2027 ~ Annual 4th & Walnut Lecture
Tuesday 16th March, 2027.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
In Person at Frazier Hall, Bellarmine University
7.00 pm ~ free and open to the public
Virtual - Tuesdays with Merton
Mariann Edgar Budde serves as spiritual leader for the congregations and Episcopal schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties that comprise the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. The first woman elected to this position, she also serves as the chair of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, which stewards the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral and Cathedral schools.
A passionate believer in the gospel of Jesus and the Episcopal Church’s particular witness, Bishop Budde is committed to the spiritual and numerical growth of congregations and developing new expressions of Christian community. She believes that Jesus calls all who follow him to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. She is proud to serve a diocese committed to spiritual maturity, mercy, and justice. She cherishes her friendship with interfaith leaders in the Washington Metro Area and their joint endeavors in service to the common good.
Bishop Budde was consecrated as the ninth bishop of Washington in November 2011. Prior to her election, she served for 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. She earned a B.A. in history at the University of Rochester, graduating magna cum laude. She earned both a Masters in Divinity (1989) and Doctor of Ministry (2008) from Virginia Theological Seminary.
Her sermons have been published in several books and journals and she is the author of Gathering Up the Fragments: Preaching as Spiritual Practice
(2007), Receiving Jesus: The Way of Love (2019) and How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (2023), which has been adapted into a young adult book, We Can Be Brave: How We Learn to Be Brave in Life’s Decisive Moments (2025), and a picture book for young children, I Can Learn to Be Brave, Illustrated by Holly Hatam (to be released in July 2026).In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers … There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
This moment marked a pivotal moment in the monastic life of Thomas Merton as he turned from the world denying monk of The Seven Storey Mountain to the world embracing monk of the sixties as he began addressing many of the major issues of that time, some of which are as relevant today as when he penned them, if not more so.
The early sixties saw Merton’s most intense writings on war, the nuclear arms race, the cold war, racism, and other issues. When he was silenced from writing on issues of war and peace and he was banned from publishing his recently completed book Peace in a Post-Christian Era he started to circulate mimeographed copies of these banned writings, including his famous Cold War Letters.
After Merton’s experience in Louisville that day he would write to James Baldwin saying: “I am therefore not completely human until I have found myself in my African and Asian and Indonesian brother because he has the part of humanity which I lack.”
Tuesday 17th March 2026.
Finding Thomas Merton on the Campaign Trail
with
John F. Dickerson
Available at: Tuesdays with Merton YouTube Channel
John Dickerson is a journalist, author, and longtime interviewer, most recently co-anchor of the CBS Evening News and chief political analyst for CBS News. He spent 16 years at CBS, where he also served as senior national correspondent, contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning, and previously co-host of CBS This Morning. From 2015 to 2018, he moderated Face the Nation and served as the network’s chief Washington correspondent. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he moderated two CBS presidential debates. From 2019 to 2021, he was a correspondent for 60 Minutes, where his story on the death of Elijah McClain was nominated for an Emmy. He resigned from CBS News in December 2025.
Dickerson is the author of On Her Trail (Simon & Schuster); the New York Times bestseller Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History (Twelve Books); and The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency (Random House).
Tuesday 18th March 2025.
Being a Healing Presence in a Wounded and Traumatized World
with
James Finley
Available at: Tuesdays with Merton YouTube Channel
James
Finley Ph.D. lived as a monk at the
cloistered Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemani in
Kentucky, where the world-renowned monk and author, Thomas
Merton, was his spiritual director.
James Finley is the author of: The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation, Merton's Palace of Nowhere, The Contemplative Heart and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.
The annual "Fourth and Walnut Lecture" is co-sponsored by the International Thomas Merton Society and the Thomas Merton Center, at Bellarmine University.