{"id":2307,"date":"2017-02-22T14:15:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T14:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews\/?p=2307"},"modified":"2018-05-31T14:15:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:15:33","slug":"a-way-to-god-thomas-mertons-creation-spirituality-journey-by-matthew-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/2017\/02\/22\/a-way-to-god-thomas-mertons-creation-spirituality-journey-by-matthew-fox\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey’ by Matthew Fox"},"content":{"rendered":"

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New World Library, 2016<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1608684205<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Ian Mowll<\/em><\/p>\n

________________________________________________________________________
\nThis book is primarily about Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 \u2013 10 December 1968), who was a Trappist monk in the USA. But the book is about more than this; it is also about Creation Spirituality (as articulated by Matthew Fox) and Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic of the Middle Ages who influenced both Thomas Merton and Matthew Fox.<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton was described by Pope Francis as \u201c\u2026.above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certainties of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his time Merton was quite radical; he openly challenged the Vietnam war, defended the rights of indigenous people, was against racial injustice and had a desire for America to develop an ecological conscience. He was also quite critical of some aspects of his religious order \u2013 something that resonated with Matthew Fox, who had issues with his Dominican order. As well as calling for a complete overhaul of the priesthood and its meaning, Thomas Merton also offered solutions. However, it was his up to date vision for a better world that drew people to his teachings and his prolific writings.<\/p>\n

I found the discussion of Merton\u2019s spirituality in the book very interesting. He lived a somewhat amoral life until his conversion to Christianity at the age of 26; after entering the Trappist community, he lived a very disciplined existence. Matthew Fox writes: \u201cThere he found, some might say, the \u2018missing mother\u2019 of his childhood in Mother Church and the \u2018missing father\u2019 in his father abbot\u201d.<\/p>\n

Merton drew a great deal from the Desert Father and, according to Matthew Fox, the Cosmic Christ theology was important to him; that means recognising the Christ (or Buddha nature or Image of God) in everything, which is a step towards honouring the Earth and all living beings.<\/p>\n

This book is a good way not only to understand Thomas Merton but also to see the strands of Creation Spirituality in Eckhart, Merton and Fox.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book is primarily about Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 \u2013 10 December 1968), a Trappist monk in the USA. But it is also about Creation Spirituality (as articulated by Matthew Fox) and Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic of the Middle Ages who influenced both Thomas Merton and Matthew Fox. It is a good way not only to understand Thomas Merton but also to see the strands of Creation Spirituality in Eckhart, Merton and Fox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,12,16,18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-creation-spirituality","category-philosophy","category-religion","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2532,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions\/2532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}