Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

On the Nature of Sin - Abp Lazar Puhalo

Faith is an orientation of the soul, not an accord with a collection of facts. If sin ultimately means alienation from God, then its cure, true repentance, must consist in a re-orientation of one's mind, soul and life toward Jesus Christ and His great moral imperatives.

WHAT DOES "SIN" MEAN?

The term in Greek ('amartia) means "to fall short of the goal, miss the mark, fall short of one's proper vocation.”

This term is rendered in Latin as "sons," "sontis," which means "guilt; guilty," and has a forensic significance. We can see already that there is an important difference here. The terms used in Holy Scripture ('amartia, etc.) refer to something far greater than the Latin term used to translate them. The Latin term (and the understanding usually given to the word in English) is legalistic and juridical and understood in a forensic sense.

Perhaps, also, the absence of an awareness of the meaning of the concept of “energies,” both as Paul uses the word, as the holy fathers have expressed the word, and as we understand it in a more “human” context. Sin is the misuse of our energies, and vice or addiction is a habitual misuse of our energies. Repentance is the re-orientation of the soul toward God through Jesus Christ. It has to do with the struggle to discover and use our energies in a proper manner our energies. “Energy” concerns relationships. We know God through His uncreated energy, which we call Grace. Our relationships with other human beings involve the proper use of our created energies. Perhaps this is the underlying meaning of Christ's two great commandments, which, He said, are the foundation of all the law and the prophets, “love the Lord your God with your whole being, and your neighbour as yourself.”

This can be accomplished only through the proper use of our energies. Ironically, the juridical concept of sin also lowers and degrades the concept of morality. If sin is only a violation of the law, then morality consists only in obeying the law. Such morality could not contribute to one's salvation but could only render one as hypocritical as the Pharisees and as alienated from Christ as the rich young ruler (Mt.16:19- 12).

It was, and is, in fact, perfectly lawful for righteous and moral “pharisees” to throw a poverty-stricken widow out of her house if she owed them money or they held a lien on the house (see Mt.23:14). In the same way modern "prosperity gospel" moral evangelicals could foreclose on a poor widow's mortgage or lien without violating a law so that it would be a perfectly moral act from a juridical, forensic point of view.

"Sin" does not refer simply to a "violation of the law" which is "punished by God's justice." “Sin” can be any act, physical or mental, that creates an alienation of one from God. God is not alienated from us; we become estranged from Him.

CLICK HERE to download Lazar Puhalo's complete PDF "ON THE NATURE OF SIN"

Remembering the One Body: A Reading of Hebrews 13 - CEW Green

Reading the Bible a certain way changes the heart.
Ephraim Radner

Let brotherly love continue. 
Hebrews 13:1

I’ve been arguing that Hebrews is concerned to show how the sacrifices of Cain and Abel both fail, and how Jesus’ sacrifice, as pure gift, exposes those failures in the light of the fire of the love of God. Hebrews wants us to see how that love, flaming forth in Jesus’ priestly self-offering, consumes all other offerings—undoing for Abel what Cain did and doing for Cain what Abel did not. Now, at the end of the letter, we’re told that brotherly love must continue. And thanks to Jesus, who’s proud to call us brothers, it can and does. We are, just as he is, God’s kith and kin.

This chapter may seem like a random list of instructions and imperatives. But in fact, it’s a cunningly conversionary conclusion, one that, by its form, catches us up into the form of life it calls for.

Two weeks ago, while we [at OpenTableConference.com] were discussing the first part of Hebrews 12, someone asked if verse 13 is an oblique reference to Jacob and his wounding: “make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”

They pointed out that Esau is mentioned in verse 16, described as “an immoral and godless person… who sold his birthright for a single meal” (Heb. 12:16).

I must’ve had that observation in mind while I read, because the opening lines of chapter 13 struck me suddenly as a reference to these brothers. The preacher has already impressed on us the fact that Esau came under God’s judgment for defiling marriage with his wickedness. And who, if not Jacob, “entertained angels unawares” (Heb 13:2)?

Download and Read the rest of "Remembering the One Body" (Green-OTC)

Myth & Meaning - Ron Dart

The Feast of the Conscience – Abp Lazar Puhalo

The Feast of the Conscience – Lazar Puhalo

Let us think of today as the feast of the conscience, because our conscience is our judge.

