Thomas Merton - Spiritual Direction and Meditation

Short Review: This is a combination of two unrelated pamphlet length works by Merton. I was interested in the one about Spiritual direction and went ahead and read the one on meditation as well. The spiritual direction one is helpful but not the best I have read. Both the spiritual direction and meditation works are more about why you should do it than how to do them. Both are against some of the myths around the practices as well (spiritual direction is not about being told how to grow spiritually, but having someone to listen to God with you and help you discern a path to growth closer to Christ. or Meditation is not about emptying yourself or thinking great thoughts but about finding God and reflecting on God throughout the day.)

I like reading other streams of Christian literature in part to find different presuppositions and this is the case here. These are clearly oriented toward Catholics and to a lesser extent toward monks. I need to work a bit to related these to me.

My full blog review has some quotes to give you a sense of what the book is like. http://bookwi.se/spiritual-direction-meditiation/