A Retreat With Thomas Merton: Becoming Who We Are (Retreat With-- Series)

Rating:
Summary: A Great Short Retreat
Review: As suggested I took seven days to go through this audio taped retreat. I was off work and spent the time in prayer and reflection. I will remember the retreat for years.

The author presents a quick biography of Merton's life own. In examining the way God works through Merton's life one comes to grips with God's activity in the listener's own life . . . and comes away richer.

What better return can a person have for an investment of a few dollars?

Rating:
Summary: Uncommonly intelligent spirituality
Review: Padovano remarks early in this book that "biography is spirituality," and uses Merton's life to guide us back to what is sacred in our own normal lives. Indeed, for Padovano and Merton, the search for spirituality is nothing less than the pursuit of being perfectly normal--or as Padovano might say, being normal, perfectly.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful glimpse into Merton's thoughts
Review: This small book has much to offer. Padovano's insight into Merton's "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" is especially compelling, as it should be, coming from a writer who has himself chosen not to be a bystander but instead to aspire to being perfectly normal, or rather--as Padovano might say--being normal, perfectly.

Also, Padovano's writing, here and elsewhere, offers a much needed antidote to all the goofiness that parades itself as "spiritual" or "metaphysical" in contemp culture. As Padovano says of Merton's own writing, "spirituality is biography."