The holy fathers tell us that even on Judgment Day when the Lord is present, our conscience will be our judge. When we behold the glory and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, healing all things, our conscience will tell us whether we’re sheep or goats, to the right or to the left. Our conscience stands forth, either excusing or accusing us, on the day when the secrets of man's heart are revealed.

If you think a little bit about it—how often our conscience challenges our thoughts and our actions, and how often we, with our free will decide to override our conscience—or how often we’re tempted to do something, and our conscience tells us that one we dearly love is going to be hurt if we take that action. So, both our love and the work of conscience turns us back, and we do not commit that sin.

We know that if we override our conscience too often—when it warns us about a certain deed— we can develop an addiction. For an addiction is really when our will and desire overrules our conscience. Once we do it a few times, then we will do it continuously so that becomes an addiction. In this life and through the great fast, the Great Lent, this is when we struggle to give our conscience the highest voice, the loudest voice. We’re struggling through Great Lent toward the purification of our conscience—to bring the heart and our conscience and the community in accord with one another.

Remember that your conscience is your judge when you depart this life.

Sometimes we call it "the partial judgment." It simply means that your conscience informs you of how you stand in the face of the love and glory of Jesus Christ.

The minute you depart this life, your conscience rehearses before you all the negative things all the positive things and lets you know what judgment you face on the day of the Resurrection. And on that day, when there's nothing to be seen except the love and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, like a river of fire that flows in our midst, your conscience will tell you, “You are on the left side of the river of fire or over on the right side of the river of fire.”

Will the river of fire be joy, light, and rejoicing in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or will the river of fire burn your conscience like everlasting flames, that the passions you try to retain in this life will be like the worm and that never dies, that nags at your conscience forever,…until the suffering of your conscience becomes a redeeming suffering and moves us from one side of the river across to the other.

Just use this time of Lent to struggle, to strengthen your will, to abide by your conscience and strengthen yourself so you can hear your conscience more loudly, so you can hear it more clearly.

And we cannot fear because God never harms his creatures, he never harms his creation, and he not going to harm you either, neither in this life nor the life to come. He has nothing but mercy and love for his poor, benighted creatures.

Our conscience will be the scourge, so let us try to live in peace and harmony with our own conscience. Don’t make it an adversary and don't be an adversary to our conscience. But listen to the words of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ and try your best to abide by it, knowing that however you fall short, our Lord Jesus Christ picks you up and he makes up the difference for you.

If we believe God, it will be accounted to us for righteousness from generation to generation, as Abraham believed God and it was accounted for him for righteousness.

Brothers and sisters, try to make this fast meaningful. Try to grow spiritually through it and you’ll notice the benefits of the peace and reconciliation that come with striving. Let the fast help you to purify your conscience, purify your will, purify your soul. Make it pure for the heavenly Kingdom. The gates of the Heavenly Kingdom will open before you and our Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit will receive you.

The Implications of Addiction Recovery for Universal Salvation - Thad Cox

When you work closely with those struggling with addiction, universalism increasingly becomes a foregone conclusion.

 

The "repent or perish" motif is cast in a new light. With addicts, the very capacity to repent, to choose, has been infected and impeded. They often aren't in control of their behavior to any meaningful extent. Often, their perceptions and capacity to prioritize their own needs have been wholly compromised. A drug has become more important to them than food or friends and family.

 

It's not that an addict comes to some rational conclusion about the matter and freely decides to forsake all things for the sake of a high. Rationality itself has, for them, been chemically and neurologically subverted. They literally "know not what they do" anymore. What addict could not relate to St. Paul's account of his struggles with sin in Romans 7?

 

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me."

 

Spend enough time around addicts and you begin to see yourself and all fallen humanity in them. We have all been blinded by some kind of addiction; all of us have been intoxicated by some falsity we take to be our highest good, our ultimate concern. Every sin we commit is a kind of relapse.

 

We often "know better," just as the Roman soldiers and the Sanhedrin "knew" perfectly well what they were doing. But in that moment, they were blinded in their knowing. The higher orders of perception and judgment were incapacitated. In that higher and more fundamental sense, "they knew not." Their addictions had them in bondage to baser instincts.

 

So it is with every sinner and addict alike. Both are, without a doubt, in grave need of repentance. Both are in the process of perishing. But the One who came to seek and save those lost in the bondages, delusions, and addictions of sin, has demonstrated His unconditional love for, commitment to, and solidarity with them.

