Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain: the Story of a Vocation, 1996. (Vol. 1 of Merton's Journals)

I took the first volume of Merton's journals with me to Cuba because of a 150-odd page section in the middle of it: Brother Patrick Hart calls it the "Cuban Interlude." It's a description of what Cuba was like for Merton when he visited it, some 65 years ago, and I thought it would be a neat thing to reread while I was in Cuba.

What was startling was how true some of Merton's pointed observations remain to this day. One of the most striking of these remarks was his comment that a view of some part of Cuba from a distance looks lush, and tropical and vibrant--and that the promise is invariably better than what that place looks like up close. It's hardly fair for me to generalize that statement to what things are like now--I visited Holguin during the middle of a rather depressing drought--but what I saw agrees, and quite a number of other people have made similar remarks to me.

Merton visited some 19 years before the 26th of July movement succeeded, and so his experience was well before the socialism that currently holds sway over the country. He describes a Cuba that is focused on goals: building a stronger, more palatable existence with the help of the United States. It's not so different a time from now, as Cuba builds a solid existence without the Soviet subsidies that supported it despite the American embargo. He depicts an earlier but not a simpler time: I envy the ability that he had to widely travel,and to get a feel for what life was like in Cuba. The only problem for me is that he's so terribly and morally earnest: he feels the need to keep his Catholicism and his enthusiasm for it solidly in the foreground of his writing. What's otherwise a fascinating travelogue is marred by the intensity of this focus; because I was reading this section for the parts about Cuba, I found it frustrating in ways that, when reading to learn about Merton's life-development, I hadn't previously encountered.

The non-Cuban sections of the journal, in New York City and then at St. Bonaventure's, as Merton prepares to enter the monastery are as thrillingly intimate as ever. This is a book I can come back to time and time again, thrilled to learn even more about Merton's life, and piecing together tidbits of information into a coherent understanding of how his life actually came together.

I'm always happy to recommend Merton: if you can get past the off-putting-ness of his earnest-ness, this book is a great read. All seven volumes of the journals are great reads, for that matter: the real trick for me now is going to be resisting the urge to reread the next six.

Thomas Merton, Geography of Holiness: The Photography of Thomas Merton, (ed. Dema Prasad Patnaik).

Wayne Allen very kindly leant me this collection of Merton's photography.

Merton--whom I'm very fond of--sometimes frustrates me by making me incredibly jealous of him. This book is yet one more example of that. Merton's shots exhibit a clear understanding of lighting: he captures shadows that both obscure and reveal, drawing attention to intriguing negative spaces, while washing important subjects almost out of the picture. Plate 28 [Darjeeling (the Kanchenjunga)], for example, almost makes the mountains that dominate the landscape disappear into the clouds, calling the viewer's attention and focus to the tiny trees that dot the mountain in the middle-ground.

Always the photographs ask you to consider details; the shots draw you in with the sense of line. In plate 29 [Darjeeling (Terraced Plantation)], the winding road contrasts sharply with the ridge-contours of the planting, pulling the eye to the very small cluster of flowers in the foreground.

Plates 59 & 60 (both of the monastery of Christ in the Desert, NM, a place I'd very much like to visit), are of shadows from pegs emerging from an adobe wall: the mottled colours of the wall soften the jutting pegs & sharp, spear-like shadows that that they cast. Both photograps are of an enclosing feature, but both reveal a tremendous lightness and openness that invite reflection.

While some of the photos are of exotic locales, Merton also reveals an eye for the beauty that is around him: chairs on the porch of his hermitage, fields, roots, rocks, a wagon wheel, doors... He frames each shot in such a way as to present life and action in the stillness of the photograph, and his eye for composition makes me jealous indeed.

These are a gorgeous series of photos, and I'm grateful indeed to Wayne for sharing them with me.

Robert Waldron, Walking with Thomas Merton: Discovering his Poetry, Essays, and Journals.

I'm getting ready to give a short talk about Merton's poetry, for a Lenten series at my church. Naturally, in addition to rereading Merton's poetry like a dervish, I'm reading others' writings about Merton's poetry, too. This is quite a new little book that details Waldron's efforts to get ready to give a day-long retreat based on Merton's poetry. Hence me picking it up.

Waldron's book is a journal he kept while preparing for the retreat. There are some lovely, well-considered and argued ideas; there's more uninteresting gobblety-gook. But the whole book's only 106 pages, so the skippable bits won't wear on you too much.

If you're interested in the poetry--and you've read it--you might enjoy this book, as an example of how someone else approaches teaching it. If not, or if that idea doesn't interest you, don't worry yourself. Go read the journals (again). They're so much fun. And even if it does interest you, you're better off with the more academic & much better written Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton, by Michael Higgins.