In the early pages of this breezy glimpse into Thomas Merton's life and writings, we learn that he possessed four times the psychic energy of the ordinary person; that he sought relentlessly for the deepest self; that his autobiography became a best-seller; that he wrote over 15,000 letters to a wide group of literary, religious, scholarly, and activist friends; that he lived apart on monastery grounds; that he enjoyed poetry and savored solitude; that he made time to publish on issues of social justice, political controversy, and peace; and that during his last days he was speaking at a meeting of Benedictines and Cistercians from throughout Asia.
Jon M. Sweeney serves as editor of What I Am Living For and he delivers a pensive and timely survey of Merton's animated faith which continuously found fresh questing paths. Twenty popular spiritual writers — including Robert Ellsberg, James Martin, Paula Huston, Pico Iyer, Sylvia Boorstein, and Sue Monk Kidd — shed light on Merton's interfaith probes, his sexual struggles, and his cultural assessments of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and the creative resources of the 1960s.