 

The Great Physician will not be satisfied until all are healed. His light will continue to shine into the darkness of our death, dysfunction, and alienation until all can finally see. The One who calls all to repentance will, by His grace, restore to all the capacity to repent. While we are often too eager to write off "hopeless cases," God never does. Not in this age, nor in the age to come.

Psalm 2 - A Cruciform Prayer as the Nations Rage - Ted Hill

 

A prayerful reflection after reading Athanasius' letter to Marcellinus on reading the Psalms, particularly this quote: "... the reader takes all its (the Psalter) words upon his lips as though they were his own..."

 

First, Psalm 2:

 

Why do the nations conspire
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
    and cast their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord has them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath
    and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”

I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, “You are my son;
    today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
    be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear;
with trembling kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way,
    for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Happy are all who take refuge in him.

 

As I begin praying through the Psalms, I come to Psalm 2. In my prayer journal, I write:

 

"OOF, Jesus ... Psalm 2 has much need of parsing/deconstructing ... I ask You for a natural voice to pray this that honors You and experiences the revelation You desire me to know!  I am starting to see how You halt me to point me to You - to Your Cross, where derision, fury, laughter, wrath, terror, anger, dashing, breaking are all taken up into You on the Cross - NOT as punishment but as knowingly & willingly able to end the power all of that wields in the world!  I take refuge in You, NOT from Your wrath, but from the power to use wrath and all its 'offspring' ..."

 

Chris Green's "BEING TRANSFIGURED: Lenten Homilies" narrated by Boyd Barrett

ORDER THE AUDIOBOOK HERE

"Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" (Part 1-7) - Ron Dart

 

David Bentley Hart via Kenneth Tanner

Courage shielded her brother until the rescuers arrived.

This is from David Hart’s moving argument for the gospel’s God, The Doors of the Sea (2005). Read it when you are ready for something beautiful to take hold of your heart forever.

“In the New York Times this morning...there appeared a report from Sri Lanka recounting, in part, the story of a large man of enormous physical strength who was unable to prevent four of his five children from perishing in the tsunami, and who—as he recited the names of his lost children to the reporter, in descending order of age, ending with the name of his four-year-old son—was utterly overwhelmed by his own weeping. Only a moral cretin at that moment would have attempted to soothe his anguish by assuring him that his children had died as a result of God’s eternal, inscrutable, and righteous counsels, and that in fact, their deaths had mysteriously served God’s purposes in history, and that all of this was completely necessary for God to accomplish his ultimate design in having created the world. Most of us would have the good sense to be ashamed to speak such words; we would recognize that they would offer no...credible comfort...

“And this should tell us something. For if we would think it shamefully foolish and cruel to say such things in the moment when another’s sorrow is most real and irresistibly painful, then we ought never to say them; because what would still our tongues would be the knowledge (which we would possess at the time, though we might forget it later) that such sentiments would amount not only to an indiscretion or words spoken out of season, but to a vile stupidity and a lie told principally for our own comfort, by which we would try to excuse ourselves for believing in an omnipotent and benevolent God. In the process, moreover, we would be attempting to deny that man a knowledge central to the gospel: the knowledge of the evil of death, its intrinsic falsity, its unjust dominion over the world, its ultimate nullity; the knowledge that God is not pleased or nourished by our deaths, that he is not the secret architect of evil, that he is the conqueror of hell, that he has condemned all these things by the power of the cross; the knowledge that God is life and light and infinite love...

“[W]e Christian are not obliged (and perhaps are not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day—to look upon the entire littoral rim of the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children—and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces—whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance—that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. ...

“...the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy... . [W]e are able to rejoice that...God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, ‘Behold, I make all things new.'"

Mark Braverman with Bradley Jersak

Mark Braverman is a Jewish author, activist, and organizer for Palestinean rights in Israel. He is the executive director of Kairos USA.

In this interview with Bradley Jersak, he discusses his journey as a young Zionist, through deconstruction, and through his engagement with Palestinean Christians in the West Bank, forward to becoming the Jew he always wanted to be. He describes his "Damascus Road" experience in the context of the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau.

