Elizabeth: Your guest, Gretchen Rubin, was right to describe Thomas Merton as "complicated," but mistaken or overly simplistic to describe him as "misanthropic." Like you, I appreciate Merton. To learn more about him, I picked up John Moses' "Divine Discontent: The Prophetic Voice of Thomas Merton" (Bloomsbury 2014) on the strength of Anglican theologian Rowan William's foreword, where he says: "This book provides a coherent and comprehensive reminder of why Merton has mattered and still matters so much to so many diverse readers. He remains hard to categorize, a dangerous ally for anyone looking for support for any kind of party. At his best - and there is so much that is his best - he diagnoses as no one else both the spiritual and the political dis-eases of the post-war world, and we can still recognize the problems. But equally he displays wonderfully the richness and resourcefulness of the renewed world of the gospel. He gives 'a summons to life,' in a phrase used by John Moses at the end of his fine study. I hope there will be many to hear it."

recent subscriber! i found your work through your interview with john v. i like his content but prefer the personal experiential side of your content; it feels very relatable (i think many of us have had these deep questions and answers but don't have a proper framework to relate to and understand our spirituality through). thanks for producing such quality content and making it accessible!

Speaking of finding opposites of the deadly sins, do you know Rowan William's audio lectures titled "Apatheia and the Passions"? In them he draws lines to the beatitudes as opposites to the passions (precursors to the deadly sins). Mucknell Abbey host the recordings. Super insightful!

This was such a lovely conversation thank you! “Ordinary blessings” … yes.

A kind thought towards or about someone is a powerful blessing. A kind word works as well.

What changed my perspective on the seven deadly sins was reading The Praktikos by Evagrius of Pontus, one of the Alexandrian early Church Fathers, a slightly later contemporary of Origen. It was this book which John Cassian used to base the works which then influenced St Benedict, the founder of western monasticism. In this book he deals with the 'eight thoughts' which are, he claims, are included in every thought. These ultimately led to the development of 7 deadly sins model in the west (which I think is less useful). The Praktikos is a treatise on how to identify and manage these thoughts, which is a fundamental basis of the ascetic life. The 8 thoughts are gluttony, impurity, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride. His description of acedia reminded me of the kubler- Ross stages of grief and also the very similar (identical?) stages of organisational change. In fact I think you can map all the 8 thoughts onto the stages of grief. Possibly not so crazy if you consider sin as separation or loss of true relationship. If one assumes every change we make for the better requires a level of loss of the old for the promise of the new, Acedia could be strongly associated with the bargaining/depression stage aka 'the dark night of the soul' or the period in the desert. A big topic so best stop here. I hope some useful pointers.

Just got the fully alive book last week, cracked it open yesterday and I coukdn't even get past the introduction before I started underlining quotes from the book.

I don't know if you noticed this but when you first began to talk about Katherine May and accidental gurus you used the word, seminar. Gretchen Rubin gave it back to you as "seminar". In your concluding reflections you used Rubin's word rather than your own. Has something shifted?