The Only Mind Worth Having: Thomas Merton and the Child Mind

by Fiona Gardner, Rowan Williams (Foreword by)

Overview

In The Only Mind Worth Having, Fiona Gardner takes Thomas Merton's belief that the child mind is "the only mind worth having" and explores it in the context of Jesus' challenging, paradoxical, and enigmatic command to become like small children. She demonstrates how Merton's belief and Jesus's command can be understood as part of contemporary spirituality and spiritual practice. To follow Christ's command requires a great leap of the imagination. Gardner examines what it might mean to make this leap when one is an adult without it becoming sentimental and mawkish, or regressive and pathological. Using both psychological and spiritual insights, and drawing on the experiences of Thomas Merton and others, Gardner suggests that in some mysterious and paradoxical way recovering a sense of childhood spirituality is the path toward spiritual maturity. The move from childhood spirituality to adulthood and on to a spiritual maturity through the child mind is a move from innocence to experience to organized innocence, or from dependence to independence to a state of being in-dependence with God.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498230230
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	11/06/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	242
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Fiona Gardner is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, spiritual director, and writer living in the UK. She is the author of Journeying Home (2004), The Four Steps of Love (2007), and Precious Thoughts (2011) as well as psychoanalytic books and articles. Formerly chair of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland (2004-8) and coeditor of The Merton Journal (2008-14), she is on the board of the International Thomas Merton Society and was awarded a "Louie" in 2015 at the ITMS Centenary Conference.
Fiona Gardner is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, spiritual director, and writer living in the UK. She is the author of Journeying Home (2004), The Four Steps of Love (2007), and Precious Thoughts (2011) as well as psychoanalytic books and articles. Formerly chair of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland (2004-8) and coeditor of The Merton Journal (2008-14), she is on the board of the International Thomas Merton Society and was awarded a "Louie" in 2015 at the ITMS Centenary Conference.

Table of Contents

Foreword Rowan Williams ix

Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction to Jesus' Command, to Thomas Merton, and to Ideas about the Spirit of the Child 1

Part 1 Understanding

2 Infancy and Rebirth 15

3 Thinking about God as Parent and God as Child 28

4 The Influence of Monastics, Saints, and Theologians on Thomas Mertons Thinking on the Child Mind 43

5 Child's Mind is Buddha's Mind 57

6 The Shadow and the Disguise: The Adult Life of Care 71

Part 2 Re-Finding

7 The Enchanted World, the Tendency towards Dis-enchantment, and the Possibility of Re-enchantment 85

8 The Secret Life of the "Wounded Child 98

9 Finding Spiritual and Psychological Healing 111

10 An Invitation to Look and Find Paradise 126

Part 3 Becoming

11 Dancing in the Water of Life 141

12 Poetry: The Language of the Child Mind 155

13 The Divine Play of God: Play and Creativity 170

14 The Internal Landscape of the Child Mind and Models of Spiritual Maturity 183

15 Epiphanies of the Child Mind 196

Afterword 209

Bibiliography 213

Index 223

Editorial Reviews

[Gardner] is a psychotherapist and spiritual director and is well acquainted with Merton's writing, having been the chair of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain. She points out that the process of becoming involves growth towards a beginning to be. ... I have found this book immensely stimulating and valuable

The American Benedictine Review - Sr. Mary John Marshall O.S.B.

Fiona Gardner authoritatively yet sensitively draws on the poetry, journals, and correspondence of Thomas Merton and has expanded her own previously published lectures and articles to produce a work that is as fascinating as it is much-needed. It is, I think, one of the best introductions to the life and writing of Thomas Merton I know.

Luke Penkett