Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Seven Storey Mountain

by Thomas Merton

This publication is the complete and unedited edition of Thomas Merton's autobiography. It tells of a life spent in devotion, and offers insights into the religious experience.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own : An American Pilgrimage

The Life You Save May Be Your Own : An American Pilgrimage

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their story-a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power... (more)

Thoughts in Solitude

by Thomas Merton

Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a... (more)

New Seeds of Contemplation (Shambhala Library)

New Seeds of Contemplation (Shambhala Library)

by Thomas Merton

A much-enlarged and revised version of Seeds of Contemplation--one of the late Father Merton's most widely-read and best-loved works--New Seeds of Contemplation seeks to awaken the dormant inner depths of the spirit so long neglected by Western man and to nurture a deeply contemplative and mystical dimension in our spiritual lives.

No Man Is an Island

by Thomas Merton

Here, in one of his most popular of his more than thirty books, Thomas Merton provides further meditations on the spiritual life in sixteen thoughtful essays, beginning with his classic treatise "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." This sequel to Seeds of Contemplation provides fresh insight into Merton's favorite topics of silence and solitude, while also underscoring the importance of community and... (more)

Thomas Merton Reader

by Thomas Merton

A profile of Merton as a thinker, writer, poet, peacemaker, and social critic contains significant selections from his famous and lesser-known works and considers such topics as war, love, Eastern spirituality, monastic life, and solitude. Reissue.

The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)

The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)

by Thomas Merton

This volume, the journal Merton kept on the journey to Asia where his life ended, also is a culmination of his long spiritual journey as a writer. "His ecumenism was total," the editors remind us, "and we find him ranging from Tantric Buddhism to Zen, and from Islam and Sufism to Vedanta." The book, however, is not dryly academic; rather, as the foreword suggests, "Merton's pilgrimage to Asia was an effort to... (more)

The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)

The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)

by Thomas Merton

With the election of a new Abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton enters a period of unprecedented freedom, culminating in the opportunity to travel to California, Alaska, and finally the Far East – journeys that offer him new possibilities and causes for contemplation. In his last days at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton continues to follow the tumultuous events of the sixties, including the assassinations of... (more)

Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing

Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing

by Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti

When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life—including a very promising literary career. He sent his journals, a novel-in-progess, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe keeping, fully expecting to write little, if anything, ever again. It was a relatively short-lived resolution, for Merton almost immediately... (more)

Love and Living

by Thomas Merton

A posthumously published collection of Merton’s essays and meditations centering on the need for love in learning to live. “Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity.” Edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart.

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

by Thomas Merton

A series of monastic notes, opinions, experiences, and reflections considers such issues as the ""death of God,"" politics, modern life and values, and racial strife. Reissue.

When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions (Plus)

When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions (Plus)

by Sue Monk Kidd

stood at the window watching the cocoon, which hung in the winter air like an upside–down question mark. That was the moment... I understood. Really understood. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping– they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of... (more)

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Jr. Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson

Clayborne Carson has created a book that remarkably approximates a self-portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. Delving into all aspects of this mans life, the work covers his boyhood, his education, and his emergence as a leader. From his relationships with his wife and children, to his dealings with the important political figures of the era, this book defines the history of a genuine hero.

The View from a Monastery: The Vowed Life and Its Cast of Many Characters

The View from a Monastery: The Vowed Life and Its Cast of Many Characters

by Benet Tvedten

The View from a Monastery by Brother Benet Tvedten, is a memoir of life in the Benedictine community at South Dakota's Blue Cloud Abbey. (This abbey was famously described by Kathleen Norris in both Dakota and The Cloister Walk .) Tvedten mines his 40 years at Blue Cloud for colorful stories about the routines, rituals, and leisure activities that have filled his life, and writes an engaging narrative... (more)

The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals

The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals

by Thomas Merton

In this diary-like memoir, composed of his most poignant and insightful journal entries, The Intimate Merton lays bare the steep ways of Thomas Merton's spiritual path. Culled from the seven volumes of his personal journals, this twenty nine year chronicle deepens and extends the story Thomas Merton recounted and made famous in The Seven Storey Mountain. This book is the spiritual autobiography of our... (more)

The Way of Chuang Tzu (Shambhala Library)

The Way of Chuang Tzu (Shambhala Library)

by Thomas Merton

Chuang Tzu—considered, along with Lao Tzu, one of the great figures of early Taoist thought—used parables and anecdotes, allegory and paradox, to illustrate that real happiness and freedom are found only in understanding the Tao or Way of nature, and dwelling in its unity. The respected Trappist monk Thomas Merton spent several years reading and reflecting upon four different translations of the Chinese classic... (more)

The Death of Thomas Merton: A Novel

by Paul Hourihan

This winner of the Best Spiritual Book Award for 2003-2004 from the Sacramento Publishers & Authors is a penetrating fact-based study of what could have occurred on the last day of Merton’s life. It is the first book to provide a radical reinterpretation of Merton’s character. Hourihan provides a convincing answer to a question that a multitude of Catholics, and others, have asked themselves: Why did the... (more)

Merton's Palace of Nowhere

by James Finley

"This one door is the door of the Palace of Nowhere. It is the door of God. It is our very self, our true self called by God to perfect union with himself. And it is through this door we secretly enter in responding to the saving call to 'Come with me to the Palace of Nowhere where all the many things are one.'"

Thoughts in Solitude Reflections on the Spiritual Life and the Love of SolitudeThomas Merton

Thoughts in Solitude Reflections on the Spiritual Life and the Love of Solitude

by Thomas Merton

The New Man

by Thomas Merton

The New Man shows Thomas Merton at the height of his powers and has as its theme the question of spiritual identity. What must we do to recover possession of our true selves? By way of an answer, Merton discusses how we have become strangers to ourselves by our depence on outward identity and success, while our real need is for a concern with the image of God in ourselves. At a time of retrieval of our religious... (more)

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by Thomas Merton

by Paul Elie

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Sue Monk Kidd

by Jr. Martin Luther King, Clayborne Carson

by Benet Tvedten

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton

by Paul Hourihan

by James Finley

by Thomas Merton

by Thomas Merton