Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings
Though best known for his spiritual writings, Thomas Merton also made  drawings, whose Eastern-style brushwork have a meditative power rivaling that of  his finest prayers. InDialogues with Silence, these (mostly unpublished)  drawings--of human figures, churches, the crucifixion, and abstract forms--are paired on pages with the texts of his well-known prayers. Editor  Jonathan Montaldo's introduction to this volume asserts that Merton, the author of classics includingThe  Seven Storey Mountain, became a:witness for his generation  of the way out of self-defeating individualism by tracking anew the boundaries of that ancient other country,  whose citizens recognize a hidden ground of unity and love among all living  things.He might have added that, for Merton, one direct escape from individualism was the  act of loving other individuals, an aspect of Merton's character that shines  clearly in the many portraits here. Notably, the most arresting of these images is a  face without features. It hovers next to a prayer that begins, "O God, my God, why am I so mute?"--Michael Joseph Gross--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.