John said to me, during my visit to his home, that the day before Merton died, he said to John, “Zen and Christianity are the future.” It is no wonder that Merton felt the tug of Eastern spirituality that in his mind could blend so well with the Western ways of exterior devotions to God.

We can learn a great deal on how to internalize silence, to return to the contemplative ways of our Christian heritage by way of looking deep within Buddhism. Kathleen Deignan, a scholar devoted, in part, to the continued consideration of Thomas Merton’s work and his continued influence on the church, edited a little book called A Book of Hours, published by Sorin Books, a collection of Merton’s thoughts from his many writings into a book that can be carried as a simple guide to daily living. Each segment of the book is broken down into the seven days of the week, and each day is broken down into wonderful parts: dawn, day, dusk and dark.

The original book of hours was created during medieval times, illuminated manuscripts that were collections of prayers, illustrations, psalms that offered Christians a guide for daily worship.

In many ways, a book of hours was a way for people to mimic some of the routines of a monastic life, praying to Mary, reciting the psalms, or giving thanks and honor to the saints.

These books were originally for the wealthy nobleman, but, as with other books, they became more accessible to everyone at the creation of the printing press.

Thomas Merton was not a nobleman, a regal, distant man of prayer squirreled away in theology and hidden behind high stone walls. He was a man of the people, living among us all with his human frailties and spiritual triumphs.

This Book of Hours beautifully illustrated by John Giuliani is a day book, a road map to the entire week. It is a book where each person can begin at dawn with the words of Thomas Merton whispering, “Open the secret eye of faith.” The book leads us to listen to Merton’s hymns “I am drunk with the great wilderness of the sixth day of Genesis.” Each day is filled with Fr. Merton cajoling us to recognize that “paradise is all around us,” that the beauty of dew, the morning sun, even the simple leaves crawling on the ground under a light, morning breeze, are things of wonder and beauty.

A book of hours is a spiritual companion. We can pick up Merton’s collection during the day and find his words reverberating in our own selves as we try to complete our work in the presence of a merciful God. “Fill my will with fire,” Merton prays beside us. As we move through the day, we ask God, in Merton’s words, “to burn in our hearts, burn in our living marrow.”

We are reminded by reading this little book that Merton was a poet, capable of expressing his devotion to God using concrete language filled with rich images. As we turn ourselves over to the closing of the day, in the section of the book labeled “dark,” Merton speaks of the approaching night as a “full choir” filled with “sweet delight.” Each reader can take great comfort from Merton’s words that can lull us to a sense of closure for another day.

Kathleen Deignan, using her obviously well-informed and sensitive heart, arranged this book in such a way that each day follows the patter of dawn, day, dusk and night using Merton’s words as a launching site for our own contemplative reconsiderations for the days’ accomplishments and failures.

The original book of hours from the medieval world contains most of what is preserved in literature from that time in the history of civilization.

We have here in Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours another work of illumination that will survive into the coming centuries because of the wisdom and beauty of Merton’s writing, because of Giuliani’s beautiful drawings, and because Kathleen Deignan has helped promote Merton’s work through the creation of a user-friendly daily prayer book that gives us a way into a Zen-like, Christian-like sense of peace and holiness.

“What was fragile has become powerful,” Merton writes at the end of this little book. Our day is filled with what is fragile, the most being our own searching, fragile souls. By living each day with Merton’s Book of Hours, we can recognize our own true power, which comes from the illumination and reminder that God is love, and salvation is within our reach each day.

Reviewed by Christopher de Vinck in the National Catholic Reporter

Sr. Kathleen Deignan, CND, with Jonathan Montaldo former co-director of the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living and Paul Avgerinos of Studio Unicorn, has compiled and composed what Schola Ministries calls an “audio breviary composed of the prayers, poems and psalms of the spiritual master who has taught the world to pray.”

It’s not essential to have Sr. Kathleen’s earlier A BOOK OF HOURS (Sorin 2007) but it is certainly the complement and inspiration for these CD’s. In Day of the Stranger Thomas Merton describes his favorite writers as a kind of chorus whose golden sounds he hears in the silence of the hermitage. Christine Bochen says “He also discovers that the language of music enables him to speak of the inner unity of contemplation…Merton understood the language of music.”

Sr. Kathleen Deignan’s crystal clear lyrical soprano, invites us to the pure, pure pleasure of being fully alive in praising God from dawn to dusk. Like the mockingbird or meadowlark, on beautiful spring mornings singing for pure pleasure, Sr. Kathleen’s beckons us to contemplation, thanksgiving, mercy.

Here’s the content for a typical 11 minute selection. In Sunday Dawn the tuning fork fixes our attention for Kathleen’s opening song and narration The most wonderful moment of the day. Listen carefully. This is important. She sings us into the presence of our God. I am giving Thee worship with my whole living…I am giving Thee praise with my heart singing. Jonathan sequences this with his resonant baritone reading Merton When the psalms surprise me with their music and antiphons turn to rum: The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul… Today, Father, the blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you together with the sweet smelling air that is full of brilliant light…You have made us one and many.

