On the 50th Anniversary of Thomas Merton’s Death (1968-2018) we offer three remarkable, special books on Thomas Merton to open up his world to us.

A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton: Retired Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ writings on and examination of the life and works of Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton’s life, especially once he had become a monk, was to a great extent one of dialogue with people who were either distant or dead (many saints and writers of past centuries). Rowan Williams looks closely at two such relationships in Merton’s life—first with the Orthodox theologian, Paul Evdokimov, and then with Karl Barth, the Reformed theologian who, by a surprising providence, died on the same day as Merton. Rowan also takes note of the impact on Merton’s thought of books by Hannah Arendt, Dostoevsky, Vladimir Lossky, Olivier Clément, Bonhoeffer, Boris Pasternak, and St. John of the Cross.

Hidden in the Same Mystery: By including the texts of talks Thomas Merton gave to the novices at the Loretto Motherhouse, Hidden in the Same Mystery presents previously unpublished Merton materials which are a rich source of his thinking on prayer and on religious life. Included are some of Sr. Mary Luke Tobin’s incisive thoughts about Merton, particularly her analysis of Merton on prayer.

Meatyard/Merton- Photographing Thomas Merton: This series of photographs, by a 20th Century master, of a 20th Century seeker, are especially remarkable, because they combine the formalism and relevance of great art with the intimacy, the playfulness, the casual snapshotty sense of lost time, that arises between dear friends… This volume is much more than the catalog for an exhibit accompanying the 2013 visit of the Dalai Lama to Louisville, Kentucky, and commemorating his affection for Thomas Merton. It is a document of something we have all missed about the final two years of Merton’s life. The starkness and brevity of the passages selected resound in a direct way upon the soul.

Photographing Thomas Merton. Photographs by Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Calligraphies by Thomas Merton

“Would you be willing to try something in an experimental vein? If not just say so and it will be perfectly all right with me and I will understand. What I propose is to see how closely I, or any artists can connect with the utterances of another. If you were to send me words, prose or poetry and number of words doesn’t matter and I don’t necessarily understand the personal or private meaning of them- then try to make a photograph of them? we might also if that works try my abstracted photo first and then your words.”- August 12, 1967 Meatyard to Merton