Simply Merton, by Linus Mundy

Thomas Merton poured out his restless, searching, and wondering soul in his journals, which add up to more than a million words. Another monk once asked him why he wrote everything down. “If you don’t, it is lost,” Merton replied. Mundy organizes Merton’s reflections according to 15 different themes, such as simplicity, becoming one’s true self, nonviolence, prayer and contemplation, and silence and solitude. There was a time when some of Merton’s journals were restricted, but now they are all available. He must have sensed that someday people would be interested in reading his journals; in fact, some were published during his lifetime. Yet in these writings the reader discovers a transparency rare among religious writers. One Merton quote must suffice: “The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be doing.”