The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Exhibit explores art, spirituality relationship
Retrospective shows one side of a complex man
LITCHFIELD — Monk, contemplative, spiritual writer, poet, journalist, photographer, ecumenical guide, activist. All of these describe the breadth of Thomas Merton. His life and talent spread across so many disciplines that it is impossible to hold him to just one.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death and to bring to light his importance in the field of religion, Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center is presenting an exhibition of his photography and a lecture on his life. It will mark the first time his pictures have been displayed in New England.
“We have had programs on Merton before,” Sister JoAnn Iannotti, spirituality coordinator, said. “But this is a significant anniversary and I know how interested people are in his work. His archives are housed at The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky., and I knew that the photographs he had taken were there as well. I wondered if there was a traveling exhibition which we could use for our
“... This is a significant anniversary and I know how interested people are in his work.”
Sister Jo-Ann Iannotti, spirituality coordinator
celebration.”
The program is co-sponsored by Fairfield University’s Center for Catholic Studies. Paul M. Pearson, director and archivist of the center, has been instrumental in coordinating the exhibition and the event at Wisdom House. He is the editor of the forthcoming book, “Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton.”
Michael W. Higgins, will lead a discussion when the exhibition opens. He is the former vice-president for mission and catholic identity at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, and is Distinguished Professor of Catholic Thought. One of the foremost authorities on Merton, he authored “Heretic Blood: The Spirituality of Thomas Merton” and “The Unquiet Monk: Thomas Merton’s Questing Faith.”
Merton has been called the most influential Catholic-American author of the 20th century. Born in France in 1915, his father was an immigrant from New Zealand, his mother an
American Quaker. After private schools in France and England, and Clare College in Cambridge, Mass., he returned to the United Sates and attended Columbia University. It was there that he converted to Catholicism and his life moved closer to religion and he contemplated a life in the priesthood. He entered the Abbey of Gethsemane in Trappist, Ky., became a Trappist monk and began his writing. Among his many books, his autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain” is perhaps his most famous. It follows the path of his quest for God and his conversion to Catholicism.
Merton used his writing as a way to explore and express his relationships with the world around him. When he discovered photography, it enabled him to use the camera as a contemplative instrument, as well. His images give us a reason to pause, to stop and see what is in front of us every day.
Robert Waldron, the author of “Thomas Merton, Master of Attention: An Exploration of Prayer,” said, “The display of simplicity one finds in Merton’s photography is but an affirmation of things as they are, in their simple, humble, fragile normality. In this kind of opening, in the still, everyday being of things and beings, God reveals Himself.”
Iannotti believes Merton is as relevant, perhaps even more so today, as he has ever been. He is a staple in terms of religious development.
“He was a staple in terms of religious development,” she said. “He can be a figure of encouragement. Nothing really escaped him in terms of the human experience and the divine as well. The experience of the divine made him more the human that he was. He knew God’s mercy and His love. The crossing over for him was the arts, first as a writer, then as a photographer. He defines the relationship between art and spirituality.
“He has been a part of my life since I was a teenager. In fact, I wrote my master’s thesis at Fordham on him: ‘Merton on Solitude.’ There is so much more we can learn from appreciating Merton and his beliefs.”