What do you think?
Rate this book
The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton
WINNER of the 2021 Thomas Merton Award awarded by The International Thomas Merton Society What if we truly belong to each other? What if we are all walking around shining like the sun? Mystic, monk, and activist Thomas Merton asked those questions in the twentieth century. Writer Sophfronia Scott is asking them today. In The Seeker and the Monk , Scott mines the extensive private journals of one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past for guidance on how to live in these fraught times. As a Black woman who is not Catholic, Scott both learns from and pushes back against Merton, holding spirited, and intimate conversations on race, ambition, faith, activism, nature, prayer, friendship, and love. She What is the connection between contemplation and action? Is there ever such a thing as a wrong answer to a spiritual question? How do we care about the brutality in the world while not becoming overwhelmed by it? By engaging in this lively discourse, readers will gain a steady sense of how to dwell more deeply within--and even to love--this despairing and radiant world.
202 pages, Paperback
Published March 16, 2021
52 people are currently reading
1265 people want to read
About the author
Sophfronia Scott
14 books378 followersSophfronia Scott is a novelist, essayist, and leading contemplative thinker whose work has received a 2020 Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. Her book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton won the 2021 Thomas Merton “Louie” Award from the International Thomas Merton Society. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Sophfronia began her career as an award-winning magazine journalist for Time, where she co-authored the groundbreaking cover story “Twentysomething,” the first study identifying the demographic group known as Generation X, and People. When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004 Sophfronia was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards and hailed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as “potentially one of the best writers of her generation.”
Her latest book is Wild, Beautiful, and Free, a historical novel set during the Civil War. Sophfronia’s other books include Unforgivable Love, Love’s Long Line, Doing Business By the Book, and This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, co-written with her son Tain. Her essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Yankee Magazine, The Christian Century, North American Review, NewYorkTimes.com, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her essays “Hope On Any Given Day,” “The Legs On Which I Move,” and “Why I Didn’t Go to the Firehouse” are listed among the Notables in the Best American Essays series.
Sophfronia has taught at Regis University’s Mile High MFA and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is currently the director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing, a low-residency graduate program based in Alma, Michigan. Sophfronia lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Sophfronia began her career as an award-winning magazine journalist for Time, where she co-authored the groundbreaking cover story “Twentysomething,” the first study identifying the demographic group known as Generation X, and People. When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004 Sophfronia was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards and hailed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as “potentially one of the best writers of her generation.”
Her latest book is Wild, Beautiful, and Free, a historical novel set during the Civil War. Sophfronia’s other books include Unforgivable Love, Love’s Long Line, Doing Business By the Book, and This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, co-written with her son Tain. Her essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Yankee Magazine, The Christian Century, North American Review, NewYorkTimes.com, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her essays “Hope On Any Given Day,” “The Legs On Which I Move,” and “Why I Didn’t Go to the Firehouse” are listed among the Notables in the Best American Essays series.
Sophfronia has taught at Regis University’s Mile High MFA and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is currently the director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing, a low-residency graduate program based in Alma, Michigan. Sophfronia lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
January 17, 2021
I wrote this book and I invite you to join me on a journey of discovery with Thomas Merton. If you're a fan of the famous monk, you'll find new connections with an old friend. If you've always been curious to experience Merton, this is a reader-friendly primer that will bring you to his life and work in way that will engage you with topics relevant to your life today: love, politics, ambition, race, materialism, death, and, yes, faith. I hope you enjoy it.
Sophfronia Scott
Sophfronia Scott
March 15, 2021
In the first chapter of The Seeker and the Monk, Sophfronia Scott writes, “I've always felt my job is to offer a way of looking at things. To model a way of living just by being.” This author's “job” is the gift of this book. Scott's perspective, super-charged from her deep dive into Thomas Merton's journals, is like reveling for hours in the counsel of a much wiser friend.
But Scott does more than create a provocative dialogue. She also takes writings that might initially read as disconnected from our present reality (a monk's view on materialism, for example) and makes them immediately relevant, even urgent.
