Tuesdays with Merton Podcast

In this presentation, Ryan Bell explores how Thomas Merton had a profound influence on the life of Raymond Hunthausen, the high-profile, boundary-pushing Archbishop of Seattle from 1975 to 1991. While the two scions of the post-Vatican II American Catholic Church never met, Merton’s writings on peace and justice spurred Hunthausen to begin a series of headline- grabbing protests against nuclear arms, racism, and sexism. Ryan outlines how Merton’s influence on Hunthausen turned the archbishop into a modern prophet within an increasingly polarized American Catholic Church. Ryan Bell is a recent graduate of the University of Denver and a professed Benedictine Oblate at Benet Hill Monastery in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was a Daggy Scholar at the 2023 ITMS meeting at St. Mary’s College.

The following is a plenary presentation from the 19th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society, Regis University, Denver, Colorado, delivered on June 21, 2025. Estevan Rael-Gálvez is the director of Native Bound-Unbound, a Mellon Foundation sponsored digital humanities project centered on the millions of indigenous people whose lives were and have been shaped by enslavement. Dr. Rael-Gálvez, anthropologist, historian, and Indigenous slavery scholar, has served as the state historian of New Mexico, the executive director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and senior vice president of historic sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He has participated in public history and digital history projects involving communities linked to Mt. Taylor, Girl Scouts USA, Santa Fe, and many other broad, vast and important projects in public memory and public storytelling and narrative-making.

The following is a plenary presentation from the 19th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society, Regis University, Denver, Colorado, delivered on June 20, 2025. Susan Reynolds is a theologian and ethnographer whose first book, People Get Ready, received the 2024 Best Book Award by the College Theology Society. Reynolds is an assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA, and is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine. Originally from Denver, CO, she writes often on themes of ritual, community, and place.

This talk is about two men of the twentieth century, giants in their own right, the monk Thomas Merton and the Beat writer Jack Kerouac who as Roman Catholics studied Zen Buddhism. Both had a great deal common: Celtic ancestry, students at Columbia University, grounded in a spirituality of nature and a love of animals that reflected their respect for all sensate creatures. Both too had a dark side, prone to depression, struggling with sanity, even suicide at times. This talk discusses their similarities and differences, focusing upon their satori experiences, a Zen term for awakenings, epiphanies, enlightenment. Ed Sellner, Ph.D., is professor emeritus in theology and spirituality at Saint Catherine University in St Paul, Minnesota, where he taught and administered programs for 35 years. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he is author of numerous books on Celtic spirituality, western and eastern monasticism, and animal theology. Ed is also a spiritual director, trained at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland.

Becky McIntyre and Sarah Fuller discuss their art and experiences as artists working in religious and social justice movements, particularly the Catholic Worker movement. They will discuss intersections of faith, resistance, creativity and justice in their own life histories and artistic practices. They discuss examples of their art, and discuss ways in which the art and work of Thomas Merton touches on their own artistic practices. Becky McIntyre is a community artist, printmaker, and muralist in Philadelphia, currently living as an artist in residence at St. Raphaela Center in Haverford, PA. She regularly creates the cover art for the Los Angeles Catholic Worker newspaper, is a community muralist who worked as Chief of Operations, project manager, and artist for Walls for Justice, and is the visual artist for the Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP) project. Her website is www.sanaartista.com. Sarah Fuller is a printmaker in Ventura, California, who creates art for the Catholic Worker movement. She was an Artist in Residence at the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in 2023. She has had art published in magazines, books, and Catholic Worker newsletters and newspapers. Her most recent book illustration project was for The Anabaptist Community Bible project with MennoMedia. Her website is www.sarahfullerart.com.

Annual Fourth & Walnut Lecture, 2025 with James Finley Being A Healing Presence in a Wounded & Traumatized World James Finley Ph.D. lived as a monk at the cloistered Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where the world-renowned monk and author, Thomas Merton, was his spiritual director. James Finley leads retreats and workshops throughout the United States and Canada, attracting men and women from all religious traditions who seek to live a contemplative way of life in the midst of today's busy world. He is also a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California. James Finley is the author of: The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation, Merton's Palace of Nowhere, The Contemplative Heart and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.

In this presentation to celebrate the launch of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence in Rome in September 2024, Sojourners senior editor Rose Marie Berger reflects on what led up to the launch of the Institute, what moral and theological questions top the Institute's research agenda, and what comes next for this tremendous new resource available to the global Church and beyond. Merton's own thinking and prayer on war and peace opened the way for the maturing of Catholic nonviolence as it is understood today. The launch of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence is another dynamic experiment in Merton's thoughts on how the Church's "wars are fought without any weapons at all." Rose Marie Berger is a Catholic peace activist and poet. She is senior editor at Sojourners magazine, an ecumenical Christian magazine promoting faith and social justice, where she has worked since 1986. Rose’s work in Christian nonviolence has taken her to conflict zones around the world. She is active in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, and served as co-editor for Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World, the fruit of a multiyear, global, participatory process to deepen Catholic understanding of and commitment to Gospel nonviolence. She serves on the board of The International Thomas Merton Society.

