Unlike many introductions to Thomas Merton, this new, short clip appearing today on PBS’s “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” website includes an introduction to the present-day Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in Bardstown, Kentucky.  It also includes interviews with Paul Pearson, director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University (full disclosure: a friend), Morgan Atkinson, the filmmaker who made the movie “Soul Searcher,” and Paul Quenon, a monk at Gethsemani, who had Merton as his spiritual director.  (My favorite quote in this short piece is his: “The essence of the Trappist life would be living in God, and I don’t think I would want to say much more than that.”)  The R&E segment also includes rare footage of Merton speaking at an interfaith conference in Bangkok in 1968, just a few hours before his death.  Take a look at this segment. 

James Martin, SJ

The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.