title: Dialogues with Silence: Prayers and Drawings
author:  Thomas Merton 
description: Though best known for his spiritual writings, Thomas Merton also made drawings, whose Eastern-style brushwork have a meditative power rivaling that of his finest prayers. In <i>Dialogues with Silence</i>, these (mostly unpublished) drawings--of human figures, churches, the crucifixion, and abstract forms--are paired on pages with the texts of his well-known prayers. Editor Jonathan Montaldo's introduction to this volume asserts that Merton, the author of classics including <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156010860/${0}">The Seven Storey Mountain</a></i>, became a:
zlib_text: *
  Prayers
  'eT Drawings
  Edited
  by JONATHAN
  
  USA
  $25.00
  CAN $37.95
  ^Thomas Merton loved
  life with
  the passion
  of a romantic poet. At the age of twenty-six he
  chose to become a
  c
  ]~rappist monk and began
  to
  pursue his ultimate,
  lifelong passion. From
  his
  austere quarters at Our Lady of Gethsemani
  Abbey in °Trappist , Kentucky, Merton worked
  to change
  the world and
  to come closer
  to
  his
  God. ^Lhe drawings and prayers in this volume
  are
  the intimate,
  beautifully rendered record
  of that pursuit—Merton’s dialogue with God.
  cThe prayers have been gathered from
  all of
  Merton’s
  writings— his
  books, journals,
  letters— and are collected here, along with
  his
  largely unknown drawings,
  for the first time.
  In his drawings we see the evolution of Merton s
  art from purely representational to the more
  abstract, reflecting his interest in Zen and
  Eastern cultures.
  It
  is easy to see that art was in
  his genes; both of his parents were
  artists. With
  each prayer and in every brushstroke, we sense
  the depth of