Bonnie Thurston
Thomas Merton & Contemplative Living

July 12-24, 2009 

Thomas Merton & Contemplative Living, July 12-24 with Bonnie Thurston

“Contemplation is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source.” – Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

In December, 2008, people all over the world will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was attending a dialogue between Christian and Buddhist contemplatives. We thought that having a session about Merton and Contemplative Living would be a fitting way of honoring and revisiting this most important spiritual teacher of the 20th Century.

Like many seminarians, theology and philosophy majors, or just people serious about their spiritual life, my first encounter with Merton was in his memoir, Seven Storey Mountain, the account of his childhood, searching youth, and eventual conversion and entrance into the Trappists. Thankfully, my reading with Merton did not stop there. And, though I have certainly not read all of his many, many works, his books proved formative in my own development. I suspect like many of the young people who read Seven Storey Mountain, I flirted with visions of being a monk.

Merton’s powerful influence continues these forty years later. In his introduction to The Merton Annual 2003, Victor Kramer highlights the influence Thomas Merton had on what he calls “Contemplative Presence within Contemporary Society”:

In the early moments of the twenty-first century, observe a Church as it is learning from its lay people. Catholics are clearly profiting from links to Buddhists, to Jews, to Muslims and to other Christians. We are beginning finally to glimpse what Merton so prophetically saw: The contemplative is for all persons.

Merton's intuitions about the needs of our present culture are a gift which has now been accepted by enormous numbers of persons who are living in an amazing variety of secular circumstances. Through his texts and by the example of his life, Thomas Merton has exerted a powerful influence upon others to bring change within our frequently overly active and sometimes frenetic culture. These aspiring contemplatives have learned to go to the center, to slow down, and are changed in their quiet. They read, contemplate and profit from association with monasteries and in doing Centering Prayer. Merton and his brother monks have helped to change the way people live and pray and have their being.

In this same volume, Pascaline Coif declared:

Contemporary contemplative practice has opened many new vistas for the lay contemplative today. Already in his day Thomas Merton was a great promoter and catalyst, even an instigator of many of what seem like new possibilities today, such as inter-religious dialogue, eco-spirituality, ashram spirituality, small contemplative prayer groups, Zen sitting, peace and justice involvements, monastic oblates, and pilgrimages. Merton had his own contemporary way of understanding and living the traditional contemplative practices. Though written more than a half century ago, Merton's contemplative message is still vibrantly contemporary, and he assured us again and again that he was writing not just for those in the monastery but for any and all.

We are delighted that Bonnie Thurston will be our retreat leader during this twelve-day session. Not only is she a founding member and former president of the International Thomas Merton Society, she is a distinguished professor of New Testament, author of many books, retreat director, and poet. For those in the Ring Lake Ranch community, Bonnie was also – like Thomas Merton -- a close friend of Sister Mary Luke Tobin, SL who, like Bonnie, gave retreats on Thomas Merton for many years at the Ranch.

Finally, as an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ and someone living in solitude, Bonnie gives witness that contemplative living is not just for Trappist or Buddhist monks. Contemplative living calls all of us back to – as Merton says – the Source.
-- Carl Koch, Director

Bonnie and Jim Forrest at Merton Avila Conference

“Well Done”
(Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, SL r.i.p. 8/24/06)
by Bonnie Thurston

She was our voice, our mentor,
our sign of salvation.
When called, she went.
When summoned, she served.
Offered drink, she drank.
She saw us as we could be
and showed us how to live.

Like Bartholomew on whose fear
she made her transitus,
she was without guile,
a proclaimer of the Lamb
who saw in this veil of tears
the promised angels
ascending and descending.

Now, after stillness,
she has dance up
to the hope of heaven’s open door
and waltzed right through
to a standing ovation from us
and all the heavenly host.
“Well done, good and faithful.”

Selected Books by Bonnie Thurston:

Merton & Buddhism

“Thomas Merton is the saintly man who caused the Dalai Lama to come to admire Christianity as the equal of his beloved Buddhism. This book finally gives us a clear look at how that happened, how Merton understood Buddhism, how it moved him, and how tragically his premature death cost us the feast of insight he would surely have provided us.

This book has solid scholarship, beautiful illustrations, and enlightening commentary. It is a rare door to deeper understanding of both Buddhism and Christianity and a pleasant companion on the great way!” -- Bob Thurman, Professor of Buddhist Studies, in the Department of Religion at Columbia University

To Everything a Season: Spirituality of Time

“ I found this book insightful and helpful. Thurston is scholarly and spiritual, writes fluently, and has a genuine pastoral concern for those of us attempting to reclaim the rhythm of creation by God for rest and re-creation.?

The ‘time exercises’ at the end of the first four chapters were very useful in helping me understand how I think about and use time.” – John T. Farrell

Women in the New Testament

"Reconstructing the cultural, religious, and economic roles of women in pre-Christian times and during the New Testament period, Thurston shows how women were an important force in Christianity as it emerged. This is a well-balanced, thorough, and excellent treatment of a highly charged topic." - Bernadette McGrath,