The Night Spirit and the Dawn Air

‘How the valley awakes… Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand... “Wisdom,” cries the dawn deacon, but we do not attend.’
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Conference papers presented at the Eighth General Meeting of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland held at Oakham School, Oakham from 9th - 11th April, 2010.

• Conjectures: Postscript from Gethsemani by Paul Quenon, OCSO.

• Earthing our Spirituality: What role for contemplation roots in an age of planetary crisis? by Mary Grey.

• The Night Spirit, the Dawn Air – Where Are They Now? by Margaret Silf.

• Engaged Spirituality: Merton's ‘Contemplative Life’ and Bonhoeffer's ‘Life Together’ by William Apel.

• Attending to the Presence of God: Thomas Merton & Le Point Vierge by Nass Cannon.

• Being in the Dark: Explorations in Purification and Renewal by Fiona Gardner.

• ‘Another Kind of Trifling’: Merton and the Destructive Hyperactivity of Consumer Culture by Gary Hall.

• Sparks of Haecceitas: A Scotist Reading of Thomas Merton by Daniel P. Horan.

• ‘Let us walk along here, says my shadow’: Thomas Merton, Doubter by Roger Lipsey.

• ‘Let Mercy Fall Like Rain’: Thomas Merton and the Ox Mountain Parable by Paul M. Pearson.

• Absence of Remembrance in the Ruins of Representation: Thomas Merton’s Relevance for the Post-nuclear Age by Gosia Poks.

• Merton in Conversation with Charles Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’ by Jonathan Sozek.

• Thomas Merton and Etty Hillesum: Twin Guides in a Post-modern Age by Patrick Woodhouse.

• Thomas Merton and the ‘point vierge’ by Hebe Wellbourn and Sarah Bird.

• Merton: Technology and Change by Tony Bannon.