The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani

...

the Abbey of Gethsemani, yes.

That's right.

And they, they were in the, the business, see.

And when I asked him if he knew anything about the death, he sent me the documents, so I got them from two different sources.

I sent them to the Merton Center at Bellarmine University, and they said they'd never seen them before.

And I'd also learned in my research that the Abbey of Gethsemani where Merton lived had been sent the same documents.

So I contacted them to see if their copies were the same or different, and they told me they didn't have them because they said they lost them, conveniently.

Um, I think it's more, much more available now, but 20, 30, 40 years ago, it was hard to find, you know.

I, I go out, for example, to the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky.

I'll go there in a few weeks, where Thomas Merton, the greatest Christian contemplative of the 20th century, was a monk and, uh, one of the few places where you would really learn Christian contemplation for, uh, you know, you know, a better probably 150 years.

You wouldn't-- So I can understand why meditation is so popular, but there has been this marginalization of the ethical dimension, and it's helpful to really see that it's extremely important, I think both personally and also socially.

And a lot of them, though, were deeper.

And you really get to see their friendship, their relationship, how Naomi really basically kept Merton afloat and the Abbey, for that matter, financially and professionally when he was doing all of this publishing and agreeing to things without thinking and everything.

You know, you really learn, to quote a friend of mine, how Merton is a kind of a chaos Muppet, you know, without his abbot to kind of help anchor him and encourage him in his solitude as he becomes more and more aramedical out in the hermitage.

But also Naomi, who really keeps him on track with all of his publication responsibilities and their own spiritual journey.

So listeners who are interested in learning more about Merton, a very new perspective, and to see the longest correspondence, the longest and most intimate relationship with a woman in Merton's life.

You know, his mother dies when he's six years old.

He enters the Abbey.

He has famously some kind of checkered relationships as a college student and as a young man.

Yeah

... and a member of the Gethsemani Abbey." Like, he was in good standing bec-

Oh, totally

... [laughs]