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I've got a great little gem of a piece for you today.
You may know of Thomas Merton. He was a 20th c. monk, poet, thinker, and activist who converted to Catholicism at age 23 and spent most of his life after that as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky.
This piece of his was first published in the Carleton Miscellany in the Fall, 1960 before appearing in his book The Behavior of Titans.
This was the middle of the Cold War, the McCarthy era was just beginning to ebb, and the Vietnam War had already been underway for five years. The jingoism that we're experiencing now is far from our first time at this rodeo, and while we must take action to protect those most harmed by it (Merton's letters at the time indicated that he was creating a Christians for Peace group, eg, and was engaged in other activism at the time) – this sweet approach has some layers to it as well. Why? Let's have a look.
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