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The perseverance of prayer
My goal this year is to attempt to re-read some key books that have influenced my life and to slow down on the number of books I read this year to try to read deeper. I am not sure how the “slower” is going to go, but I did finish Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain as my first book. If I do a…
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Withdrawal is not the same as retreat
Several years ago I was sharing with a historian in our denomination my work on the monks of the 4th Century in Egypt and what I was learning about their “Pentecostal” experience. He dismissed it quickly, saying that he wasn’t interested in people who retreated from culture and the world instead of engaging it. We really need to give up…
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Merton and “Conversion”
What has attracted me to Seven Storey Mountain over the years is the process of coming to faith. Merton sees his life in process and even when he “comes to faith,” it’s a process. The passage of his confession and baptism into the Catholic Church is still one of the most moving passages I have ever read. He details the weight that is lifted off…
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Merton and Seven Storey Mountain
My goal for reading this year is to read slllllooooowwwwweeeerr… and repeat some books. Repeating books: check. Slower: ummmm. The one book I have read multiple times… okay… a second book I have read multiple times is Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography of Thomas Merton. This is my first read of the year. This book is very easy for me to read every…
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The Vulnerability of Prayer
It’s a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God…. at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God. There is no such thing as…
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Fighting the Noon Day Demon
I have begun reading Thomas Merton’s The Waters of Siloe, which follows up his wonderful autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain. This book will give more detail to his life at the monastery in Kentucky. Early in the book he gives a reminder to monastic orders, or spiritual orders of any kind, really, that is a great reminder for me in ministry.…
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Embracing the Silence
As I am away on a silent retreat, I wanted to leave some thoughts on silence and solitude. These are from Thomas Merton. “In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He…
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Spiritual Reading
I am working my way through Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain again. I am not good at re-reading many books, but this one I’ve ready probably 5 times. It is his story of coming to faith and entering the monastery as a Cistercian brother. As he came to faith, he struggled his first year. He was a PhD student at…
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New Year… New Opportunities
I enter this year with hope, as always. I enter this year with plans, as always. Then, I look back on a year and realize… well… not many things may have ended up happening as planned. Consistency and intentionality are always key. This month begins a journey. The Lord has been challenging me on prayer and fasting, so I enter…
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The Need for Spiritual Reading
There is a great line from the movie “Shadowlands.” The C.S. Lewis character, played by Anthony Hopkins, says, “We read to know we’re not alone.” He picked that up from a former student and let it teach him something valuable later in life. A challenge I have in my own life is reading great books. Books teach me. The temptation…
Tag: Thomas Merton