In the same vein, Scott often presents a gentler view on difficult issues. In my favorite chapter, “Your Work and God's Work,” about ambition, Scott responds to Merton's self-flagellation: “But Thomas, I wonder, is it wise to starve the monster [of ambition] even as you're holding it off? If you don't allow it small pleasures, won't it become more insistent on having its own way?”
Sophfronia's realistic and inspiring takes had me starring and double-underlining all the way through the book, which ends with one of the most comforting takes on death I have ever encountered. A taste: “As much as we seek our paths and have questions about the journey, there is a sense deep within us, like a primeval compass, that shows we already know where to go. We only have to recognize the place, live our lives trusting it is there, and believe, when the time comes to float toward the harbor, that all shall be well.”
Scott has sent back this spiritual missive large of mind and even larger of heart and brimming, at turns, with that “sublime sustenance” of joy.
But Scott does more than create a provocative dialogue. She also takes writings that might initially read as disconnected from our present reality (a monk's view on materialism, for example) and makes them immediately relevant, even urgent.
In the same vein, Scott often presents a gentler view on difficult issues. In my favorite chapter, “Your Work and God's Work,” about ambition, Scott responds to Merton's self-flagellation: “But Thomas, I wonder, is it wise to starve the monster [of ambition] even as you're holding it off? If you don't allow it small pleasures, won't it become more insistent on having its own way?”
Sophfronia's realistic and inspiring takes had me starring and double-underlining all the way through the book, which ends with one of the most comforting takes on death I have ever encountered. A taste: “As much as we seek our paths and have questions about the journey, there is a sense deep within us, like a primeval compass, that shows we already know where to go. We only have to recognize the place, live our lives trusting it is there, and believe, when the time comes to float toward the harbor, that all shall be well.”
Scott has sent back this spiritual missive large of mind and even larger of heart and brimming, at turns, with that “sublime sustenance” of joy.
November 9, 2022
My profs forcing me to read books in a week is single-handly my carrying my goodreads goal 🫡
December 16, 2023
For reasons I cannot fully ascertain, I’ve been slow to get into Thomas Merton. As in: it just hasn’t happened for me yet. Once, in my early years of literary exploration, I picked up The Seven Storey Mountain. It’s a book People Like Me are supposed to have read; I was aware of this. But I couldn’t get past the first few pages before setting it aside. At some point, I must have given my copy away.
Several years ago, I gave Merton another try with The Wisdom of the Desert. (It wasn’t bad.) I also read Robert Hudson’s strange and wonderful The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. It was easily one of my favorite books of 2018—I think about it still—but that affection has more to do with Hudson and Dylan than with Merton, I’m sorry to say.
It’s possible my puzzling disinterest in everyone’s favorite Trappist monk has something to do with Merton’s later flirtations with Zen Buddhism, an approach to life that, generally speaking and with all due respect, leaves me cold. But there’s more to Merton than that—so much writing and living came before—and I’m not quite ready to give up on getting to know him.
Which brings me to Sophfronia Scott and her book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton (Broadleaf). Scott is perhaps an unlikely “friend” to Merton. A Black female Protestant mainliner with Baptist roots, it’s not immediately apparent what she would have in common with this French-born son of a Kiwi who cavorted through his younger years before converting to Catholicism and becoming a monk. Besides the biographical differences, there are the equally important temperamental ones. If they were to meet at a cocktail party, Scott muses, “I’d probably find Merton boisterous and slightly boorish. Later, I’d likely describe him to friends as having that entitled, mansplaining kind of tone that makes you keep your distance.”
And yet, Scott tells us that at a certain point she found herself thinking about Merton all the time. “I just have this monk who follows me around,” she recalls telling an audience at a writing conference in Grand Rapids. “And he kind of mentors me and gives me advice.”
The Seeker and the Monk is conceived as a “conversation” between Scott and Merton, with chapters covering a range of themes that appear in Merton’s private journals. By focusing on these journals as opposed to his more popular books, Scott helps us get to know Merton the man, unfiltered and unedited.
