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Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)

Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The delimma between what you should do and what you want to
Review: "Learning to Love" captures the ache of forbidden love better than any work I have ever read. Merton's honesty, as mentioned in the other reviews, sets the gold standard for how we should converse with ourselves and with God. Ultimately, through meditation and prayer, Merton decides that his affair has opened his heart so that it holds a greater love for God, and the experience of going against his vows humbles him.

Anyone who is a true believer, who struggles to live that belief in daily life and who tries to reconcile the faith and the heart will enjoy this book. I can also recommend this book to people who are interested in journaling, as a example of "getting to the heart of matter" (Graham Greene) and to people who want a good introduction to Thomas Merton. I have gone on to read a number of his journals and his other books. He is most well-known for Seven Story Mountain. The Merton in that book is far younger and more naïve than the erudite and humble Merton displayed in these pages. Had I read Seven Story Mountain first, I never would have picked up another Merton book. Luckily for me, I picked this Merton book up first.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: In the usual style of Fr. Louie
Review: As usual, his journal style leads me into deep contemplation, but his honesty in dealing with all issues reminds the reader that he is a man before a monk or priest. I reccommend this book to all Seminary Students and those seeking quiet prayer and contemplation.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Brilliant Honest man
Review: here is the volume that was much anticipated, the volume of Thomas Merton's diaries that dealt with his "love affair" with a young nurse, Margie Smith. By this point in the diaries, Merton has become a full time hermit{as someone once remarked, the busiest,most voluminous hermit in history. Or,as Merton wrly titled one of his diaries, A VOW OF CONVERSATION}. Moving further away from the obdient young novice of volume 2,Merton as always in full tonged battles with his Abbot,James Fox,,has been exploring eastern religions,trying to find the center which unites all. Then, he goes to a louisville hospital to have back surgery,and falls deeply in love with a young nurse. Always honest with himself,Merton knows where this is heading, and knows, even in his early entries, that this will not end well for her. There is a sweet episode when Joan Baez arrives,and after Merton tells her about his new love, insists that they drive straight away to Loiuisville to go to her{they do not.}There is nothing salacious here,and Merton comes to grips with his poor treatment of woman in his early life{he had fathered a child in London, and mother and son had died during the blitz in WWII},and finds another side in himself. Interspersed within this is the usual Merton gold, the ability to see through modern problems for what they are{fleeting}, and come up with crystalline insights{his commenst on his prayer life while he is essentialy leading ,for him, a compromised life, are very interestin.] This is top flight Merton, now on the top step, cleansed and looking east,where on the horizon, is the next and last volume, and the Asian journey. Essential,non-sensational,always edifying.


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