Call number
248.4 MER
Status
Available
Call number
Pages
360
Description
In this series of notes, opinions, experiences, and reflections, Thomas Merton examines some of the most urgent questions of our age. With his characteristic forcefulness and candor, he brings the reader face-to-face with such provocative and controversial issues as the “death of God,” politics, modern life and values, and racial strife–issues that are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is Merton at his best–detached but not unpassionate, humorous yet sensitive, at all times alive and searching, with a gift for language which has made him one of the most widely read and influential spiritual writers of our time.
Publication
Image (1966), Edition: Reissue, 360 pages
ISBN
0385010184 / 9780385010184
Collection
User reviews
LibraryThing member LTW
He calls himself a "bystander" relating to his aloofness as a monk. He calls himself "guilty" in relation to not living up to his responsibility for the outside world. As a monk, he calls himself a contemplative activist. As a collection of "conjectures," it is a compilation of thoughts or pensees
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is Thomas Merton's response to the terror of the world around him, the world he had been raised into, and the world he sought to leave behind as a monk in the back corners of Kentucky. It is a collection of thoughts which had been developing in him from the very beginning of his life. He came to monastic life to retreat from the world. He came to find quiet. And yet he remained more connected to the outside world than most people within that world, and certainly more than anyone behind his monastic walls, even as he wrote and compiled Conjectures itself from his secluded hermitage.
Show More
grouped together loosely, only slightly tied together by five section titles.Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is Thomas Merton's response to the terror of the world around him, the world he had been raised into, and the world he sought to leave behind as a monk in the back corners of Kentucky. It is a collection of thoughts which had been developing in him from the very beginning of his life. He came to monastic life to retreat from the world. He came to find quiet. And yet he remained more connected to the outside world than most people within that world, and certainly more than anyone behind his monastic walls, even as he wrote and compiled Conjectures itself from his secluded hermitage.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jd234512
Although Merton prefaces the book by saying that this book is a random assortment of his journal entries and should be read as such, I was not expecting it to lack as much cohesion as it did. Many of his books seem to have this format, which I've grown accustomed to, but I just could not reconcile
Show More
it as much in this. This made it hard to enjoy, and while there certainly are wonderful Merton nuggets in this work, it falls short because there also seems to be "filler"(for lack of a better word) which spread out the goodness within. Show Less
LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
Even Thomas Merton himself didn't quite know what to make of his 1965 book “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.” The much-revered monk insisted it was not a spiritual journal. Nor, he said, was it "a venture in self-revelation or self-discovery" or "a pure soliloquy." Finally in his preface he
I would call it simply a collection of brief essays, some just a sentence or two long, others going on for a page or two. Many of these essays reflect the point in history in which he was writing, the early 1960s. There is much here about President John F. Kennedy, a fellow Catholic whom Merton greatly admires, and the monk is clearly crushed by Kennedy's assassination. Pope John also dies during this period, another blow to him. Merton writes about the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear testing and the civil rights movement, giving any reader the temper of those uncertain times.
Yet much of what Merton writes could have been written yesterday. His thoughts on theology, morality and humanity are not so easily dated. Here's a sampling of some of his most intriguing comments:
"Nor is it certain that we have any urgent obligation to find sin in ourselves. How much sin is kept hidden from us by God Himself, in His mercy? After which He hides it from Himself!"
"Perhaps the man who says he 'thinks for himself' is simply one who does not think at all."
"Note of course that the doctrine of original sin, properly understood, is optimistic. It does not teach that man is by nature evil, but that evil in him is unnatural, a disorder, a sin."
"It is because religion is a principle and source of the deepest freedom that all totalitarian systems, whether overt or implicit, must necessarily attack it."
"The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization."
"The greatest temptation that assails Christians is that in effect, for most of us, the Gospel has ceased to be news. And if it is not news, it is not the Gospel."
"Man is the image of God, not His shadow."
"He who fears death or he who longs for it — both are in the same condition: they admit they have not lived."
Rarely does Merton get personal, but there are occasional references to his life before he became a monk, his life in a Louisville monastery and a brief hospitalization. Perhaps the most striking comment in the book comes when he writes, "I think sometimes that I may soon die, though I am not yet old (forty-seven)." In fact he did die of an accidental electrocution in 1968.
Show More
settled on "a series of sketches and meditations, some poetic, and literary, others historical and even theological, fitted together in a spontaneous, informal philosophic scheme in such a way that they react upon each other," not that that helps much.I would call it simply a collection of brief essays, some just a sentence or two long, others going on for a page or two. Many of these essays reflect the point in history in which he was writing, the early 1960s. There is much here about President John F. Kennedy, a fellow Catholic whom Merton greatly admires, and the monk is clearly crushed by Kennedy's assassination. Pope John also dies during this period, another blow to him. Merton writes about the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear testing and the civil rights movement, giving any reader the temper of those uncertain times.
Yet much of what Merton writes could have been written yesterday. His thoughts on theology, morality and humanity are not so easily dated. Here's a sampling of some of his most intriguing comments:
"Nor is it certain that we have any urgent obligation to find sin in ourselves. How much sin is kept hidden from us by God Himself, in His mercy? After which He hides it from Himself!"
"Perhaps the man who says he 'thinks for himself' is simply one who does not think at all."
"Note of course that the doctrine of original sin, properly understood, is optimistic. It does not teach that man is by nature evil, but that evil in him is unnatural, a disorder, a sin."
"It is because religion is a principle and source of the deepest freedom that all totalitarian systems, whether overt or implicit, must necessarily attack it."
"The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization."
"The greatest temptation that assails Christians is that in effect, for most of us, the Gospel has ceased to be news. And if it is not news, it is not the Gospel."
"Man is the image of God, not His shadow."
"He who fears death or he who longs for it — both are in the same condition: they admit they have not lived."
Rarely does Merton get personal, but there are occasional references to his life before he became a monk, his life in a Louisville monastery and a brief hospitalization. Perhaps the most striking comment in the book comes when he writes, "I think sometimes that I may soon die, though I am not yet old (forty-seven)." In fact he did die of an accidental electrocution in 1968.
Show Less