Want an example? There’s a famous passage in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (a marvelous title for a book, if you ask me) in which Merton recounts a street-corner epiphany that marked a turning point in his life. In that moment in downtown Louisville, this monk who had so publicly withdrawn from the world was suddenly overcome by the recognition “that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” So significant was this mystical experience in Merton’s life—and, later, in the imaginations of his readers—that if you visit that street corner today, you will find a historical marker.
One year after the epiphany, though, Merton returned to Louisville and had a very different experience. “Hated the town. It was hot and stupid,” he writes in his journal. “Everywhere the world oppresses me with a sense of infinite clutter and confusion…”
It’s a jarring reversal. But as Scott reminds us, it’s also an understandable one—if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves about our own complexities and contradictions. Merton’s epiphany came at a particular moment in time. I don’t doubt the experience was spiritually significant, and he certainly carried that sense with him. But life didn’t permit him to remain there on that street corner forever. Nor, certainly, did he remain as grumpy as the journal would find him, back in Louisville the following year. That too was a moment in time.
Our spiritual and literary companions are, without exception, human beings who have undergone seismic (if sometimes subterranean) shifts throughout the course of their lives. Sometimes we like those changes; praise be to God. Other times, though, we hate them. We’d prefer to flash-freeze these teachers of ours in some earlier stage, before that book, before that debacle, before that tragic last act.
But that’s not how life works. Every author, and every person, contains multitudes. Including Thomas Merton. So it seems just and right to grapple with these men and women in all their glorious complexity—and to keep on grappling, as long as it takes.
Several years ago, I gave Merton another try with The Wisdom of the Desert. (It wasn’t bad.) I also read Robert Hudson’s strange and wonderful The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. It was easily one of my favorite books of 2018—I think about it still—but that affection has more to do with Hudson and Dylan than with Merton, I’m sorry to say.
It’s possible my puzzling disinterest in everyone’s favorite Trappist monk has something to do with Merton’s later flirtations with Zen Buddhism, an approach to life that, generally speaking and with all due respect, leaves me cold. But there’s more to Merton than that—so much writing and living came before—and I’m not quite ready to give up on getting to know him.
Which brings me to Sophfronia Scott and her book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton (Broadleaf). Scott is perhaps an unlikely “friend” to Merton. A Black female Protestant mainliner with Baptist roots, it’s not immediately apparent what she would have in common with this French-born son of a Kiwi who cavorted through his younger years before converting to Catholicism and becoming a monk. Besides the biographical differences, there are the equally important temperamental ones. If they were to meet at a cocktail party, Scott muses, “I’d probably find Merton boisterous and slightly boorish. Later, I’d likely describe him to friends as having that entitled, mansplaining kind of tone that makes you keep your distance.”
And yet, Scott tells us that at a certain point she found herself thinking about Merton all the time. “I just have this monk who follows me around,” she recalls telling an audience at a writing conference in Grand Rapids. “And he kind of mentors me and gives me advice.”
The Seeker and the Monk is conceived as a “conversation” between Scott and Merton, with chapters covering a range of themes that appear in Merton’s private journals. By focusing on these journals as opposed to his more popular books, Scott helps us get to know Merton the man, unfiltered and unedited.
Want an example? There’s a famous passage in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (a marvelous title for a book, if you ask me) in which Merton recounts a street-corner epiphany that marked a turning point in his life. In that moment in downtown Louisville, this monk who had so publicly withdrawn from the world was suddenly overcome by the recognition “that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” So significant was this mystical experience in Merton’s life—and, later, in the imaginations of his readers—that if you visit that street corner today, you will find a historical marker.
One year after the epiphany, though, Merton returned to Louisville and had a very different experience. “Hated the town. It was hot and stupid,” he writes in his journal. “Everywhere the world oppresses me with a sense of infinite clutter and confusion…”
It’s a jarring reversal. But as Scott reminds us, it’s also an understandable one—if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves about our own complexities and contradictions. Merton’s epiphany came at a particular moment in time. I don’t doubt the experience was spiritually significant, and he certainly carried that sense with him. But life didn’t permit him to remain there on that street corner forever. Nor, certainly, did he remain as grumpy as the journal would find him, back in Louisville the following year. That too was a moment in time.