His ministry is as a Jew, speaking to Christians: "I know what it is to be a follower of Jesus. You know what to do when you see the naked man, beaten and laying in the ditch. You know what you need to do when you see injustice and inequality and suffering. Step up, whether it's in your backyard or in another continent... Stand up for the oppressed... And I pray for the day when you don't need a Jew's permission to be a follower of Jesus."

In this interview, he shares his story, addresses political and theological questions, including three questions:

• Is challenging human rights abuses in Israel antisemitic?
• Are the New Testament Gospels antisemitic?
• Is Christian Zionism antisemitic? 

Recommended links from Mark:

https://kairossouthernafrica.wordpres...

https://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/...

https://kairosusa.org/wp-content/uplo...

https://www.palestineportal.org/

http://markbraverman.org/

Bradley Jersak's "Out of the Embers" - Review by Ron Dart

Bradley Jersak, Out of the Embers: Faith After The Great Deconstruction (Whitaker House, 2022)                       

Out of the Embers, like the perennial wise and far-seeing Phoenix, knows the meaning of going to places of death and disappointment, suffering and sadness, and yet, from such places, the resurrection and tears of the Phoenix, brings healing to all whose tears touch the skin of their souls. In short, from the embers and ashes of the great deconstruction, a wise, mature and resurrected life is born and offers tears and discerning insights to others.

Out of the Embers is divided into 3 sections, each section an invitation to journey into the next, deconstruction birthing reconstruction and renovation in the larger culture wars: Part I: Memoirs: Trauma, Purgation, and Liberation, Part II: Memos: Seven Sleepers of Deconstruction and Part III: Provocations: Out of the Embers –Faith after Freefall. 

Part I, as the title suggests, has a personal and confessional bent to it, Brad relating and telling his journey, his journey having much overlap with many who were birthed in varied forms of a conservative evangelical ethos but finding such a family soul suffocating and tomb-like. Needless to say, Brad’s journey does mirror and reflect the initial faith journey of many but such a beginning does need to be grown beyond if minimal depth and thoughtfulness are to be part of the next steps of the pilgrimage through time—in short, such beginnings do need to be critically deconstructed. But, who might be heard, trusted, and consulted in such a needful deconstruction?

Part II, in a creative and engaged manner, draws from an ancient myth of the seven sleepers, such sleepers awakening to bring light and life to dark and troubling times. Brad has called forth seven significant philosophers of the past to aid in the deconstruction process: Moses (and his apophatic line and linage as a means of deconstructing ways of thinking and being that are too certain types of interpretive idolatry), Plato, Voltaire, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Weil-Camus. There are two sections dedicated to Nietzsche and three sections heeding the challenging insights of Dostoevsky. Each of these thinkers-activists are rigorous and no-nonsense master of deconstruction: they have little time or patience for religious silliness or thinness. I was fortunate, when doing my Ph.D., to do translations of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra and trekked many of the trails Nietzsche did from his home in Sils Maria in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland (there is a scholars in residence program at Nietzsche’s home in Sils). I have also, at the University I have taught for almost 35 years, hosted day-long symposiums on Russian writers, including Dostoevsky—Brad has chosen wisely and well from his seven sleepers. Part II is the longest section of the book and is worthy of many a meditative read—deconstruction and reconstruction ever the challenging and lived tension.

Part III reflects on various and needful approaches of provocation, the emergence, phoenix-like, out of the embers, faith after a painful and for many years erratic and confusing freefalls. Each of the sections in provocations is worth lingering at as pointers to the deeper, fuller and resurrected journey---such is “revenants”. The future way forward is more than hinted at in this final section of Out of the Embers—do read and inwardly digest.

Each of us, probably, has 5-10 books on our shelf as keepers if told we could only take so many to a deserted Island. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse is in my top 5. The Glass Bead Game is about a community of intellectuals (Castalians) who live in the midst of cultural chaos and fragmentation, shallow journalism, war, multiple amusements and diversions and such Castalians attempt to raise the level of cultural and civilizational thought to a higher and fuller level. The low culture, pop culture, deconstructionist and mediocre culture of the time had led to nihilism, cynicism and tribalism. The battle of ideas and identity waged vigorously at many levels. The head of the order, Magister Ludi, understood the need for grappling with ideas at the highest level, but he realized that those who separated the struggle for the best that had been thought and said from engagement with the public and political realm were themselves in an enclosed matrix of sorts. I have taught in the area of political philosophy most of my teaching vocation and I have often been somewhat concerned about how the glass bead game of ideas, theology, exegesis, liturgy etc is often disengaged from political thought, substantive political theology, political parties, political activism and policy. When this occurs, a subtler form of gnosticism emerges, ideas versus history, theology-philosophy versus politics etc. In short, in this superb book by Brad, I would have liked to see some serious thinking on how “faith after the great deconstruction” faces into the head winds of political philosophy, political theology, political parties, activism and party policies—cynicism and skepticism in these areas is short-sighted and counterproductive. Some of the seven sleepers Brad draws from certainly did rigorous political probes—more attention to these probes might have enriched the book yet further.

