W.L. Lyons Brown Library 

Thomas Merton Center

Bellarmine University

Wide Open to Heaven and Earth:
Contemplation, Community, Culture

Speakers

Kate Campbell .

Kate Campbell, is originally from Sledge, Mississippi, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, Kate's formative years were forged by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's and those indelible experiences continue to inform her music. Kate has performed at some of the most prestigious festivals at home and abroad including the Cambridge Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Festival. For The Living Of These Days, Kate's eleventh and most recent album, includes a new Civil Rights Memorial Song as well as "Prayer of Thomas Merton," which Kate set to music. Further information about Kate can be found on her web site - katecampbell.com

James Forest.

James Forest, became a close personal friend and correspondent of Thomas Merton in the early 1960s. He was managing editor of The Catholic Worker. A founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and former General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.  He is currently secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. He is the author of many books including the Merton biography, Living with Wisdom, Praying with Icons and Love is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day.

Arun Gandhi.

Arun Gandhi is the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at Christian Brothers University. He is the author of numerous books on Gandhi and nonviolence including Legacy of Love: My Education in the Path of Nonviolence.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton has served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit since 1968 and pastor of St. Leo church in inner-city Detroit since 1983; he was the founding president of Pax Christi USA, and continues to speak widely on issues of peace and social justice.

Joyce Hollyday.

Joyce Hollyday is a United Church of Christ minister in Asheville, NC and a former associate editor of Sojourners magazine; she was a founding member of Witness for Peace and author of several books including Then Shall Your Light Rise: Spiritual Formation and Social Witness.

Albert J. Raboteau.

Albert J. Raboteau is a professor at Princeton University, specializing in American religious history with a focus on American Catholic history and African-American religious movements. He is also the author A Fire in the Bones, which includes a chapter on Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

John Michael Talbot .

John Michael Talbot grew up in an Oklahoman, Methodist family, dropped out of high school to perform as rock guitarist for the country/folk rock band Mason Proffit, which once opened for Janis Joplin.  He began a solo career as a Christian artist amid the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, converted to Catholicism and joined the Secular Franciscan Order in 1978.  In his long career Talbot has recorded 49 albums, authored a dozen books as well as founded the Little Brothers and Sisters of Charity, an integrated monastic community at Little Portion Hermitage in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas.  In addition to his writings on contemplation, meditation and monasticism, John Michael has written an introductory survey of Christian mystics, The Way of the Mystics (2005), concluding with a chapter on Merton in which he shares how Merton “had a major influence on me at a time in my spiritual pilgrimage when I was beginning to consider both monasticism and Catholicism.” Recent albums include: Signatures, Wisdom and Brother to Brother.  

Paul M. Pearson.

Paul M. Pearson, is director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, editor of Merton's Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers, and the Tenth President of the International Thomas Merton Society.

James Conner, OCSO.

James Conner, OCSO, is a monk of Gethsemani Abbey, was a student of Merton and acted as chaplain to the Benedictine Community of Osage Monastery, Oklahoma. He worked with Merton as under-master for novices. For five years, in the late nineties her served as Abbot of Assumption Abbey in Missouri. He was 4th President of the ITMS and had written on Thomas Merton in Cistercian Studies, The Merton Annual, and in the volume Thomas Merton Monk: A Monastic Tribute.