Our spiritual and literary companions are, without exception, human beings who have undergone seismic (if sometimes subterranean) shifts throughout the course of their lives. Sometimes we like those changes; praise be to God. Other times, though, we hate them. We’d prefer to flash-freeze these teachers of ours in some earlier stage, before that book, before that debacle, before that tragic last act.
But that’s not how life works. Every author, and every person, contains multitudes. Including Thomas Merton. So it seems just and right to grapple with these men and women in all their glorious complexity—and to keep on grappling, as long as it takes.
April 26, 2021
I must admit that I enjoy eavesdropping on conversations. Imagine how excited I was to read a book that literally invited me to eavesdrop on a conversation across time and space. Better, it was inviting me into that conversation. I didn't actually read this book because of Thomas Merton. I read it because I love Sophfronia Scott's writing, and wanted to be in on this conversation.
What a satisfying conversation it is. Scott managed to turn my indifference to Merton into admiration, because she was helping me to get to know him personally, through discussions about some difficult topics. They include racism, love, death... Merton and Scott's contemplations helped me to get to know them and love them deeply. They also deepened my faith.
I received a copy from Broadleaf Press as a part of the launch team.
What a satisfying conversation it is. Scott managed to turn my indifference to Merton into admiration, because she was helping me to get to know him personally, through discussions about some difficult topics. They include racism, love, death... Merton and Scott's contemplations helped me to get to know them and love them deeply. They also deepened my faith.
I received a copy from Broadleaf Press as a part of the launch team.
March 16, 2021
Thomas Merton has been described as "one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past..." And now we see and hear Thomas Merton through the writing of Sophfronia Scott, an influential contemplative thinker of the present. A very thoughtful book...
September 1, 2022
A must-read!!!
May 6, 2022
So exciting to meet the author through book club. Now a total fan girl of Thomas Merton and her!
March 3, 2023
What if you could sit down in a comfy chair next to the fire with your favorite hot cup of something delicious, and directly across from you was someone you’ve longed to have a deep conversation with about life or any other questions you’ve longed to ask? Who would that person be?
Sophfronia Scott has taken this question to new heights and beyond a simple fireside chat over tea.
There were so many things I loved about this book. The way Sophfronia connected and spoke to Thomas Merton in this book’s pages was refreshing and insightful. I loved reading about her struggles and sharing intimate stories that she weaved so elegantly throughout the text.
This book was a wonderful journey following Thomas’s life and giving the book an interesting biographical aspect, focusing on subjects like materialism. There’s a chapter aptly called “Alexa, Where’s My Stuff?” Others focus on ambition, God’s presence in nature, faith, prayer, hope, love, and racism.
Her brilliant and incredibly insightful perspective and raw, honest sharing of her inner thoughts truly bring this book to life. It’s not merely about Thomas and his beliefs. It’s about her own and her experiential journey.
I give you some terrific quotes and inspiring glimpses into this book here - https://booksyougottaread.com/2021/03...
Sophfronia Scott has taken this question to new heights and beyond a simple fireside chat over tea.
There were so many things I loved about this book. The way Sophfronia connected and spoke to Thomas Merton in this book’s pages was refreshing and insightful. I loved reading about her struggles and sharing intimate stories that she weaved so elegantly throughout the text.
This book was a wonderful journey following Thomas’s life and giving the book an interesting biographical aspect, focusing on subjects like materialism. There’s a chapter aptly called “Alexa, Where’s My Stuff?” Others focus on ambition, God’s presence in nature, faith, prayer, hope, love, and racism.
Her brilliant and incredibly insightful perspective and raw, honest sharing of her inner thoughts truly bring this book to life. It’s not merely about Thomas and his beliefs. It’s about her own and her experiential journey.
I give you some terrific quotes and inspiring glimpses into this book here - https://booksyougottaread.com/2021/03...