An excerpt from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander lives as permanently as can be on the door entering the dining room in Maryhouse, one of the New York Catholic Worker houses of hospitality. In this personal talk, I hope to explore what it meant to read Merton in the context of living at a Catholic Worker house, and how I believe the Worker and Merton hold the tension of guilt and faithful living in a world inundated with violence. Abbi Fraser, the child of two Protestant pastors, got her BA in Public Affairs from UCLA and instantly dove into the world of the Catholic Worker. Abbi loves talking about God and finds Them most in her friends, protests, and the park.

In this presentation on the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, iconographer Fr. Bill McNichols and theologian Christopher Pramuk reflect on the power of sacred art to quicken the hope of Advent in our hearts, and to bring the creativity and courage of love into “this demented inn,” where Christ “has come uninvited.” Their book together, All My Eyes See: The Artistic Vocation of Fr. William Hart McNichols, has been described as “incandescent,” an “intimate conversation between two soul friends,” which “not only preserves the legacy of a hidden master, but also contributes to the awakening of the world.” Ordained in 1979, Fr. William Hart McNichols was a member of the Society of Jesus from 1968-2002. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and from 1983 to 1990 he worked in AIDS hospice ministry in Manhattan, while continuing to paint and illustrating many children’s books. In 1990 he moved to Albuquerque, NM, to study with master iconographer Br. Robert Lentz; he continues to serve the people of God as a priest in northern New Mexico. Christopher Pramuk is Regis University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination, and professor of theology at Regis University, Denver, CO. A past President of the ITMS, his seven books include two award-winning studies of Thomas Merton, the first of which sparked his long friendship with Fr. Bill.

The consistent ethic of life is a fully Catholic engagement with the difficult challenges that conscience encounters in our time. Now in this challenging, divided moment is the right time to re-discover the consistent ethic and adopt an attitude that calls us to partisans for life beyond our partisanship. Steven P. Millies is professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. His most recent books include A Consistent Ethic of Life: Navigating Catholic Engagement with U.S. Politics and Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump (Liturgical Press, 2018).

Gray Matthews, assistant professor of Communication at the University of Memphis, Memphis TN, has served the International Thomas Merton Society as a member of the Board, co-editor of The Merton Annual, coordinator of the 2007 ITMS conference, as well as coordinator of the Memphis ITMS Chapter since 2001. Gray has been a frequent presenter at ITMS conferences and recently authored an exploratory essay on Merton and decolonial issues of contemplative concern. This Presentation is a thought experiment in deep responsiveness. The question of contemplation—in a world of action that is deteriorating into a frantic order of hyper-activity, brutal re-activism, and paralyzed strategies of inaction—begs for a pause to deliberately rethink and reimagine the nature of not only the practice of contemplation, but the contemplative nature of life itself. Given a diet of crises, catastrophes, and collapses, there is a tradition of self-deadening retreat from the maddening order of noise in order to seek rest in the privileged shelter of false tranquility. Instead of an orderly evasion of grief, I think our suffering world is calling for contemplative mayhem in responsive depth .

Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day championed social justice witness informed by deep contemplative practice. Their powerful example amid the crises of the 1960s can provide us with insights as we seek to respond with integrity to today’s seemingly unprecedented crises. Julie Leininger Pycior will invite your reflections on these themes as revealed in her prize-winning book Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and the Greatest Commandment: Radical Love in Times of Crisis. She also will share how research for this book was instrumental in Pope Francis choosing Merton and Day as the two spiritual figures to spotlight in his historic address to Congress. Julie Leininger Pycior, Professor of History Emeritus, Manhattan College, is the author of four books and has published articles in a number of journals, including The Merton Annual. She lectures widely and is regularly quoted in the media. Her PhD is from the University of Notre Dame and she is a longtime member of the Corpus Christi/New York City chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society.

David M. Odorisio, PhD, is Co-Chair and Associate Core Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. David received his MA in the History of Christian Spirituality from Saint John's University, School of Theology-Seminary (Collegeville, MN), and his PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco, CA). David is editor of Thomas Merton in California: The Redwoods Conferences and Letters (Liturgical Press, 2024), and Merton & Hinduism: The Yoga of the Heart (Fons Vitae, 2021) and has published in The Merton Seasonal and The Merton Annual. In 1968, Thomas Merton offered several conferences at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey, a Cistercian women’s community in Northern California. The material presented in these talks reveals Merton’s wide-ranging intellectual and spiritual pursuits in the final year of his life. This accessible presentation explores Merton’s pilgrimage to California’s remote and rugged “Lost Coast” and unpacks this treasure trove of previously unpublished material. Covering a variety of topics including approaches to modern consciousness, yoga, Sufism, and inter-religious dialogue, Thomas Merton in California fills a long-standing lacuna around Merton's visits to Redwoods Monastery and forms an essential bridge to the Asian journey that was to come.

