W.L. Lyons Brown Library 

Thomas Merton Center

Bellarmine University

Forthcoming Events

 

Thomas Merton with Exploritas

Exploritas "Week with Thomas Merton"

The Fall 2010 Exploritas week with Thomas Merton (formerly Elderhostel) will be held from Sunday 10th October, 2010 until Friday 15th October, 2010. The Spring 2011 Merton Exploritas week will take place from Sunday 10th April until Friday 15th April, 2011. For further details contact Linda Bailey on (502) 272 8161 or by e-mail: lbailey@bellarmine.edu or visit the Exploritas website.  

The Poetry of Thomas Merton

Frederick Smock

3 Tuesday March 16, 23 and 30 from 6 – 7 p.m.

Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University

Course Charge: $39 ($49 after Mar. 9)

Author, activist, literary correspondent, essayist, spiritual icon…..Trappist monk Thomas Merton was also a serious and prolific poet – spiritually aware, politically engaged, aesthetically sublime. Explore the poetry of Merton, perhaps the only area of his life that has not received a great deal of attention. Required text: Selected Poems of Thomas Merton. (This course will be held in The Merton Center at Bellarmine.)

INSTRUCTOR: Frederick Smock, MA, is Chairman of the Department of English at Bellarmine University. Professor Smock has written Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton.

Further details: http://www.bellarmine.edu/ce/ or contact continuingstudies@bellarmine.edu Telephone: 502-272-8161.

Thomas Merton and Ecology

A Day Conference

Saturday 16th October, 2010

Hilary's, Bellarmine University

Speakers will include:

Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener is the director of the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network and the spiritual leader of Congregation Pnai Or of Central Connecticut. As a teacher, rabbi and community organizer, Andrea has practiced the art of bringing a spiritual perspective to problem solving for three decades. She has practical skills in communication and dialogue, environmental activism and personal growth. Andrea has worked in coalition and singly to address environment and life style issues. Andrea was ordained as a rabbi and spiritual guide in 1999 by the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She is the author of Claiming Earth as Common Ground: The Ecological Crisis through the Lens of Faith.

Sister Kathleen Deignan is Professor of Religious Studies and founder of the Iona Spirituality Institute, which she directs at Iona College, in New Rochelle, NY.  Kathleen is the author of two books on the spiritual legacy of Thomas Merton: When the Trees Say Nothing: Thomas Merton's Writings on Nature (Sorin 2003), and Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours (Sorin 2007). Her engagement with Merton Studies, personally and professionally, has drawn her down paths in Christian and Buddhist spirituality and social and ecological justice concerns, which likewise fascinated Thomas Merton. She is engaged in formal inter-religious dialogue with Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, was a participant in the “Nuns in the West” encounter in May 2003, and is in the first class of Green Faith Fellows, a training program for religious environmental leaders.

Dennis Patrick O’Hara is assistant professor of ethics in the Faculty of Theology and Director of the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology at the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto. He is also a sessional lecturer for the Centre for Environment at the University of Toronto. Dr. O’Hara has spoken widely to professional and academic gatherings on ecotheology, health care ethics, and the spiritual dimension of human health. He has been actively involved with the work of the Natural Health Products Directorate in Health Canada. He is a co-investigator of the CIHR funded Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine Research. Dr. O’Hara has also contributed to on-going efforts to integrate courses on complementary and alternative medicine into undergraduate medical education through the Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Undergraduate Medical Education Group. He recently completed a report on naturopathic medical education for the World Health Organization.

Dr. Monica Weis SSJ, Professor of English at Nazareth College, Rochester NY where she teaches American literature and rhetoric, is a frequent speaker on Thomas Merton and nature. Currently on the Board of Directors of the International Thomas Merton Society, she has been Vice-President of the ITMS, and serves on the Program Committee for the 11th General Meeting of the ITMS in June 2009. She is the author of Thomas Merton's Gethsemani: Landscapes of Paradise.


Fifth Annual Thomas Merton Black History Month Lecture

Sr. Julie Phelps, O.P.

February 15th 2011 - 7 pm

Free and Open to the Public

Further details to come...

 

Sister Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., Ph.D., has been a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters since 1959. Currently she is a Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies of Xavier University of Louisiana. Prior to this position she has been a member of the faculty of the Catholic Theological Union and Loyola University, both in Chicago, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Theology in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Dayton, Dayton Ohio.

Dr. Phelps holds a B.A. in sociology from Siena Heights University, Adrian Michigan, an M.S.W. in Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago; a M.A. in Theology from St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from The Catholic University of America.

She has edited two books Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk and co-edited Stamped in the Image of God: African Americans as God's Image in Black. In addition she has published more than 50 theological articles on issues of the mission of the Church, evangelization, enculturation, Christology, and spirituality. These have appeared in scholarly books and journals including The Bible Today, Missiology, New Theology Review, Theological Studies, U. S. Catholic Historian, Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church edited by Gabriel O'Donnell and Robin Mass, A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Reflections on Evil and Suffering edited by Emilie M. Townes, Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States edited by Diana Hayes and Cyprian Davis, and Black Faith and Public Talk, edited by Dwight N. Hopkins, and The Spirit in the Church and the Word edited by Braford E. Hinze. Most Recently she has written the 2008 Advent Meditation Booklet for Pax Christi USA Be Watchful and Alert-Seek God's Spirit in Our World.

The Paradox of Place: Thomas Merton's Photography

The exhibit of Merton's photographs celebrating the 40th Anniversary (1963-2003) of the Thomas Merton Collection at Bellarmine University is now a permanent exhibit displayed in the W. L. Lyons Brown Library on the Bellarmine University campus. This exhibit focuses on the places Merton visited in his final travels of 1968 including California, Alaska and Asia and the contrast with his photographs of Gethsemani and his hermitage.

Click here for a campus map and directions

Financial assistance is needed to assist with funding these special events at the Thomas Merton Center. If you would be interested in assisting with funding, or becoming a major sponsor for one of these events please contact:
Dr Paul Pearson on (502) 272 8177 or by e-mail: pmpearson@bellarmine.edu

Copyright (c) The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. All rights reserved.
Photographs copyright of the Merton Legacy Trust. Not to be used without written permission.