November 22, 2021
This book touched me, made me cry, and made me think deeply about my relationship with God and others. I don’t have words to express how much I feel like these two are “my people.” I live near Gethsemani but have never visited. I have been to Bellarmine but not to the Merton Center. Now, I feel like I must see both and read this book again.
June 21, 2022
So many things make sense to me after reading this book. Learning more about Thomas Merton and Sophfronia Scott in sort of a double memoir. This book made Thomas Merton accessible and quite human. I appreciate the work of Ms. Scott and how openly she shared her own journey.
March 30, 2021
An important, thoughtful, and soul-gripping book whose message is profound: How does one live a life of purpose and actualize one's potential? Masterful.
December 20, 2022
A wonderful conversation between a living writer and a dead but living monk. It’s all good; the last reflection a portal to wisdom.
April 5, 2021
The book starts with the author's discovery of Thomas Merton (an American monk, thinker and writer) who achieved popular celebrity in the US in the 50s and 60s. ‘The Seeker and the Monk’ is a series of imagined conversations or interactions between Scott and Merton on a whole range of contemporary subjects including faith, love, ambition, race and loyalty.
The book is a spiritual journey and like all well-crafted books it can be read in many different ways and at many different levels. For example, discussion of faith and pilgrimage can be considered in a purely religious way, in terms of belief, or it can be considered in a secular way, in terms of mindfulness and appreciation. When Scott visits Gethsemani, the abbey where Merton lived as a monk for many years she describes a walk in the countryside in a way that can be linked to prayer or pilgrimage but also to a heightened awareness and appreciation of our surroundings.
As I progressed through the chapters, I found myself thinking of the book as a handbook or even a guide book for the soul. A source of contemplative thinking that can be dipped into at will. It reminded me of the ‘vade mecum’ of the 17th century – a little handbook or guide kept constantly at one’s side to be consulted regularly.
The style of the book is light and engaging. I found it easy to read. Scott quotes Merton struggling with his failure to be a ‘good enough monk’ and offers to be Lucy to his Charlie Brown (Peanuts) with Scott as Lucy offering medical advice to Merton for ‘5 cents please’. A genuine offer of help across the decades to a struggling man.
She also references films, including Moonstruck with Nicholas Cage and Cher, where Cage, talking about love says, ‘Love doesn’t make things easy. It breaks our hearts; it’s messy. We’re here to love all the wrong people and die’. Scott also deals unflinchingly with the usual human preoccupations of life, love and death. There’s a wonderful passage in the book where Scott describes a visit to the private hermitage of Thomas Merton, built in the woods in a very secluded spot to give ‘Mr Important Monk’ complete privacy. After a reading of Merton’s writing Scott feels his presence in the room. This reminds me of the Latin American writers who interweave the living and the dead into their narratives, as a completely natural extension of our own mortal existence. This blurring of real and imagined, between the worldly and the celestial has always defined my understanding of spirituality.
Scott doesn’t shy away from unpleasant human behaviour either. She discusses and comments on ambition, jealousy, resentment and guilt relating to both Merton’s writing and her own personal experiences. I found this forthright approach to life’s journey and the bumps along the road as both meaningful and helpful.
‘The Seeker and the Monk’ is a physical and spiritual meandering through the corridors of our existence. Whilst the pretext for the book is further discussion of the words and thoughts of Thomas Merton, I found Sophfronia Scott’s own words and interpretations to be more interesting and more poignant than the excerpts from the great man himself.
Verdict – this book is well written and accessible. It is most definitely worth a read.
The book is a spiritual journey and like all well-crafted books it can be read in many different ways and at many different levels. For example, discussion of faith and pilgrimage can be considered in a purely religious way, in terms of belief, or it can be considered in a secular way, in terms of mindfulness and appreciation. When Scott visits Gethsemani, the abbey where Merton lived as a monk for many years she describes a walk in the countryside in a way that can be linked to prayer or pilgrimage but also to a heightened awareness and appreciation of our surroundings.