Then Kathleen’s melody Before we speak you already heard us… followed by her reading Merton Contemplation is the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being; for we ourselves are words of His. Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison –Lord, have mercy, mercy, mercy

Jonathan’s counterpoint Keep me above all things from sin…that I may love for You alone… With my hair almost on end. With the eyes of the soul wide open I am present. O paradise of simplicity…self awareness and self-forgetfulness. Kathleen, with a background of drums sings the conclusion to the meditation O what their joy must be. It is enough for one morning. It fills us.

Sunday Dusk follows a similar pattern. The tuning fork, like the Buddhist gong, soothes our cluttered souls and calls us to prepare for the night, to get ready to give all the day to the Creator of a mystic heaven setting a place where souls dark night. Kathleen calms with a beautiful song from Merton’s poetry, O night of admiration, full of choirs, O night of deepest praise, And darkness of sweet delight. Jonathan’s narrative with the Schola singers in the background tucks us in with a blanket of peace as he reads from New Seeds of Contemplation Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory…I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You have created, singing your hymns to find joy in giving You glory.

Kathleen narrates The Lord plays in the garden of His creation and then invites us with song to forget ourselves on purpose and join in the general dance. This is followed by Jonathan and Kathleen as a duet reciting Merton’s beautiful litany from Search for Solitude Teach me to go to this country beyond words and beyond names …I need my heart to be moved by you…I need the world to be saved and changed by You…I need your healing hand to work always in my life…It is necessary. Amen. We are emptied of the day and taken into the unknown night with the closing prayer from Entering The Silence This is the land where You have given me roots in eternity. O God of heaven and earth…the place of peace, the place of silence, the place of wrestling with the angel. It is enough. Our souls are past the sunset and ready for the end of evening twilight.

Others have also complimented these fine recordings. Richard De Maria writes, “For those who do not have a community with which to pray, this double CD will provide a welcomed companion and treasure.” Susan Hedge adds “I have been searching for a way to incorporate my yoga practice into prayer and this CD has done it for me… it allows me to concentrate on the movement rather than having to create my own words.” Madonna Coleman-Petrik told Sr. Kathleen “Your sun n’moon laced book has saved me numerous times, when drained or distracted reaching for breath unsure of what’s threatening my center… And others: “Thank you for lending your gifts to the creation of this music and poetry.” “Absolutely love it! But that does not even touch how it is…silence only begins to express the power of this gift you have shared with us. It goes to a space deeper than silence…”

Amazon gives these CD’s 5 Stars and has a special offering of A Book of Hours and the CD’s for $32.89.

A word about the Schola Ministries which keeps alive the ancient Christian tradition of the schola cantorum – those musicians of the spirit or “schools of singers” who for centuries have breathed life into worship with their vibrant song. Schola musicians bring this ancient inspiration into a new time and fresh musical idiom in service of the Anima, the life-force, breath, spirit, soul. Since 1966 Sr. Kathleen has been a Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame (CND), the first and lasting home of her music. Since 1975 she has been the leader of song and composer in residence at the Benedictine Grange, a vibrant Christian worship community in West Redding, Connecticut. For decades they have been developing a sound and style unique in the world of sacred music. They interweave the haunting sounds of Native American flute, recorder, medieval psaltry, acoustic guitar, African rattles and tambourines, with the intensity of Middle Eastern percussion and Celtic lyricism. Sr. Kathleen’s voice is at once celestial, earthy, contemplative, and ecstatic.

Although reviews purport to be objective as they give a synopsis of the work, the reviewer hopes for a reader response like, “I’d want to read that book or listen to the CD. I’d like to know more.” Of course the opposite reaction is also common: “I don’t need to know more.” In listening to this beautiful, beautifully profound music that touched the depth of my awareness and the core of my being, I just want to shout “Buy it!” Listen to it! Give it away!” Your birthday, anniversary gift shopping will be done. Your friends will thank you and they will definitely remember the present you gave them.

Review of A Book of Hours: At Prayer with Thomas Merton
Created by Kathleen Deignan, CND with Jonathan Montaldo and Paul Avgerinos
SCHOLA MINISTRIES, Washington, D.C., 2009

Reviewed by John Berger

Stations: A Lenten Concert of Sacred Songs with psalmist and sacred song composer Kathleen Deignan, CND, pianist Rob Silvan, guitarist Beth Bradley, percussionist Marion Najamy and choreographer and co-director of the Omega Dance company, Sandra Rivera – a special celebration on Friday February 26th at 7:30pm in the spiritual setting of Holy Spirit Chapel at Sacred Heart University. Join these artists for a contemplative journey of Lent, sung through the familiar voices of passiontide. Please download the flyer to your left and pass around! We look forward to meeting you for this special celebration.

