Customer Reviews

When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Kathleen Deignan, a professor of religious studies at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, really outdid herself here in compiling and editing some THREE HUNDRED works by Thomas Merton in this text. It's not a particularly long book, surprisingly, with only 190 some odd pages in it. With that being said, not much is left out here, either. It's by all means complete. There are chapters on the four seasons - on the mountains and the forests. Nature herself.

Merton even likens a mountain to sainthood, seeing God`s creative beauty and wonder all throughout nature. If you have ever been to the Abbey of Gethsemani, you may understand why that is, too. The monastery is surrounded by absolutely stunning and expanding landscape, the perfect spot for the kind of reflection and introspection Merton apparently did in this work. He urges us to be engaged with nature. That probably means for us modernists to get out there off of our sometimes lazy butts and take a walk; go ride our bike. Whatever it is feel your connection to nature in a very raw sense. It opens up the sunshine that is already within. Merton's helpful finger pointing us the way in this work on how wonderful nature really is, serves as truly a great inspiration to do just that.

Compiled and edited by Kathleen Deignan ( Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame), enhanced with drawings by John Giuliani (Founder and Overseer of The Benedictine Grang, a spiritual center in West Redding, Connecticut), and featuring an informative foreword by Thomas Berry, When The Trees Say Nothing: Writings On Nature is an impressively thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of commentaries by the late Thomas Merton (1915-1968), an influential Catholic monk, poet, spiritual writer, and social activist. The commentaries, observations, and writings are superbly organized into eight chapters: Seasons; Elements; Firmament; Creatures; Festivals; Presences; and Sanctuary. These, along with the postscript "Sophia," a section of notes, a list of abbreviations, and a bibliography, combine in a movingly written, enthusiastically recommended volume of readings that are appropriate and spiritually rewarding for readers of all faiths who seek to experience the sacred and the sacramental in God's handiworks.

Kathleen Deignan's When the Trees Say Nothing
is a fresh rendition of Thomas Merton's writings evoked from creation. In times when chatter is normative and being alone is mistaken for loneliness we have a wonderful lectio book of quotes and context of 'seeing' from the inside.

This book will live beyond the writer but not without chanigng many readers into the vast beauty of 'silence'.

This is a most beautiful book, with content by a mystic, gathered by a scholar and illustrated delicately by an artist. Our post-modern world is one where we, the human species, are beginning to realise the damage we have done to the natural world. This book draws us back to an appreciation of all we are missing in our daily lives.

Merton saw it as man's duty to feel, praise, and love God's creation "Living so close to the cold, you feel the spring. And this is man's mission! The earth cannot feel all this. We must.". He sees the honor of witnessing the creation "A very small gold-winged moth came and settled on the back of my hand". He also sees the forest as a presence to God "Out here in the woods I can think of nothing except God and it is not so much that I think of him either. I am as aware of Him as of the sun and the clouds ..." and the profound aloneness "As soon as I get away from people the Presence of God invades me". This book makes a good meditation before a walk or birding trip, or better yet a trip to Gethsemani.

Users of Amazon will enjoy the quote ""There is no misery to compare with that which exists where technology has been a total success". "

I just love when people take a dead man's writings totally out of context and then use him for their agenda. Anyone who has really read Thomas Merton's works (not edited works) knows the man loved God alone and did not worship nature. Nice try, but you can only fool people who don't understand your agenda. Anyone who really wants to know what Thomas Merton believed should read "Seeds of Contemplation."

Very good read, with a 5 star being his The Seven Storey Mountain. This is a great collection for anyone looking to group Merton's works in to topics, seasons, or just short chapters. This is a definite "must get" for anyone into Merton or nature, even if they are not looking to use it for prayer and meditation. This is the book you sit and read as Merton walks you through the woods of beautiful landscape and little creatures, taking you away from the kids, city life and traffic.

My excpectations for this book may have been a little too high. Merton's work pepper my shelves, put this one I think will go up for resale. Other than a precious few noteable quotes, it read more like a nature walk than a spiritual path for enlightenment. Ah well, compilations of the works of others can be a very tricky business. Nice try though Ms. Deignan.

Merton has helped me to open all my senses to a world that has been talking to us from the beginning,The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World and now I can begin to hear it and wonder at its messages, the messages that David Abram also talks about in his The Spell of the Sensuous.(I tried to insert a product link to the Abram book, but it doesn't show up when I preview this review)