As I progressed through the chapters, I found myself thinking of the book as a handbook or even a guide book for the soul. A source of contemplative thinking that can be dipped into at will. It reminded me of the ‘vade mecum’ of the 17th century – a little handbook or guide kept constantly at one’s side to be consulted regularly.
The style of the book is light and engaging. I found it easy to read. Scott quotes Merton struggling with his failure to be a ‘good enough monk’ and offers to be Lucy to his Charlie Brown (Peanuts) with Scott as Lucy offering medical advice to Merton for ‘5 cents please’. A genuine offer of help across the decades to a struggling man.
She also references films, including Moonstruck with Nicholas Cage and Cher, where Cage, talking about love says, ‘Love doesn’t make things easy. It breaks our hearts; it’s messy. We’re here to love all the wrong people and die’. Scott also deals unflinchingly with the usual human preoccupations of life, love and death. There’s a wonderful passage in the book where Scott describes a visit to the private hermitage of Thomas Merton, built in the woods in a very secluded spot to give ‘Mr Important Monk’ complete privacy. After a reading of Merton’s writing Scott feels his presence in the room. This reminds me of the Latin American writers who interweave the living and the dead into their narratives, as a completely natural extension of our own mortal existence. This blurring of real and imagined, between the worldly and the celestial has always defined my understanding of spirituality.
Scott doesn’t shy away from unpleasant human behaviour either. She discusses and comments on ambition, jealousy, resentment and guilt relating to both Merton’s writing and her own personal experiences. I found this forthright approach to life’s journey and the bumps along the road as both meaningful and helpful.
‘The Seeker and the Monk’ is a physical and spiritual meandering through the corridors of our existence. Whilst the pretext for the book is further discussion of the words and thoughts of Thomas Merton, I found Sophfronia Scott’s own words and interpretations to be more interesting and more poignant than the excerpts from the great man himself.
Verdict – this book is well written and accessible. It is most definitely worth a read.
July 30, 2021
I recently became aware of and interested in the writings of American monk Thomas Merton through friends who refer to him. I have several of his books on hold at the library and I thought this book, The Seeker and the Monk would be a good way to find out more about Merton while I wait for his own writings.
Scott lives a very different life than Merton, who she imagines as someone who does a lot of ‘mansplaining’ but has deeply held beliefs. The idea behind this book is compelling: author Sophronia Scott explains, through imagined conversations with Merton, how Merton’s writings have influenced her life and work. It's written recently enough to include reference to the pandemic ("we are all monks, now.")
Topics include the value of material goods, personal ambition and the act of writing (Merton, living in seclusion as a monk published books, poetry and wrote volumes of journals), activism (Merton was a social activist who struggled with his role as a monk), friendship (as a monk living in solitude, Merton was dissuaded from having close friends). I’m particularly interested in Merton’s writing about his relationship with nature and found this part of the book intriguing, as Scott literally follows in his footsteps while visiting Merton’s home.
The book is particularly vivid when Scott talks about race and explains to her son how racism will affect his life, and poignant when she writes about love (Merton had a relationship with a nurse, and burned all correspondence after it ended). I struggled with sections on prayer.
I was left cold, baffled even, by anecdotes related to prayer that seem to involve God interceding in her life as a result of prayer, in particular a story that involves a chaise lounge, and another about the sudden appearance of an old friend, ostensibly through prayer. These sections left me cold, either because I misunderstood. The Seeker and the Monk receives many positive reviews so I may not be the best judge of its attributes. While I enjoyed the push-pull of the conversations, my response to the book is lukewarm at best.
Scott lives a very different life than Merton, who she imagines as someone who does a lot of ‘mansplaining’ but has deeply held beliefs. The idea behind this book is compelling: author Sophronia Scott explains, through imagined conversations with Merton, how Merton’s writings have influenced her life and work. It's written recently enough to include reference to the pandemic ("we are all monks, now.")
Topics include the value of material goods, personal ambition and the act of writing (Merton, living in seclusion as a monk published books, poetry and wrote volumes of journals), activism (Merton was a social activist who struggled with his role as a monk), friendship (as a monk living in solitude, Merton was dissuaded from having close friends). I’m particularly interested in Merton’s writing about his relationship with nature and found this part of the book intriguing, as Scott literally follows in his footsteps while visiting Merton’s home.
