Dancing in the Water of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage

This next-to-last volume of the famous Trappist monk's personal journals covers the years before and just after his move to a hermitage on the grounds of the Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Ken.. Filled with Merton's characteristic humor and spiritual insight, this book contains Merton's thoughts on the assassination of President Kennedy, his first reflections on the escalating war in Vietnam and his ruminations on the changes in the Catholic church and the Trappist order wrought by Vatican II. In these pages, Merton also reveals a strong antipathy for the cheerful piety of his sometimes seemingly duplicitous but well-meaning abbot, James Fox. Making his struggles and his happiness practically tangible on these page, Merton was never a better writer than in his journals. His great gifts are as abundantly clear in this volume as in its predecessors. (June)