All the themes and readings of the liturgy compose us in a world of waiting, of serene expectation and hope for the dawning of a new time, a time of renewal and rebirth played out in a poetics of anticipation – anticipation for a child, a wonder-child, fresh from the womb of divinity: the Christ Child.

Lately I have been in a steady conversation with that mysterious Child ever gestating in the great round womb of the universe as its deepest subjectivity and newness, as its eternal beginning. And since we are creatures in whom divinity is being born again and again in countless ways, I wonder about that Child gestating in us.

The other day, to begin the Advent practice of getting little and uncluttered and quiet, I made my way into The Oratory where there is only a prayer chair and huge image of The Little Flower, Therese of the Child Jesus. What better spiritual guide through this season than the one who experimented her whole brief life with a way of spiritual childhood? But knowing Therese, I understood that this kind of childhood was the realization of an old soul, a wise and seasoned being who had discovered some soul-truth by way of growing younger and younger day by day till she had found her way back to the womb of God.

Is it possible to live in the womb of God as divinity’s own pure potential – to come to sense and feel oneself as kin to that Christ Child originally revealed in Jesus, “the first-born of a New Creation?” And what would it mean to live as one perpetually being born in the “renewal of one’s mind,” one’s heart and habits – without memory or forethought to obscure the graceful possibility of the present moment? What would it be like to just be there with beginners mind each instant, letting dissolve by inattention the old-self-ways that distract us from the annunciations and immaculate conceptions that mean to bring The Christ Child to birth. Again. Here and now. In us…?

This is what I am wondering this Advent – such a great time for wondering. What are you wondering?

* Mythos Gate by Ann Deignan: further information on the Books Page

Aline Wolf, Switzerland

Bro. David Steindl-Rast, OSB

Dan Driscoll, Spiritual Books Associates

May God bless you on your journey.
Pat Michaelson

For further information, please see our Events page and the Schola Benefit Concert website.

Audio Divina: the practice of contemplative listening or hearing a sacred word For over half a century spiritual master Thomas Merton has taught countless worldly contemplatives the art of lectio divina: the meditative reading of his sacred texts which have drawn our souls deep into silence and devotion. As the eye brought us to the depths of prayer, now the ear will do the same as it opens here to the sounding of Merton’s exquisite poems and psalms read by Jonathan Montaldo and Kathleen Deignan CND.

Enter into this aural oratory made of Merton’s word and Deignan’s song, and hear the resonance that will heal the dissonance of your soul. A bell will summon you each day at dawn and dusk to a brief sounding of prayer. Rest there. Linger. Sink in to the silence beneath the word, the echoing silence beneath the song. Lear the art of audio divina…

At Prayer with Thomas Merton is an audio breviary created by Kathleen Deignan, CND composed of the prayers, poems and psalms of the spiritual master who has taught the world to pray.

Drawn from her edited volume Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours (Sorin Books 2007), she has inter-laced his mystical word with her sacred song to weave a sound tapestry for prayer at dawn and dusk each day that will encompass you in stillness or in motion, in solitude or while moving through the busyness of your life.

With Jonathan Montaldo of the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living and Paul Avgerinos of Studio Unicorn, Kathleen invites you to be at prayer with Thomas Merton and savor the grace of contemplative presence.

Though there were few of his own books on the shelves of his study, A Vow of Conversation was the one I reached for and kept handy as I rehearsed how profoundly Merton had influenced my way of being in the world. He had – since my encounter with his writings as a high school student – inspired nearly every significant turn I would take, and had informed my deepest commitments. Those days there in his small cinderblock house were for me a way of touching something of his quiet presence, offering thanks for the way the words he had written from his cultivated silence, had become lucid wisdom for me and for many – even as they continue to resound for generations still on their way.

At the end of my days there, I asked two of Merton’s good friends to come and witness a promise that wanted to be spoken in that place. It was a desire to be more conformed to the way of being that the founder of my community, the Congregation of Notre Dame, lived her life. Marguerite Bourgeoys, in imitation of Mary of the Visitation, wanted her sisters and associates to be women and men of dialogue: “conversant avec la prochain.” In a sense she wanted us to live that transformative practice of deep conversation – which Merton so faithfully embodied – in all its aspects: in our prayer, in our relationships, in our missions and ministries of world healing and building.

So in Merton’s tiny chapel, I shyly and clumsily murmured words I can hardly remember now. But I know it was to echo a similar desire to experiment with my own vow of conversation – of open, respectful, curious dialogue with my neighbor in whatever form – from divinity to the elements – and see what wisdom would arise from such sustained encounter. This page is a way of sharing where some of those conversations have led me and to invite you to your own practice of conversation that promises conversion in the wisdom of voices sounding all around. KD 10.25.09