During the last three years of her life, Sr. Wendy Becket, an English hermit and art historian, shared an intimate, daily correspondence, largely about holiness and the life of faith. Throughout, the figure of Thomas Merton loomed large. Sr. Wendy held ambivalent feelings on the subject of Merton. Yet in the course of our correspondence she came to a startling reassessment, comparable in some ways to Merton’s own “awakening from a dream of separateness.” Robert Ellsberg is the long-time publisher of Orbis books. He is the author of many books on saints and holiness, including All Saints; Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time, and A Living Gospel: Reading God’s Story in Holy Lives. He contributes the daily entry, “Blessed Among Us” in Give Us This Day. His presentation is based on Dearest Sister Wendy: A Surprising Story of Faith and Friendship.

Thomas Merton’s death in 1968 at the age of just 53 was tragic and sudden, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he was unprepared for the end. What does it mean to be prepared? Sophfronia will examine Merton’s writings to see how he can take us beyond society’s “having one’s affairs in order” way of thinking about death to a way of living as a full expression of the life in abundance that Christ offers in the New Testament. Sophfronia Scott is a novelist, essayist, and contemplative thinker whose book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton won the 2021 Thomas Merton “Louie” Award from the International Thomas Merton Society. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sophfronia is the founding director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing, a low-residency graduate program based in Alma, Michigan.

Leslye Colvin weaves a tapestry that provides a fresh perspective of Thomas Merton interwoven with glimpses of her journey as a child of the Civil Rights Movement era, and the systems that bind us all. Leslye Colvin is a writer, spiritual companion, and contemplative activist. She has extensive experience in promoting mission and expanding outreach of a variety of sectors including faith-based non profit, government, corporate, and academia. Inspired by the Catholic social justice tradition, she is passionate about encouraging diversity of thought especially as it relates to those often marginalized within the community.

Anne Pearson is a graduate of Bellarmine University, where she earned a degree in political science and psychology and studied the encroachment of prisons into the public school system through disciplinary alternative schools. While at Bellarmine, she completed a thesis on Thomas Merton and racism and has since presented her research at multiple national and international conferences and as a TEDx talk. She currently lives in Washington, DC where she provides resources to graduate nursing students across the country and advocates for more equitable higher education. Thomas Merton's writings on racism, most prominently those found in his "Letters to a White Liberal", have continued to ring true as the racial inequalities of his lifetime persist in the 21st century. This presentation will briefly outline his criticisms and solutions for white liberals before exploring an all-important question: what role should Merton, a cloistered white monk, have in speaking on racism? The answer will investigate how his imperfect approach impacts his continued relevance and reveal the example he sets for white individuals working towards racial justice in 2024.

Thomas Merton’s epiphany on the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets was a significant breakthrough into Christ consciousness and the opening up of what Raimon Panikkar calls, “Christophany.” This new consciousness propelled an inversion of Merton’s monastic life toward ever deepening relationships with a world of complexity. Relying on insights from Carl Jung, Raimon Panikkar and Teilhard de Chardin, I will explore Merton’s Christophany as a radical theology, a mutational disruption of the Neoplatonic quest, and the ushering in of a new monastic consciousness reflective of the second axial age, marked by the hyperpersonal monk of planetary consciousness. Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the import of these for theology. Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, and is the author of twenty books including Care for Creation (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods), The Emergent Christ and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love (Orbis, 2013).

Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She is an award-winning scholar of the African American experience and Black Catholicism with research and teaching specializations in women's, religious, and Black freedom movement history. Dr. Williams holds a B.A. in history with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Agnes Scott College, a M.A. in Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University. The first Black woman elected to the Executive Council of the American Catholic Historical Association, Dr. Williams is a co-founder the Fleming-Morrow Endowment in African American History at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 2020, Williams also submitted successful proposals to establish the Mother Mary Lange Lecture in Black Catholic History at Villanova University and the Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. Prize through the American Catholic Historical Association and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. A lifelong Catholic, Dr. Williams authored the award-winning column, The Griot's Cross, for the Catholic New Service from 2020 to 2022. For most people, Whoopi Goldberg's performance as Sister Mary Clarence in Sister Act is the dominant interpretation of an African American nun and the desegregation of white Catholic sisterhood in the United States. In this presentation, Dr. Shannen Dee Williams will explore the story of America's real sister act: the story of how generations of Black women and girls called to the sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience fought against racism, sexism, and exclusion to become and minster as consecrated women of God in the Roman Catholic Church. In so doing, she will turn attention to women's religious life as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation, and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle. Dr. Williams will also illuminate Thomas Merton's connections to Black sisters' largely suppressed history.

Cassidy S. Hall (She/Her), MA, MDIV, MTS, is an author, award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, and leading voice in contemplative spirituality. She is the cohost of the Encountering Silence podcast and the creator of the Contemplating Now and Queering Contemplation podcasts. Her films include In Pursuit of Silence and Day of a Stranger. Cassidy is widely published and currently resides in Indianapolis, where she is studying for her DMin degree. What Would it Look Like to Queer Thomas Merton? What is queer theory and queer theology and how can they be used as a lens to better understand Merton—and ourselves? In our time together, Cassidy, a cis queer white woman, will examine the ways the traditional western Christian contemplative canon has left out far too many voices from the conversation. She will share a part of her own contemplative journey which led her to traveling to all 17 Trappist Monasteries of the US, Directing a film about Thomas Merton’s hermitage years, and writing the forthcoming book Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality.