Tuesdays with Merton Podcast

Recent Years have seen, around the world, a resurgence of political movements and leaders appealing to nationalist ideologies. These movements appeal to the desire for unity and shared identity but have an ugly history of exclusion, xenophobia, and bigotry. This presentation looks to Thomas Merton – particularly some lesser-known writings on German theologian Eberhard Arnold – for insights on the search for political community rooted not in division and exclusion but in charity and grace. Dr. David Golemboski is an Assistant Professor of Government & International Affairs at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is a former President of the International Thomas Merton Society and is co-editor of The Merton Annual. He is Chair of the Program Committee for the 2023 ITMS General Meeting. In addition to his work on Merton, he writes on politics, law, and religion and is author of Religious Pluralism & Political Stability: Obligations in Agreement (Routledge, 2022).  

Merton and Delio are restless in spirit. They embraced the ongoing work of the Spirit in their lives as the evolutionary reality that continually called them out of the ordinary into the extra­ordinary. They accepted the awkwardness of learning how to dance in the Spirit in order to move with rhythm, rather than move through routine. To discover and live in the rhythm of the Spirit is to experience vibrancy – energy, strength and resiliency. And the Spirit invites us all: find a partner and dance. Dr. Alan Kolp holds the Baldwin Wallace Chair in Faith & Life and is Professor of Religion at Baldwin Wallace University. In addition to his work in spirituality, he has authored books with a business colleague and Cleveland Clinic physician in the area of high performance and leadership. His forthcoming book, Better Humans, Better Performance: Driving Leadership, Teamwork and Culture with Intention­ality, will be available in the fall.  

JULIANNE E. WALLACE Of Messengers of Peace: A Liturgy for Our World in the Voices of Merton and Francis Please join us for a special Tuesdays with Merton as we gather to celebrate a liturgy for peace. This service, integrating music, readings, poetry, and reflections from the wisdom of Thomas Merton and St. Francis of Assisi, will provide a moment of reflection during times where peace often seems just out of reach. We invite you to be renewed and nourished in the wisdom of Merton and Francis. Dr. Julianne E. Wallace is Vice President for Mission at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She holds a Doctor of Ministry in Educational Leadership from Virginia Theological Seminary, a Master of Theological Studies in Word and Worship from Washington Theological Union, and a bachelor’s in Music Performance from the University of Mary Washington. She has been active in Franciscan higher education for almost twelve years, most recently as Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Alvernia University. She served as Associate Director of Faith Formation, Worship, and Ministry at St. Bonaventure University in New York. She has been an active ITMS member since 2015, site-coordinator for the 2017 Annual Meeting and coordinating the liturgical life at many other ITMS conferences.

  Saint Augustine famously wrote that, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." This summarizes well what we might call a spirituality of divine love and the human longing for relationship. This Tuesdays with Merton presentation explores Thomas Merton's own contributions toward developing a spirituality of love, which surfaces as a recurring theme in his writing from his earliest journal entries and books until his untimely death. Drawing on Merton's wisdom, we may come to better distinguish for ourselves between 'true' and 'false' love in our own lives and spiritual journeys. Daniel P. Horan, OFM, is Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology and Director of the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He previously held the Dun Scotus Chair of Spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. A columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, he is the author of fourteen books, including The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton: A New Look at the Spiritual Inspiration of His Life, Thought, and Writing, Catholicity and Emerging Personhood: A Contemporary Theological Anthropology, and his two latest are titled A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege and The Way of the Franciscans: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. He also recently co-edited the book The Human in a Dehumanizing World: Reexamining Theological Anthropology and Its Implications. He is co-host of The Francis Effect Podcast. See also a video of the presentation at the Tuesdays with Merton YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChblMM9VgwmVPwlmrv5uYpQ/videos  

Thomas Merton’s famous autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) was the product of a young mind devastated by ambivalence and thirsting for certainty. Twenty years after its publication Merton felt dissatisfied with that book’s moral rigidity and finality of opinions, with his evasions and half-conscious posturing. The Geography of Lograire (1969), his mature auto¬biography, enacts the master theme of Merton’s writing – the search for the authentic self – as a constant process of self-invention and renegotiation of cultural codes. In my presentation I will attempt an autoethnographic reading of The Geography of Lograire. Dr. Malgorzata Poks is an assistant professor at the Institute of Literary Studies, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Her monograph Thomas Merton and Latin America: A Consonance of Voices (2006) received the International Thomas Merton Award, and her article “Home on the Border: In Ana Castillo's The Guardians” was awarded the 2019 Javier Coy Biennial Research Award. Recently she translated into Polish Linda Hogan’s native memoir The Woman Who Watches Over the World and finished writing Decolonial Animal Ethics in Linda Hogan’s Poetry and Prose.

