Thomas Merton: God’s Messenger on the Road towards a New World highlights the contribution of the best-selling North American writer between the Second World War and 1968. The Cistercian monk called people to act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly. By his critique of technology, a major impediment for people to follow Jesus; by his writing on contemplative prayer; by his interfaith outreach; and through his witness against racism, war, and degradation of nature, Merton still matters. This book uses Micah 6:8 to organize Merton’s focus on justice, lovingkindness, and humility, as well as his dialogue with Rachel Carson, Ernesto Cardinal, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hahn, and others.

‘Merton still matters’, writes Paul R. Dekar about Cistercian monk Thomas Merton. Calling people to act justly, love kindness and walk humbly, Merton used his contemplative practice to see beyond what disrupts and divides us from one another to find the truth of our common humanity - unity in our creation in the image of God. In Thomas Merton and the New World, Dekar focuses primarily on two issues of concern to our current world. First, he studies Merton’s warnings of the abuse that stems from unmindful and irresponsible use of technology, and its ecological devastation. Second, he examines Merton’s thinking on racial injustice in the mid-1960s through his correspondence with his allies and contemporaries - James Baldwin, for example. Using Micah 6:8 to arrange Merton’s focus on justice, lovingkindness, and humility, with input from Merton’s dialogue with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rachel Carson and others, Dekar demonstrates just how prophetic and transferable Merton’s teachings remain.

Journeying with Hope into a New Year: Reflections for Advent and Christmas originated in 1982 when our family lived at Tantur, an ecumenical institute between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. My wife Nancy and I sent family and friends a letter highlighting our experience of Christmastide in the Holy Land. Inspired by writing this message from afar, we continue each year to write a letter with family news, a moving quote from a hymn or literary work, and spiritual reflections. These provide the basis for thirty-one meditations to be read daily through the month of December. Each includes a biblical text, a brief meditation, and a prayer. These may enable readers to experience more than the commercialism of the season and be led to magnify Jesus, the One who is at the heart of why we celebrate Christmas or write New Years’ Resolutions. A line in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry summarizes a crucial idea informing this collection: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The author of The Seven Storey Mountain explores the mysticism of Saint John of the Cross. The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution. . . . The desire for unworldliness, detachment, and union with God is the most fundamental expression of this revolutionary spirit. In Ascent to Truth, author and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton makes an impassioned case for the importance of contemplation. Drawing on a range of thinkers—from Carl Jung to Pope Pius XII—Merton defines the nature of contemplative experience and shows how the Christian mysticism of sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite Saint John of the Cross offers essential answers to our disquieting and troubling times. “For any who have the desire to look into meditation and contemplation . . . this is the book for which they have waited.” —New York Herald Tribune Book Review “For those who may be curious about mysticism, and for those who may be called to a life of contemplation, this is an excellent book.” —Catholic World

One man's search to find his role in the world is revealed in the writer's portrait of his youthful political activism and entry into a Trappist monastery