The author of this book is loved by the international community of people who look to the wisdom of Thomas Merton — Catholic monk, contemplative, and bestselling author of many books. Paul Quenon is known to these audiences as Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO (the letters stand for the Catholic religious order of which both Merton and Quenon have been members). Brother Paul, more than anyone else, has been the keeper and transmitter of Merton’s artistic legacy in the nearly sixty years since Merton died in 1968.
Quenon lectures on Merton, but most importantly, he is an artist — a poet and photographer and contemplative deeply molded in Merton's spirituality and way of being, and Quenon has shared these gifts with audiences public and private for decades.
Quenon entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky at the age of seventeen, when Merton was already famous as an author (The Seven Storey Mountain, etc.), and Merton became Quenon’s novice master. He tells funny stories of encounters with his spiritual teacher.
This book is the collected journal entries of Quenon over the last half-century, from the 1970s to the 2020s. They include moments with famous people, such as H.H. the Dalai Lama when he came to Kentucky to visit the monastery. There are ruminations on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the sermons of Meister Eckhart. But, most of all, these pages reveal close ways of paying attention to a world full of bees, birds, cows, dancing, fellow monks, marijuana, and the love of God.
The spiritual practices of attention, silence, and love are abundant here, as this aging monk remembers all of his love for place, people, creatures, life itself, and the divine.
