rendered mostly as a "blip" within his remarkable biography. Yet the mysterious frontier suddenly surfaced to captivate him. Though short in duration, Merton's experience of the vast terrain, along with the talks he gave, were profound in spiritual insights. This presentation will explore that untold story, along with visual images of the places Merton experienced and photographic images taken by Merton...
Duration:01:11:15
BONUS episode: Scott Russell Sanders - Reading Merton in the Rain
10/15/2021
Scott Russell Sanders is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Hunting for Hope and A Conservationist Manifesto. His most recent books are Earth Works: Selected Essays (2012) and Divine Animal: A Novel (2014). A collection of his eco-science fiction stories entitled Dancing in Dreamtime will be published this fall, and a new edition of his documentary narrative, Stone Country, co-authored with photographer Jeffrey Wolin, will appear in 2017. Among his honors are...
Duration:00:43:55
BONUS episode: Andrew Prevot—”Contemplation in Times of Crisis”
9/28/2021
This is a Tuesdays with Merton bonus episode from the archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. In June of 2021, Andrew Prevot, associate professor of Theology at Boston College, presented a plenary address to the 17th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society. His address was titled "Contemplation in Times of Crisis."
Andrew L. Prevot, associate professor of theology at Boston College, writes and teaches at the intersection of spiritual, mystical,...
Duration:00:47:17
Sophfronia Scott -The Radio of Nature: Merton‘s Tuning Into God Outdoors
9/15/2021
On June 27, 1949, Merton was allowed, for the first time, to venture outside the Abbey of Gethsemani’s gated enclosure to walk in the woods alone. His writing and his spirituality changed forever as a result. In Thomas Merton's Gethsemani: Landscapes of Paradise, author Monica Weis notes, "Once beyond the monastery walls, Merton's heart soared." Why? Perhaps, after being doused in words for years, suddenly he could share an expansive, silent space with God and just listen. This session will...
Duration:00:58:14
Judith Valente - Why We Still Read and Need Thomas Merton: A Personal Journey
8/12/2021
In a 1966 Commonweal article, Merton describes a time when “almost nothing is really predictable … almost everything public is patently phony, and in which there is at the same time an immense ground of personal authenticity that is right there and so obvious that … most cannot even believe that it is there." Is there a more apt description of the situation we face today? How then can we fashion a personal response to the "new normal" that is unfolding? With Merton as our navigator, is there...
Duration:01:02:09
BONUS epidode: David Golemboski—"Absurdity and Imagination in a Time of Upheaval"
8/3/2021
This is a Tuesdays with Merton Bonus Episode from the Archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. The following lecture was the ITMS Presidential Address of David Golemboski delivered for the 17th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society, presented June 26, 2021.
David Golemboski is an Assistant Professor of Government & International Relations at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he writes and teaches on politics, law, and...
Duration:00:22:22
Lynn R. Szabo - Poetry as Spiritual Direction with Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov
7/15/2021
As participating readers of his powerful gift for spiritual direction, even in absentia and posthumously present, already know from their experience of his writings, the most significant forces in Thomas Merton’s own spiritual formation came from his reading and pursuing of intersections and convergences with those whose influence shaped his ever-organic selfhood and its transcendence. In many ways profound and providential resonances, his “double image,” Denise Levertov, like Merton,...
Duration:00:56:23