Unlike many introductions to Thomas Merton, this new, short clip appearing today on PBS's "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" website includes an introduction to the present-day Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in Bardstown, Kentucky. It also includes interviews with Paul Pearson, director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University (full disclosure: a friend), Morgan Atkinson, the filmmaker who made the movie "Soul Searcher," and Paul Quenon, a monk at Gethsemani, who had Merton as his spiritual director. (My favorite quote in this short piece is his: "The essence of the Trappist life would be living in God, and I don’t think I would want to say much more than that.") The R&E segment also includes rare footage of Merton speaking at an interfaith conference in Bangkok in 1968, just a few hours before his death. Take a look at this segment.
James Martin, SJ
