Thomas Merton - The Intimate Merton

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Excerpt from Silence in Heaven by Thomas Merton. Copyright 1956 by The Studio Publishers, Inc. Excerpts by Thomas Merton from The Courage for Truth, copyright 1993, The Road to Joy, copyright 1989, The School of Charity, copyright 1990, A Vow of Conversation, copyright 1988, and Witness to Freedom, copyright 1994. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. From Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton. Copyright 1966 by the Abbey of Gethsemani. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpt from The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton. Copyright 1953 by the Abbey of Gethsemani and renewed in 1981 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpt from The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. Copyright 1948 by Harcourt, Inc., and renewed in 1976 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, reprinted by permission of the publisher. From The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton. Copyright 1963 by the Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., 1977 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. From The Way of Chuang Tzu. Copyright 1965 by the Abbey of Gethsemani. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Photo credit to Brendan Egan for the photograph of Mertons Hermitage. Photographs by John Howard Griffin, copyright 1999 by Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi, executor for the Estate of John Howard Griffin. Photograph by Ralph Eugene Meatyard, copyright by Ralph Eugene Meatyard/Courtesy of Christopher Meatyard.

THE INTIMATE MERTON: His Life from His Journals . Copyright 1999 by the Merton Legacy Trust. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition MAY 2007 ISBN: 9780061983573

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The Intimate Merton is dedicated to
Naomi Burton Stone, Robert Giroux,
James Laughlin, Anne McCormick,
and Tommie OCallaghan

Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further possibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God.

Perhaps the Book of Life, in the end, is the book one has lived. If one has lived nothing, one is not in the Book of Life.

I have always wanted to write about everything. That does not mean to write a book that covers everythingwhich would be impossible, but a book in which everything can go. A book with a little of everything that creates itself out of everything. That has its own life. A faithful book. I no longer look at it as a book.

July 17, 1956