Thomas Merton Meets the Unspeakable: Rendezvous in Thailand

Born in 1915 in France to artists—an American mother with Quaker roots from New York, and a New Zealand-born father—Thomas Merton would become one of the twentieth century’s most influential spiritual leaders. Baptized as a Catholic at age twenty-six, he joined a Trappist monastery near Louisville a year later. From that point on, his spiritual side exploded into a tsunami of directions—Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and more. At age thirty-three, he became a...