Jan 31 Tip: On Merton's 99th birthday, Watch Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton

On Merton's 99th birthday, Watch Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton 

(The January 31 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace)

http://www.pbs.org/programs/soul-searching/

Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Mertonexamines the life of a modern American monk considered one of the great spiritual thinkers of the 20th century. It was a remarkably rich life and has prompted the millions who read Merton to characterize him as part Augustine, part Emerson and part Gandhi.

As the son of artists, Thomas Merton grew up in the 1920s and 1930s given to avant-garde intellectual pursuits. This led him to briefly embrace communism, which he put aside for Catholicism which in turn catapulted him to a strictly cloistered life in a rural Kentucky monastery. The writings that flowed from his monastic cell over the next 27 years examined spirituality (of the west and east), the Cold War, the civil rights movement and the challenges for the individual in the post-modern world. In short, Merton's writing took on many of the struggles of the 20th and 21st century. His thinking brought him praise, censure and the reputation as one of the most influential writers of his time. Thomas Merton died by accidental electrocution while traveling in Asia but remains one of the most widely read and written about spiritual figures of the modern era.

Award-winning producer Morgan Atkinson spent years researching Merton's work, as well as interviewing Merton's friends, scholars and authorities on the spiritual life. Atkinson's cameras reveal life at the Merton's home at the Abbey of Gethsemani, as well as his path through New York City, the Redwoods Monastery in California and New Mexico's Christ in the Desert Monastery. In bringing to life Merton's years as a monk, this deeply considered film casts a bright light on the struggles and fruits of his spiritual search.