Tuesdays with Merton Podcast

The following is a plenary presentation from the 19th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society, Regis University, Denver, Colorado, delivered on June 20, 2025. Susan Reynolds is a theologian and ethnographer whose first book, People Get Ready, received the 2024 Best Book Award by the College Theology Society. Reynolds is an assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA, and is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine. Originally from Denver, CO, she writes often on themes of ritual, community, and place.

Becky McIntyre and Sarah Fuller discuss their art and experiences as artists working in religious and social justice movements, particularly the Catholic Worker movement. They will discuss intersections of faith, resistance, creativity and justice in their own life histories and artistic practices. They discuss examples of their art, and discuss ways in which the art and work of Thomas Merton touches on their own artistic practices. Becky McIntyre is a community artist, printmaker, and muralist in Philadelphia, currently living as an artist in residence at St. Raphaela Center in Haverford, PA. She regularly creates the cover art for the Los Angeles Catholic Worker newspaper, is a community muralist who worked as Chief of Operations, project manager, and artist for Walls for Justice, and is the visual artist for the Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP) project. Her website is www.sanaartista.com. Sarah Fuller is a printmaker in Ventura, California, who creates art for the Catholic Worker movement. She was an Artist in Residence at the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in 2023. She has had art published in magazines, books, and Catholic Worker newsletters and newspapers. Her most recent book illustration project was for The Anabaptist Community Bible project with MennoMedia. Her website is www.sarahfullerart.com.

In this presentation to celebrate the launch of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence in Rome in September 2024, Sojourners senior editor Rose Marie Berger reflects on what led up to the launch of the Institute, what moral and theological questions top the Institute's research agenda, and what comes next for this tremendous new resource available to the global Church and beyond. Merton's own thinking and prayer on war and peace opened the way for the maturing of Catholic nonviolence as it is understood today. The launch of the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence is another dynamic experiment in Merton's thoughts on how the Church's "wars are fought without any weapons at all." Rose Marie Berger is a Catholic peace activist and poet. She is senior editor at Sojourners magazine, an ecumenical Christian magazine promoting faith and social justice, where she has worked since 1986. Rose’s work in Christian nonviolence has taken her to conflict zones around the world. She is active in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, and served as co-editor for Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World, the fruit of a multiyear, global, participatory process to deepen Catholic understanding of and commitment to Gospel nonviolence. She serves on the board of The International Thomas Merton Society.

In this presentation on the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, iconographer Fr. Bill McNichols and theologian Christopher Pramuk reflect on the power of sacred art to quicken the hope of Advent in our hearts, and to bring the creativity and courage of love into “this demented inn,” where Christ “has come uninvited.” Their book together, All My Eyes See: The Artistic Vocation of Fr. William Hart McNichols, has been described as “incandescent,” an “intimate conversation between two soul friends,” which “not only preserves the legacy of a hidden master, but also contributes to the awakening of the world.” Ordained in 1979, Fr. William Hart McNichols was a member of the Society of Jesus from 1968-2002. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and from 1983 to 1990 he worked in AIDS hospice ministry in Manhattan, while continuing to paint and illustrating many children’s books. In 1990 he moved to Albuquerque, NM, to study with master iconographer Br. Robert Lentz; he continues to serve the people of God as a priest in northern New Mexico. Christopher Pramuk is Regis University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination, and professor of theology at Regis University, Denver, CO. A past President of the ITMS, his seven books include two award-winning studies of Thomas Merton, the first of which sparked his long friendship with Fr. Bill.

Gray Matthews, assistant professor of Communication at the University of Memphis, Memphis TN, has served the International Thomas Merton Society as a member of the Board, co-editor of The Merton Annual, coordinator of the 2007 ITMS conference, as well as coordinator of the Memphis ITMS Chapter since 2001. Gray has been a frequent presenter at ITMS conferences and recently authored an exploratory essay on Merton and decolonial issues of contemplative concern. This Presentation is a thought experiment in deep responsiveness. The question of contemplation—in a world of action that is deteriorating into a frantic order of hyper-activity, brutal re-activism, and paralyzed strategies of inaction—begs for a pause to deliberately rethink and reimagine the nature of not only the practice of contemplation, but the contemplative nature of life itself. Given a diet of crises, catastrophes, and collapses, there is a tradition of self-deadening retreat from the maddening order of noise in order to seek rest in the privileged shelter of false tranquility. Instead of an orderly evasion of grief, I think our suffering world is calling for contemplative mayhem in responsive depth .

David M. Odorisio, PhD, is Co-Chair and Associate Core Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. David received his MA in the History of Christian Spirituality from Saint John's University, School of Theology-Seminary (Collegeville, MN), and his PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco, CA). David is editor of Thomas Merton in California: The Redwoods Conferences and Letters (Liturgical Press, 2024), and Merton & Hinduism: The Yoga of the Heart (Fons Vitae, 2021) and has published in The Merton Seasonal and The Merton Annual. In 1968, Thomas Merton offered several conferences at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey, a Cistercian women’s community in Northern California. The material presented in these talks reveals Merton’s wide-ranging intellectual and spiritual pursuits in the final year of his life. This accessible presentation explores Merton’s pilgrimage to California’s remote and rugged “Lost Coast” and unpacks this treasure trove of previously unpublished material. Covering a variety of topics including approaches to modern consciousness, yoga, Sufism, and inter-religious dialogue, Thomas Merton in California fills a long-standing lacuna around Merton's visits to Redwoods Monastery and forms an essential bridge to the Asian journey that was to come.

Thomas Merton’s death in 1968 at the age of just 53 was tragic and sudden, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he was unprepared for the end. What does it mean to be prepared? Sophfronia will examine Merton’s writings to see how he can take us beyond society’s “having one’s affairs in order” way of thinking about death to a way of living as a full expression of the life in abundance that Christ offers in the New Testament. Sophfronia Scott is a novelist, essayist, and contemplative thinker whose book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton won the 2021 Thomas Merton “Louie” Award from the International Thomas Merton Society. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sophfronia is the founding director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing, a low-residency graduate program based in Alma, Michigan.

Thomas Merton’s writings on racism, most prominently those found in his ”Letters to a White Liberal”, have continued to ring true as the racial inequalities of his lifetime persist in the 21st century. What role should Merton, a cloistered white monk, have in speaking on racism?