Thomas Merton on the Contemplative Way

By: Thomas Merton

Narrated by: Thomas Merton

Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of The Seven Storey Mountain and New Seeds of Contemplation, essential listening for all spiritual seekers.

Recorded almost 20 years after The Seven Storey Mountain was published, these talks showcase a mystic at the height of his wisdom.

In these moving talks, Merton tackles such topics as renewal, prayer, and affirming God. The contemplative life is not limited to those in solitude. Indeed, you will discover how we are all called to live contemplatively.

This series is one of Merton's great masterpieces. Contemplation was perhaps the issue closest to Merton's heart, and he tackles it here with profound insights. You will be enrapt as you listen to Merton deliver these talks with his trademark eloquence and erudition.

While you listen to Merton, you will see him wrestle with the complexities of contemplation. As Merton says, he left the world for the cloistered walls of the monastery to become an explorer of the "rocky land of the soul". At the heart of these lectures lie a sense of hope and an abiding awareness of God's presence in the world. Let Thomas Merton speak to your soul today.

This course is part of the Learn25 collection.

©2016 Now You Know Media Inc. (P)2016 Now You Know Media Inc.

Very approachable, but has specific context

The good: Thomas Merton was a warm, engaging, thoughtful guy, very down-to-earth for essentially a scholar and philosopher, and it comes right through here. One feels one is right there in the classroom with him. The atmosphere of warm fellowship is palpable.
But it serves to note these particulars, maybe not enjoyable to everyone. The presentation is classic classroom-lecture style. Chalk writing on a chalkboard can be heard. The reference to the contemplative way is to a tradition that goes back through the Roman church, through desert fathers to Augustine and so on. The listeners are apparently (forgive my unofficial terms) initiates to be monks. Some other religionists may find the monkishness (my word) here off-putting or objectionable. References to scripture are of course in the Roman canon (though mostly, probably all, shared with any other Christian denomination's Bible-readers). The themes are, however, universal given this more limited context and the aims implied, and for me, as a person with this sort of temperament, though not these religious trappings or sectarian-specific beliefs, welcome. This is a particularly approachable serving of its subject. Let those with the particular sort of ears to hear it, hear it.