Thomas merton biography video on george washington

 

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and writer, was one of the twentieth century’s most influential spiritual leaders.

 

Merton was born in 1915 in Prades in the south of France.

His father was a native of New Zealand and his mother an American.

I spent last week at Gethsemane, the monastary in Kentucky where Catholic mystic, poet, philosopher, and activist Thomas Merton lived.

The audio is taken from a video recording.

The much admired Trappist monk and writer was "one of the great Catholic voices.".

In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a little house in New Haven, Kentucky, where poet and rebel monk Thomas Merton tried to get away from.

Thomas Lewis' book, For King and Country, is a fascinating look at the world George Washington inhabited as well as his early years of trying to make something.

When Merton was six his mother died, and he was sent to live with his grandparents in the United States while his father pursed a career as an artist.

At ten Merton rejoined his father in Europe and went to boarding school, first in France and then in England.

His father died of cancer when Merton was fifteen, leaving Merton under the guardianship of a family friend.

In the next years Merton became a sophisticated and worldly young man, traveling throughout Europe and spending freely.

On a trip to Rome he was attracted to the Byzantine mosaics in churches, his first true glimmering of interest in religious matters. That impulse quickly faded, however, once he started Cambridge Univ