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  • Dancing in the Water of Life by Thomas Merton book cover
  • Dancing in the Water of Life by Thomas Merton book cover
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Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

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Solitude amid a turbulent decade

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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Solitude amid a turbulent decade

The fifth volume of Thomas Merton’s journals brings together the approach of his fiftieth birthday, his move to the Mount Olivet hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, and his attention to the upheavals of the 1960s. The journal’s scope connects the demands and satisfactions of solitary life with events and movements beyond the monastery, including the Vietnam War, the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The book offers a biographical record of Merton’s spiritual life alongside his engagement with the political and social currents of his time.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in Thomas Merton’s life and religious writing.
  • Readers exploring twentieth-century religious biography and journal writing.
  • Readers interested in the intersection of monastic solitude and 1960s social and political events.

Themes

Solitude and prayerMonastic lifeReligious biographySocial and political upheaval in the 1960s

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Book overview

The sixties were a time of restlessness, inner turmoil, and exuberance for Merton during which he closely followed the careening development of political and social activism - Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, the Vietnam war, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Volume 5 chronicles the approach of Merton's fiftieth birthday and marks his move to Mount Olivet, his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he was finally able to fully embrace the joys and challenges of solitary life: 'In the hermitage, one must pray of go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice . . . Solitude puts you with your back to the wall (or your face to it!), and this is good' (13 October, 1964).

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