In sum, Out of the Embers is a beauty and bounty of tome—more pondering on how the glass bead game of ideas connects with the challenges of public and political life would yet have made for a fuller way of embodying a form of political faith after the serious limitations of the great deconstruction.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart          

Bill Morgan's "Thomas Merton & Lawrence Ferlinghetti: and the Protection of All Beings - Review by Ron Dart

Bill Morgan, Thomas Merton & Lawrence Ferlinghetti: and the Protection of All Beings (Beatdom Books, 2022)

As to the U.S. Beats I am more in sympathy with them
but in most cases I do not respond to them fully.

Thomas Merton letter to Stefan Baciu (1965): p.77

I have sitting before me a splendid hard copy edition of Bill Morgan’s The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation (2010). I have read the evocative beauty a few times and there can be no doubt Morgan has covered, in readable detail, the varied lives of the Beats in an honest and transparent way. Most of the significant Beats such as Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs, Snyder and Ferlinghetti are covered in a candid way (their opponents are also noted). There can be no doubt Morgan is one of the finest chroniclers of the Beats (as a complex tribe) and individual Beat activists and poets in a thoughtful way and manner. There is, though, more digging that needs to be done on the Beats and the Roman Catholic Beat tradition—such is the initial approach in Thomas Merton & Lawrence Ferlinghetti: And the Protection of All Beings.

I have, in a suggestive way, attempted to reflect on the Beat-Roman Catholic Beats in two books: Thomas Merton and Beats of the North Cascades (2005 & 2008) and Thomas Merton and the Counter Culture: A Golden String (2016). I have also touched on the Beats in the North Cascades (a mountainous area where I live) in “The Beat Generation in the Mountains” Appalachia (Winter/Spring 2012).  But it is Morgan’s fine primer on Merton and Ferlinghetti that needs to be heeded and read attentively.

The subtitle of the missive sums up the main focus of the book. Merton was emerging as a political writer in the late 1950s-early 1960s (most unusual for a Roman Catholic monk mostly known for his writings on the contemplative life). Ferlinghetti was committed to calling forth poets to think and write in a more political (albeit anarchist) manner. The idea was to birth, in 1961, a magazine, The Journal For The Protection Of All Beings. Ferlinghetti sent out many an invitation for contributors but few were those willing to submit an article, poem or other means of facing the dire political issues of the time. Merton and Ferlinghetti both shared a Roman Catholic background, both had political leanings, both were poets and both shared a French European cultural ethos. Morgan covers these similarities in a nuanced way. Merton had written Original Child Bomb: Points For Meditation To Be Scratched On The Walls Of A Cave (a chilling 41-point description of the research, planning and final dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).  Ferlinghetti thought this anti-poem of sorts would fit perfectly into the Journal. The concern was would the Roman Catholic censors allow such a poem to be published by a monk? A significant part of this timely missive by Morgan covers the correspondence in the late Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter of 1961 regarding Merton’s contribution to the Journal. There was, though, another poem-anti-poem by Merton that held Ferlinghetti: Chant to Be Used in Processions Around A Site With Furnaces (the theme, of course, the docile attitude of those who mindlessly obeyed orders, Arendt calling this the “banality of evil”—Merton I might add had a significant respect for Arendt). Morgan included both of these creative anti-poems in the book and the confusion about their publishing.

Needless to say, there was more than Ferlinghetti and City Lights interested in Merton’s poems: James Laughlin-New Directions (Merton had published some of his earliest poems with New Directions in the 1940s), Robert Lax- Pax and Dorothy Day-The Catholic Worker were all vying to publish Merton’s prophetic and compact political commentary-Morgan does a superb job of highlighting this reality. The flurry of letters between Merton and Ferlinghetti is well-tracked and traced by Morgan revealing much about both men and the state of publishing at the time.

