Ebook Merton Palace of Nowhere James Finley 9780877930419 Books
Ebook Merton Palace of Nowhere James Finley 9780877930419 Books
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Merton Palace of Nowhere James Finley 9780877930419 Books Reviews
- You won't get a wordy scholarly discussion from me. No need to overstate or embellish. This book is a treasure of simple direct thought. I've been reading Merton for years. He fits very comfortably beside my Buddhist texts, writings on the Tao, and the Chinese mountain poets. I find Merton's unique synthesis of insights from Christianity and Eastern thought to be true sustenance. I read and re-read Merton and use this particular commentary as a support to morning meditation. Merton's view is fresh and powerful... His teachings ring with gentle truth. Here, James Findley's loving condensing of Merton's core teaching is a true Gift. Brief... but rich. Authoritative...but intimate. This is a wonderful book.
- Jim Finley is like a glacier, with only a little bit protruding above, but untold depths beneath the surface. I loved how succinct Finley is in this book. His writing is beautiful, packing a great deal into a sentence. I found “Merton’s Palace of Nowhere†to be an exceptional summary of Merton. Merton is hard to summarize, but Finley pulls it off because he shares the spacious non-dual mind of Merton, who was his mentor at Gethsemane Abbey. Probably my favorite line from the book… “Prayer never touches us as long as it remains on the surface of our lives, as long as it is nothing but one more of the thousands of things that must be done. It is only when prayer becomes ‘the one thing necessary’ that real prayer begins (pg. 17).â€
-Amos Smith (author of Healing The Divide Recovering Christianity's Mystic Roots) - I found that this book offers a solid core point that I could grasp we are naked and nothing creatures, so we are constantly tempted to make our selves something, creating a false self. God wants us to be our true self, which starts at being one who is loved by him (something we cannot create, but just receive).
There are other points around this main point that at times I could grasp, but these points mostly seemed ethereal. I need to read this book a few more times before I'll grasp these points.
So I recommend the book to those who've been on the spiritual formation journey for a while, but I would not recommend it to people just starting out. A better book to start with would be Brennan Manning's book, "Abba's Child" in which Manning does cite Merton a few times. "Abba's Child" basically makes the same point as this book, but in a much more accessible way. - This review is on the edition. The book is excellent and is a must read for any person interested in Thomas Merton's spirituality. I have read many of Merton's books, and I could have used Finley's incites in all of them.
Now the edition. The navigation is nearly non-existent. This would not be an issue if the book was reduced in price, but it isn't. There are numerous citations in the text referring to the expansive bibliography and notes. Hit any of them and all you will do is advance to the next page or return to the previous page.
The book also has no formal Table of Contents, but considering that Finley chose not to title the sections and chapters, a formal Table of Contents would have limited use. I do wish that Finley would have titled the sections and chapters, he certainly organized the information well enough.
I rate my book reviews on their content, not their navigation. - If you feel as if you’re reading the same Christian monologue over and over with every book you read, it’s time to move on to Finley. This is the advanced class (a class that teaches you that this thing called obedience is less work than we ever imagined, but that is just the beginning of the journey). This book in addition to Christian Meditation changed my life and the way I think about God and how to gain true presence with Him. Reading it in the morning during quiet time is how I best recommend it.
- I can't recommend this book enough for those interested in gaining a solid foundation from which they can build a genuine spiritual life. I have a master's degree in divinity from a Catholic seminary and wish I'd found this book a lot sooner. It's not a new book, published in 1978, but is truly timeless in the truths it so clearly reveals in such an orderly and readable manner. Thomas Merton, I'm sure, is very happy with this humble, gentle and powerful synthesis of his teaching. Basically Mr. Finley clarifies the tremendous danger of creating false images of ourselves that trap us in our spiritual growth, the goes on to help us free ourselves from these "idols". By humbly emptying ourselves of self images and meaningless self-serving, egoistic obsessions we can discover our true self rooted in and saturated by the person of Christ, our true self. I'd personally recommend accompanying this book with a practice of Centering Prayer (check out centeringprayer.com or .org).. The combination of the two could turn your spiritual life around for the better.
- I would agree with the other reviewer that this book is the most rewarding book I have read to date. I'd been interested in reading Merton and learning about his thought for years since so many of my spiritual "mentors" were themselves "mentored" by Merton. But he was so prolific and so deep I wasn't sure where to start and was looking for a kind of "Merton for Dummies" book! This book is that and so much more.
Sometimes people's gift is in creative, original thought (Merton in this case). And sometimes people's gift is to be able to understand another's thoughts/teaching and to synthesize them into a coherent whole. This is Finley's gift. I don't know that I've ever read such a well laid out book that took me bit by bit in a logical order through a complex subject allowing me to safely arrive at the end (where if you'd tried to start me there I might have misunderstood it).
I can't highly recommend this book enough if you are interested in spirituality.
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