Beyond his prolific publications, we know Thomas Merton for his vast, diverse readings and massive output of correspondence. This session explores perspectives on peace, race, and ecology that Merton shared in his apostolate of letters. It connects these views with reading materials that informed his thought and helped address his recipients’ immediate concerns about those social dilemmas. It also highlights how his responses spoke beyond their immediate context and, as Daniel Berrigan stated, timelessly “unmasked the spiritual forces which lie under the appearances of things” and remain at play in our own time. Gordon Oyer is the author of Signs of Hope: Thomas Merton’s Letters on Peace, Race, and Ecology and Pursuing the Spiritual Roots of Protest, which reconstructs Thomas Merton’s 1964 retreat for peace activists. Over the past decade he has presented papers at several ITMS and Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland conferences, and he has published articles in The Merton Annual and The Merton Journal as well as book reviews for The Merton Seasonal. Oyer received his MA in history from the University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign. He currently resides in Louisville, Ky.

Thomas Merton’s appreciation for the work of notable literary artists of the southern United States and Global South is well-documented throughout his writing. Using the broadest of criteria, Merton, by virtue of having found his only stable earthly home in the hills of Kentucky, can also be identified as a “southern writer,” in whose works evidence of a deep affinity with the voices of the expansive South can be heard. In this talk, I hope to explore some of the classical and contemporary particulars as well as the implications of a poetic and spiritual connection between Merton and other writers of a compelling, enigmatic body of literature. Dr. Deborah Kehoe is a lifelong resident of Mississippi, born and raised in Jackson, now living in Oxford. She took a PhD in English with a concentration in twentieth-century literature from the University of Mississippi and is retired from a decades-long career of teaching rhetoric and literature in the red clay hills of her native state. She is a former member of the ITMS Board of Directors and current co-editor of The Merton Annual.

In 2019, Jonathan Montaldo interviewed Sr. M. Elena Malits, CSC. Sr. Elena passed away on March 10, 2022. She was professor emerita in Religious Studies at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and was teaching a course on film to students at the time of recording in 2019. In the area of Thomas Merton studies, she is well-known for her book The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton's Transforming Journey. At the time of recording of the interview, the 2021 biennial conference of the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS) was planned for Saint Mary's College and titled, "Thou Inward Stranger." The 2021 conference was held online due to COVID-19. (The 2023 conference, "Sophia Comes Forth, Reaching," will be held at Saint Mary's June 22-25, 2023: merton.org/2023.)

Gregory K. Hillis What Does Thomas Merton Have to Tell Us About Catholic Identity? March 8, 2022 Since His Death in 1968, Merton’s Catholic identity has been regularly questioned, both by those who doubt the authenticity of his Catholicism given his commitment to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and by those who admire Merton because they see him as an aberration who rebelled against his Catholicism. In my presentation, I want to talk about how thoroughly immersed Merton was in his Catholic identity and to explore what we can learn today about what he can teach us about a Catholicism simultaneously rooted in tradition and open to the world and to others. Dr. Gregory K. Hillis is Professor of Theology & Religious Studies at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky. His doctoral research was on early Christian theology, with a particular focus on St. Cyril of Alexandria. In the last few years he has turned his attention to the life and writings of Thomas Merton. He teaches a popular undergraduate course on Merton and has delivered lectures around the United States on Merton’s theology. He has written both academic and popular articles on Merton’s life and authored the recent book Man of Dialogue: Thomas Merton’s Catholic Identity (Liturgical Press, 2021).

Steven P. Millies Our Crisis of Authority and Thomas Merton February 8, 2022     The Polarizing Conflicts that divide the Catholic Church and social life are widely recognized but poorly understood. Thomas Merton understood what we face as a crisis of authority that has far-flung implications and whose fullest dimensions have come into view only in decades since he died. We will explore the crisis of authority as we now experience it in 2022, and we will look to Merton for wisdom about how we can resolve the crisis. Steven P. Millies is professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. His most recent book is Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump (Liturgical Press, 2018).