The inclusion in the book of Ferlinghetti’s “Picturesque Haiti” reflects the obvious gap between the Haiti of the tourist industry and the actual and lived reality of many Haitians in which poverty is their painful lives lived, image and reality not to be confused. Merton approved the lengthy reflection. Merton did face the ire of his censors, but true to form, Ferlinghetti and Laughlin were sensitive to the problem and Laughlin went the extra mile to publish Merton’s yet more political writings, the “Cold War Letters”. Merton’s long letter to Ferlinghetti (December 12, 1961) tells the complex tale (and much else) in substantive depth—this is a letter worth mulling over many times—so much said about many pertinent and timely issues, including Merton’s high praise for the comments by Nez Perce on Chief Joseph’s surrender position, “I will fight no more forever”. Merton did wax hot and cold about some of the contributions to the Journal, though.              

Morgan touched on the use Lenny Bruce made of “Chant”, the language of Chant, of course, a perversion of its deeper religious meaning, Merton in the anti-poem making it abundantly clear, that a form of crude statism had become the new religion, a religion Ginsberg aptly portrayed in Howl. The more intense correspondence period between Merton and Ferlinghetti came to an end by late 1961 but this did not mean an end of their friendship (nor Merton’s interaction with the Beats).

The publication of Merton’s Monks Pond in 1968 included contributions by Snyder and Kerouac (Ferlinghetti welcomed to offer a submission) and it was in 1968 Merton reconnected with Ferlinghetti again. Merton was in search of a hermitage far from Gethsemani, his new Abbot approved of such a search so Merton took to Redwoods, New Mexico and Alaska on such a pilgrimage. Merton and Ferlinghetti met for the 1^st time in May 1968 and Ferlinghetti offered Merton a room for the night above City Lights. A correspondence emerged again between Merton and Ferlinghetti after their meeting in San Francisco (May 29 1968 and June 5, 1968), Morgan, rightly so, threading together these shorter letters.

There was an ongoing interest at the time in Evans-Wentz’s Tibetan Book of the Dead and when Merton travelled to Asia, he met the young Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama (who were at odds with one another)—Merton enthused about both, Rinpoche became a guru of sorts to the Beats, Naropa Institute his educational centre (much controversy in the early years) whereas the Dalai Lama was far from such tensions and clashes. But, to return to Ferlinghetti and Merton.

Morgan brings this timely and well-wrought book to an end by highlighting, in a poem, “A Buddha in the Woodpile” his lament about the tragedy in Waco Texas with the Branch Davidians and pondering if the presence of Merton (or other contemplatives) would have prevented such carnage. And, in 2001, Ferlinghetti in a poem, “Mouth” wonders whether he will yet “join the Trappists”.

Morgan began the book by recounting visits with Ferlinghetti, when both were much younger, and Ferlinghetti’s fond remembrance of Merton and as Ferlinghetti near the end of his all too human journey his support of Morgan’s book on Merton and Ferlinghetti—fine bookends, indeed.

I cannot finish this review without noting both the fine cover and the many black and white photographs in the book, many taken by Merton.

The photographs that introduce us to the book are ones of a young Ferlinghetti with “Prayer Room” in a half shadow behind him and Merton in his Cistercian robe with forest and trees in the background. There are other photos of James Laughlin, cover to Original Child Bomb, typed and written letters, cover to Journal for the Protection of All Beings and photo of Rinpoche and Merton-Dalai Lama.

It is an obvious good to see Bill Morgan extending his work on the Beats in the direction of the Roman Catholic Beats, Merton being but one of them, Kerouac and Ferlinghetti obvious affinities although Ferlinghetti more solid and grounded than Kerouac, Kerouac’s slow descent sad and tragic. Hopefully, in time, much more work will be done on the Christian and Roman Catholic Beats (and those with Beat affinities) and the internal points of concord and discord, Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker, Dan/Phil Berrigan, William Everson-Mary Fabilli, Denise Levertov, Mary Norbert Korte and Jim Forest but doorways into such an expansive and catholic vision.

Thomas Merton & Lawrence Ferlinghetti: and the Protection ff All Beings is worthy of many a curious and ample read and Morgan should be generously rewarded for his fine sleuth work.

Ron Dart