Month: September 2022
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Chapter 2: Refection 1 – An Evanescent Anonymity
In Eve’s exchange with the Serpent, the Mother of All Living offers a teaching, an exemplum, of the tender and illusive condition that is at the heart of all human suffering – our inability to see things as they really are. 1 Indeed, we see them “as more than they are.” And then, based on…
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Chapter 1: Reflection 20 – To See and Not to See
At the end of her first chapter, after just describing the last of her showings and the Trinity’s dwelling and activity in the soul “for love,” Julian writes these words of hope, trust – and maybe, holy defiance: “And we shall not be overcome by our enemy.” 1 These words, both their message and placement,…
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Chapter 1: Reflection 19 – A Fecundity Which Must Pour Itself Out
What has been said of Bernard of Clairvaux might well be said of Julian of Norwich: “Everything he concerns himself with either leads to love or is explained by love.” 1 The early Cistercian abbot was a very significant presence in TM’s religious, spiritual, and theological development. Two quotations from insightful historians paint an introductory…
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Chapter 1: Reflection 18 – Chewing with the Mind and the Heart
When Harold Talbott, TM’s Dharamsala host, recounted the Cistercian monk’s three audiences and conversations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he reported that “tradition” was one of the topics about which His Holiness inquired: When [The Dalai Lama] was asking Merton about Catholicism, he wanted to know about the monastic tradition. And Merton told him…
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Chapter 1: Reflection 17 – To Give Everything, Everything
The man who served as TM’s host in Dharamsala, Harold Talbott, was interviewed in Louisville, Kentucky in December 2000 to mark the 32nd anniversary of TM’s death. After his 1968 encounter with the Trappist pilgrim, Harold continued his sincere study and generous practice of Tibetan Buddhism. 1 And his gracious practice, his “gentle, humorous, insightful…
Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas 