What is Bridges to Contemplative Living?

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Principles of Bridges to Contemplative Living

This process of spiritual transformation is based on five key principles of Merton's thought:
     • Our everyday life is our spiritual life.
     • It is every person's primary vocation to be fully human, aware of who we are, and how we relate to
       other persons.
     • Our spiritual formation cannot take place in isolation from the rest of our lives.
     • Spiritual formation is grounded in the experience of relationships and community.
     • Personal growth and transformation is the foundation for social and cultural transformation.

Content of Bridges to Contemplative Living/I
"Entering the School of Your Experience"    

     1. Contemplative Living
     2. Contemplative Dialogue
     3.Exploring Life's Questions
     4. Trusting Life, Nature, and God
     5. Praying Through Your Changing Image of God
     6. Doing God's Will
     7. Praying Out of the Roots of Your Own Life
     8. Compassion--Prayer in Action

Content of Bridges to Contemplative Living/II
"Becoming Who You Already Are" 

Each chapter provides an opportunity for prayer, reading, personal reflection and small group dialogue, all of which leads participants progressively into deeper spiritual transformation and contemplative living.

This process is not designed as a study of contemplative living or the contemplative tradition.  It is designed to actually help participants become more contemplative by listening, reflecting and integrating what one hears and discovers  in everyday life.  It is not out-come oriented.  It avoids judgment and evaluation.  It is meant to be non-threatening, safe, and affirming, and is comfortable for adults and young adults of any religious tradition.

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About Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915.  He was baptized in the Catholic Church in 1938 and entered the Cistercian Order as a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in 1941.  He served as Master of Scholastics and Novices at Gethsemani and wrote numerous books and articles on the spiritual life, inter-religious understanding, peace and social justice.  His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was published in 1948. In 1968 Merton attended a conference of contemplatives in Thailand, where he was accidentally electrocuted and died at the age of 53.

Merton wrestles with how to be contemplative in a world of action, but offers no quick fix or "ten easy steps" to a successful spiritual life.  In The Hidden Ground of Love, published in 1985, he wrote:
       "When I first became a monk, yes, I was sure of 'answers.'  But as I grow old in the monastic life
       and advance further in solitude, I become aware that I have only begun to seek the questions. 
       And what are the questions?  Can we make sense out of our existence?  Can we honestly give
       our lives meaning merely by adopting a certain set of explanations which pretend to tell us why
       the world began and where it will end, why there is evil and what is necessary for a good life?  My
       brothers and sisters, perhaps in my solitude I have become, as it were, an explorer for you, a
       searcher in realms which you are are not able to visit...."

Related Links
> Bridges to Contemplative Living for Advent
> Bridges to Contemplative Living for Lent and Holy Week
 

[Last Update: 06.05.20]