Turning Toward the World

This is the fourth volume of Thomas Merton’s complete journals. It is one of his final literary legacies and springs from three hundred handwritten pages that capture the growing unrest of the 1960’s and Merton’s search for peace amidst shifting values.


In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and the irresistible pull of social concerns.


Precisely when he longs for more solitude, and convinces himself he should cut back on his writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about contemporary culture (“the `world’ with its funny pants, of which I do not know the name, its sandals and sunglasses”), war, and the Church’s role in society .


Thus, despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his celebrity and growing concern for social issues fuel his writings on civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with those who urge him to leave moral issues to bishops and theologians.