A new online retreat with Dr. Deborah Lee Prescott.
The Artist as Prophet
The Surprising Insights of Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton
(This is a 90 minute online program.)
Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton: two Catholic writers whose works are still read, savored, and enjoyed. Both writers are justly celebrated for their perceptive analysis of their world, even though O’Connor lived most of her life on a small Georgia farm, and Merton spent much of his adult life in an enclosed Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Dedicated readers admire them both, particularly O’Connor’s fiction, especially her short stories, and Merton’s spiritual essays.
In this webinar, we will focus on the less familiar dimensions of these two writers’ canon: we will recommend two {maybe three} essays by O’Connor about the art of being a Catholic writer, and we will read two {maybe three} poems by Merton — available online for free. More information on the selections, closer to the event. If you enjoy Merton or O’Connor we think you’ll really enjoy this program.
Our meeting will be in a book-club format. Come, let us share our insights with each other, as we learn and grow from what we have to say and what we hear. The selected poems are available online for free. O’Connor’s essays are also available online, but you may wish to either purchase the collection, Mystery and Manners, or check it out from your local library. Specific titles of the poems and essays will be announced soon. (READING MATERIALS are linked below, under the registration section:
We will ground our conversation in some of O’Connor’s insights as expressed in her essays, collected in the book Mystery and Manners. Pasted below are links to three essays that we will discuss. If you enjoy O’Connor’s writing, you may wish either to purchase the book (easily available at online booksellers) or check it out of the library.
“Novelist and Believer”
Library : Novelist and Believer | Catholic Culture
“Catholic Novelists and Their Readers”
The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South | Teaching American History
“The Church and the Fiction Writer”
The Church and the Fiction Writer: From March 30, 1957 | America Magazine
Having established what O’Connor believes about Catholic artists, let us consider the Catholic artistry of Thomas Merton. What do his poems reveal about his own understanding of his vocation, his theology, the world, and how we live in the world? Pasted below are links to four of his poems. The poems are also available in the book, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, edited by Lynn R. Szabo.
“Trappists, Working”
POETRY: Trappists, Working, by Thomas Merton – The Value of Sparrows
“Hagia Sophia”
Hagia Sophia, by Thomas Merton | poems, essays, and short stories in Poeticous
“Theory of Prayer”
POETRY: Theory Of Prayer, by Thomas Merton – The Value of Sparrows
“Chant to be Used in Processions with Furnaces”
Dante’s Ghost: Thomas Merton. Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site With Furnaces
