The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns by Merton, Thomas; William H. Shannon (ed.) | Banana Books
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The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns
Evelyn Waugh, at the start of Thomas Merton's monastic career, advised him to "write serious letters", and also urged him to make an art of it. This advice flowered in the sixties, especially after his monastic superiors ordered him to cease publishing anything on war and peace. "Monk concerned with peace. Bad image", Merton seethed in a letter, and launched his series of privately circulated mimeographed "Cold War Letters", one-third of which are published for the first time in this book. The Hidden Ground of Love is a rich collection of Merton's letters in a period of his greatest concern about religion's seeming powerlessness against global violence and nuclear war. Though the book concentrates primarily on the last decade of his 27 years as a Trappist, it opens with a few early letters to Catherine Doherty before he became a monk. His extraordinary growth as a mystic and religious thinker, deeply concerned about the materialistic world's drift toward the abyss, is revealed in these pages.
Book Details
Format
Hardcover
ISBN-10
0374169950
ISBN-13
9780374169954
Publication Date
Jan 1985
Item Weight
0.51 pounds
Length
10.00 inch
Width
6.00 inch
Height
1.00 inch
Subtitle
the letters of Thomas Merton on religious experience and social concerns
Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was a 20th century American Catholic writer. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist and student of comparative religion. In 1949, he was ordained to the priesthood and given the name Father Louis.
Merton wrote more than 70 books, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews, including his best-selling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), which sent scores of disillusioned World War II veterans, students, and even teen-agers flocking to monasteries across US, and was also featured in National Review's list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.
Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding. He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese writer on the Zen tradition, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Merton has also been the subject of several biographies.
