Reviews
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Notes From The Devil’s Trumpet
Last weekend, we went to a small town an hour north of us, one of those little places that we’ve been aware of but never explored. The main draw was a used book store, where we thought we might find some treasures. Before going to the store, we detoured to a park located at the top of a nearby mountain. The mountain has several campsites, picnic areas, and hiking trails. There is a series of reservoirs where one can boat. The day being quite hot, we decided not to hike, but took careful bearings related to all that we saw, and we determined to return at some point and do…
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Mystery, Life, Syllables
My dear friend Father James, the Trappist monk who lives at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, has been much on my mind lately. I wrote him this morning and hope to hear back from him soon. He has been having some health problems lately, and at his age, his remaining time is speeding up, is precious, is like the dust on a butterfly’s wing: fine and invaluable. I watched a video about the abbey on Youtube and noticed near the end a series of photos taken in the woods surrounding the monastery. Some of the pictures were taken near Thomas Merton’s (Father Louis’s) hermitage on the grounds there.…
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The Burial of Francis Berger’s Why
Francis Berger, the international writer, philosopher, and blogger who lives in Hungary is a friend of mine. I have never met the man, never spoken with him on the phone, and he has never (yet) bailed me out of jail. But he is my friend, and I say this because he fulfills the criteria for that term, and because I have considerable respect and even affection for this distant man. I have no idea whether Francis considers me a friend or not, and even if he showed up at my farm and told me that he does not consider me his friend, it wouldn’t change a blankety-blank thing. That’s the…
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A Big Little Life
Up until this past weekend, I had read exactly one book by Dean Koontz. It was a supernatural suspense novel called Whispers, and I read it when I was a young Marine in 1980. The book came into my possession just as I was ending a two-or-three year spree of reading Stephen King novels, and I was growing tired of the genre. Whispers did its work with me — it kept me up late into the night reading, and later kept me awake listening to the night sounds and thinking about the world Koontz had created. But I assumed that Mr. Koontz was treading the same ground King had already…
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Forgotten Men
I’ve finished reading Thomas Merton’s history of the Trappist order, The Waters of Siloe (1949 by Harcourt, Brace, and Company, Inc., New York, NY) and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Merton — or Father Louis, as he was known at Gethsemani Abbey — certainly deserved his reputation as a formidable writer. I wanted to share a couple of sections from this book. One for a rather whimsical reason, and the other a more serious point I wanted to highlight. First, the whimsical section. I offer these paragraphs from pages 132-133 in hopes that my friend Francis Berger might see them: We can see what was the mentality of the monks of Gethsemani…
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H.M.S Cistercian
My recent pilgrimage to the monastery of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky has deepened my appreciation for the writings of the abbey’s most famous monk, Thomas Merton. I have been reading with much enjoyment Merton’s lively history of the Order of the Cisterians of the Strict Observance, also known as the Trappists. The book, The Waters of Siloe, describes the origin of the order and how persecuted French monks came to the shores of the United States to establish the monastery where Merton spent his hidden contemplative life. Having been inspired by Bruce Charlton and the writers at the Junior Ganymede blog to read a bit of Mormon history, I have…
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Chosen: Custody of the Eyes
We recently watched an interesting short documentary, Chosen: Custody of the Eyes. The film traces the discernment and pursuit of a young nun’s vocation as a member of a cloistered community of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. Most striking about the young woman was the sense of deep, quiet joy at the privilege of withdrawing from the world and devoting herself to contemplation and prayer for that same world. Watch any “coming of age” or “trial by fire” documentary these days and you will notice how the film’s subjects will stress the difficulty and challenges of their undertakings, how disconcerting the new environment, and how traumatic the privations or…
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The City of Earthly Desire — A Review
I have been away for a while due to health and other personal issues, and I thought on Mother’s Day I would break my silence with a review of an outstanding book. Ever since “accidentally” discovering Francis Berger via a comment he left on another blog, I have enjoyed his perceptive writing and his broad knowledge of many subjects. But mostly I have come to appreciate his warmth and deep humanity, qualities I consider to be the mark of a great spirit. Francis and I began corresponding shortly after I found his website, and reading his blog has become one of the daily rituals to which I look forward. Francis…