The Only Mind Worth Having

Thomas Merton and the Child Mind
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7188-9441-2
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 242 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 333 g

Reihe: Lutterworth Press

An imaginative engagement with Thomas Merton's view of childhood, suggesting that a rediscovery of the 'child mind' helps to a mature relationship with God.

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' 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 towards 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 organised innocence, or from dependence to independence to a state of being in-dependence with God.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gardner, Fiona

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Rowan Williams
Acknowledgments

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

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING
2 Infancy and Rebirth
3 Thinking about God as Parent and God as Child
4 The Influence of Monastics, Saints, and Theologians on Thomas Merton's Thinking on the Child Mind
5 Child's Mind is Buddha's Mind
6 The Shadow and the Disguise: The Adult Life of Care

PART TWO: RE-FINDING
7 The Enchanted World, the Tendency towards Dis-enchantment, and the Possibility of Re-enchantment
8 The Secret Life of the Wounded Child
9 Finding Spiritual and Psychological Healing
10 An Invitation to Look and Find Paradise

PART THREE: BECOMING
11 Dancing in the Water of Life
12 Poetry: The Language of the Child Mind
13 The Divine Play of God: Play and Creativity
14 The Internal Landscape of the Child Mind and Models of Spiritual Maturity
15 Epiphanies of the Child Mind

Afterword
Bibiliography
Index