Tuesdays With Merton
A webinar series presented by the International Thomas Merton Society and the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union on the second Tuesday of each month. Free and open to the public. Registration required.
Recordings of the webinars will be available on the Tuesdays with Merton YouTube Channel within a few days of their broadcast: Tuesdays with Merton YouTube Channel. Audio-only versions also will be available later via podcast.
If you're enjoying these free webinars why not consider supporting the work of the ITMS by becoming a member or making a donation.
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Michael W. Higgins - Merton and David Jones: Visionaries Both
May 11, 2021, 8 pm EST. REGISTER HERE -
Jim Forest - An Army that Sheds No Blood: Thomas Merton’s Response to War
June 8, 2021, 8 pm EST. REGISTER HERE -
Lynn R. Szabo - Poetry as Spiritual Direction with Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov
July 13, 2021, 8 pm EST. REGISTER HERE -
Judith Valente - Why We Still Read and Need Thomas Merton: A Personal Journey
August 10, 2021, 8 pm EST. REGISTER HERE
Previous Tuesdays with Merton Webinars:
For Further Details go to: TWM - Archive
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Kathleen Deignan, CND - Overshadowed: Thomas Merton and The Cloud of Unknowing
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Bryan N. Massingale - Merton, Malcolm X, and Catholic Engagement with Black Lives Matter
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Christine M. Bochen - Created for Joy: Becoming Who We Are, Together
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Jim Finley - Turning to Thomas Merton as a Trustworthy Guide in the Gentle Art of Contemplative Living
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Jonathan Montaldo - Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Exercises for Entering the School of Our Lives
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Christopher Pramuk - What Does God's Gender Have to Do with It? Merton's Awakening to the Feminine Divine
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Bonnie Thurston - “...almost as if I had a sister”: Thomas Merton & Etta Gullick
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Daniel P. Horan, OFM - Thomas Merton and Black Lives Matter: Spirituality and Racial Justice for Our Time
Merton and David Jones: Visionaries Both
May 11, 2021, 8 PM EST REGISTER HERE
Merton Was in Love With Wales — its poetry, its Celtic sensibility, its ravishing beauty and rich history. Although he came to the art of David Jones rather late in his life, he understood implicitly what Jones was doing as a visionary. There are some striking things that they were doing in parallel unaware of each other, probing the past, resurrecting forgotten cultural memories, attending to the power of ritual and sacrament, aching for unity and harmony. This session will explore some of these creative and spiritual convergences.
Dr. Michael W. Higgins is a university president, biographer, journalist, scholar, and media commentator. His book on Cardinal Newman will appear in the Spring of 2021 and his book on Pope Francis in 2023. Past publications on Merton include: Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton; Faithful Visionary; The Unquiet Monk; and Thomas Merton: Pilgrim in Process (ed).
An Army that Sheds No Blood: Thomas Merton’s
Response to War
June 8, 2021, 8 PM EST REGISTER HERE
Jim Forest has spent a lifetime in the cause of peace and reconciliation. Among his personal acquaintances were some of the great peacemakers of our time, including Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, Henri Nouwen, and Thich Nhat Hanh. He worked with Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker in New York and then went on to play a key role in mobilizing religious protest against the Vietnam War and served a year in prison for his role in destroying draft records in Milwaukee. He is the author of over a dozen books on spirituality and peacemaking, including The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers.
Poetry as Spiritual Direction with Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov
July 13, 2021, 8 PM EST REGISTER HERE
Lynn R. Szabo is a devoted scholar of the poet, mystic, and political activist Thomas Merton. She is the editor of the first comprehensive selection of his poetry, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton (New Directions, 2005), and is Professor Emerita of English Literature, Trinity Western University, near Vancouver. In her retirement, Lynn serves as a spiritual director, a mentor to writers and young professors, and a facilitator of study groups for the National Council of Jewish Women. Her decades of studying poetry, especially Merton’s, are one of the pleasures not interrupted by her more recent life as a wheelchair navigator!
Why We Still Read and Need Thomas Merton: A
Personal Journey
August 10, 2021, 8 PM EST REGISTER HERE
Judith Valente first began reading Thomas Merton shortly before beginning her career in journalism at the age of 21 at The Washington Post. She subsequently worked for The Wall Street Journal and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She then covered religion as an on-air correspondent for PBS. She is the author of two collections of poetry and several spirituality titles, including How to Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community and The Art of Pausing, which she coauthored with Brother Paul Quenon.