The book is particularly vivid when Scott talks about race and explains to her son how racism will affect his life, and poignant when she writes about love (Merton had a relationship with a nurse, and burned all correspondence after it ended). I struggled with sections on prayer.
I was left cold, baffled even, by anecdotes related to prayer that seem to involve God interceding in her life as a result of prayer, in particular a story that involves a chaise lounge, and another about the sudden appearance of an old friend, ostensibly through prayer. These sections left me cold, either because I misunderstood. The Seeker and the Monk receives many positive reviews so I may not be the best judge of its attributes. While I enjoyed the push-pull of the conversations, my response to the book is lukewarm at best.
February 22, 2023
I stumbled upon this book through the public library. While I'm not 100 percent sure that I'll buy it now that I have read it, I could very well see me buying it. Not because it is a fresh experiential way of encountering Thomas Merton's writings (predominately his personal journals) even though it is that. Not because it is Scott's life as she connects with Thomas Merton through his writings, although it is that, too, and it is a valid reason for me to buy the book, but because it is both of those and a book which includes ideas for spiritual formation. How can we live into these thoughts? How can we draw closer to God? Furthermore, Scott does not shy away from contemporary issues, issues she is quite aware of and experienced in. Plus, much as I have learned from male authors who have written about Thomas Merton, I did appreciate the voice of a woman and mom. As young as Scott is, she also understands grief, and her thoughts on grief resonated with me, too.
The combination of all of these elements is not going to be everyone's cup of tea (at times she writes directly to Thomas Merton), and my mom won't be reading it, but then she doesn't really read any theological / philosophical non-fiction books.
The combination of all of these elements is not going to be everyone's cup of tea (at times she writes directly to Thomas Merton), and my mom won't be reading it, but then she doesn't really read any theological / philosophical non-fiction books.
December 3, 2021
In the Seeker and the Monk, Sophfronia Scott takes us on a spiritual journey through some of Thomas Merton's journals and published works. For those who do not know, Thomas Merton, a monk and influential writer of many spiritual and progressive topics has long since passed, but his writings on topics are just as relevant now as they were back then. Juxtaposing Merton's writings with direct questions and ruminations, Sophfronia crafts a "conversation" between the two to explore shared spiritual and philosophical topics of interest.
Going into this book, I didn't have much knowledge on Thomas Merton. I came by this book by listening to a podcast that Rolf Potts had with Sophfronia Scott earlier this year. Thomas Merton sounded like the type of flawed monk that I would have loved to sit down and had a conversation with.
I think different people will come away with different things from this book. Topics on Death, Love, and Racism really resonated with me. I found the book as a whole to be quite well written and engaging throughout.
Going into this book, I didn't have much knowledge on Thomas Merton. I came by this book by listening to a podcast that Rolf Potts had with Sophfronia Scott earlier this year. Thomas Merton sounded like the type of flawed monk that I would have loved to sit down and had a conversation with.
I think different people will come away with different things from this book. Topics on Death, Love, and Racism really resonated with me. I found the book as a whole to be quite well written and engaging throughout.
April 25, 2022
It takes courage to share one's spirituality with the world. It takes a bold spirit to engage with Thomas Merton and Ms Scott is bold but - she is not arrogant. She treats Thomas Merton like a friend. He's a much older friend with a decidedly different world view that can bump up against a modern sensibility. Sophfronia Scott engages with Merton like a great granddaughter with a treasured forebear. They don't always see eye to eye but she does her best to understand this genius of a man and cut him some slack when he can't possibly know what her experience has been. And of course, he can't really engage in a way that differences could be reconciled. Ms Scott is on a journey much like Merton's I think and her words, her way of engaging with the world will be a useful guide to those setting out on their own pilgrimage and it will give readers the courage, I hope, to trust their own spiritual instincts as Sophfronia Scott trusts hers. Worth the read for sure.
