Musings



I'm reading a "new" Thomas Merton book that is very good. I'm not sure if it has been released yet since I think I'm reading a review copy. The book was one that he worked on in 1959 but sat unfinished until in 1968 he finally got around to making a few corrections.



Trouble is that he had specified in a trust in 1967 that if he died this manuscript (at that time unfinished) should never be published. He left the corrected and finished copy with a priest friend and asked him to have some cloistered Carmelites read it for their review. They loved it, but in the meantime Merton never returned to pick up the manuscript, his body came back in body bag from the Orient.



The priest friend in his grief rather forgot about it too, until in the 1970's when he discovered the manuscript that the Carmelites had returned and their glowing recomendation of it. He wrote the Abott of Merton's Monastery and informed it that the book should be published as Merton had conveyed this wish to him before leaving on the trip that took his life.



Trouble is that oral testimony does not override a written will for obvious reasons ("well Daddy told me just before he died that he wanted me to inherit the farm not junior"). So the manuscript went unpublished until now. The change has come about because Cisterician Studies has published bits and pieces of it over the years and it is felt that to do the text justice the final edited version should be released.



I've read a few chapters so far and it is very good!



The name of the book is The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

Provide Aid to Earthquake Victims in Algeria

Where to Buy the Rosary Book



Praying the Rosary

Amy Should Have Posted This One







I'll let her explain why.

Life of the Florida Fish and Game Officers



or Where People Think Jesus is a Turtle...



From Jacksonville.com:



Officers John Giles and Guy Carpenter II responded to a complaint about a man who had water turtles in an illegal enclosure. Upon arriving at the man's house, the officers found two Florida cooter turtles in a skylight that was buried like a swimming pool in the front yard.



After telling the man that the turtles needed some way to get out of the water if they wanted to, he responded by saying that one of the turtles was Jesus and that he had planned on eating both of them later in the evening.



The officers told the man that he needed to put a rock or log in the pool with the turtles so that they could get out of the water, but he decided to let them go into the lake in his back yard instead.

Thanks to Martin Farkus for This Link



Fast Lane to Heaven



Very interesting site! Man had near death experience, experienced a vision of a "lady of light" (all the more interesting that the Pope added Mysteries of Light), had a vision where he foresaw a terrorist attack on New York or Washington and major wars breaking out throughout the world starting in the Middle East as a result (all in 1984). The book predicting the major terrorist attack was published in 2001 (six months before September 11th)!

For a Peak inside the New Rosary Book



Go Here