August 13, 2021
A very easy read—and very relatable! Like the author my husband and I have a fascination for all things Thomas Merton. The author digested all of the things one needs to know in bite-size chapters and was also able to cross reference it with some memorable moments in her life, pretty much like “What Would Thomas Do?” scenarios. We have been contemplating, in the years we spent living in the Midwest, to make the pilgrimage to the Abbey of Gethsemane (we traveled thru the area from Milwaukee to Huntsville twice) but never quite made an earnest effort to take the detour (35 mins outside of Louisville). This book renewed my determination to make the trip once and for all, once the mess that is Covid is gone.
October 9, 2023
What a beautiful book. I came across Sophfronia Scott talking about this book on the Nomad podcast. I'd been intrigued by Thomas Merton for some time but in what I'd read of his, he remained a bit abstract for me. A great thinker and contemplative and a bit of a maverick, through engaging with his journals in her own seeking, Sophfronia makes Thomas Merton more vivid and real in her reflections on aspects of his monastic life and faith journey, while zooming out and thinking on questions of faith more broadly, as well as touching on her own experiences. I finished this book feeling nourished and really quite moved.
February 25, 2022
This book was great. I'm already a Merton fan, but have never ventured very far off of his popular works, and certainly not his journals. This felt like a great way to get a glimpse into his life without needing to trudge through daily entries and observations. And Scott's language and prose is really beautiful. The vulnerability of it, writing about moments in her own life that were deeply personal, helped me think about moments in my own life that related to the journey of a "seeker" and to Merton's ideas about solitude, love, death, etc.
April 12, 2021
I read some basic Merton many years ago and have always been intrigued by him. I was able to stop at the Abbey of Gethsemani several years ago, and was struck with it's locale and the monastic way of life. This book was such a fresh way to revisit Thomas Merton, I read through it in 2 sittings. Now I'm going to treat myself to a deeper dive into the chapters. Ms. Scott has a distinctive modern voice, and I look forward to enjoying her company for the next few weeks.
June 24, 2021
I don't care to read books I feel anyone could have thrown together, it had a book report feel. I didn't like the premise of it being a"conversation" with "my Thomas." It was weirdly possessive and Merton is passed so he can't respond to the author's interpretation of what she thinks his motivations are. Basically using someone else's name to sell a book. Nothing life changing here, sorry. I read it for a book club and we didn't finish it all.
October 3, 2024
This was the spiritual nourishment I didn’t know I needed. Sophfronia Scott has a poignant and genuine writing style that lends itself to meaningful contemplation by her readers. This isn’t a book of simple praise for Thomas Merton, but a collection of true conversations inspired through the writings of Merton. Scott doesn’t agree with all of his sentiments either, challenging many to further the contemporary dialogues about very real issues in life and the world. This is a special book.
April 17, 2021
Wow: what an inspiring, sobering, beautiful book. The ways in which Sophfronia Scott brilliantly grounds meditations on spirituality in issues of social and racial justice, contemporary politics, and a complex celebration of family and motherhood are nothing short of exhilarating. What an essential journey this book offers us.
August 7, 2021
Here’s the problem in a nutshell: while the author writes well and insightfully, her lack of knowledge about the monastic tradition and contemplative prayer causes her to leap to some dubious conclusions in the second half of the book. In the end, for me, that made it just okay - and almost caused me to not finish the book.
April 18, 2021
Sophronia Scott writes just as she teaches and talks, with smoothness and elegance, with a deep knowing of faith and belief in the goodness of humanity. Love the collision of her writing with Merton’s.
August 2, 2021
Most excellent insights into the life of Merton. This is the book for those who want to discover Merton but do not know where to start. This book is also an excellent book for book clubs in your local church.
November 3, 2021
There is definitely some questionable statements in this book, and a lot of fangirling, but I also found a friend, not only in Sophfronia but Merton as well. I found myself encouraged along in my spiritual journey.
November 6, 2021
This was a very creative way to integrate biography, memoir and faith writing. I loved learning about Thomas Merton and how his work continues to inspire and challenge people today and how it impacts the author personally.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews