Fiona Gardner (ed.): Precious Thoughts: Daily Readings from the correspondence of Thomas Merton (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2011), Milton Jones: 10 Second Sermons… and even quicker illustrations (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2011), Steven Cottrell: How to Pray: Alone, with others, at any time, in any place (Church House, 3^rd edition, 2010). 

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote about 10,000 letters. Selections of these were published in five volumes between 1985 and 1994. Now Merton scholar Fiona Gardner has ‘picked the eyes’ out of them and chosen short passages to be read day by day. 

Lovers of Merton’s writings (and I’m one of them) are fairly unanimous that some of his works are brilliant, others quite mundane, even wooden and boring. The genre ‘Letters’ always runs the risk of being in the latter category: correspondents are providing the subject-matter, and Merton responds – not always interestingly.

An old (1895) cartoon pictures a timid-looking curate breakfasting at the bishop’s house. The bishop says, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.” The curate replies, “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!” Traditionally, that implied the egg was totally inedible, but the saying has changed its meaning over time to connote something partly good and partly bad. 

This little book is a bit like that. Merton, while sometimes incisively prophetic (eg. in his denunciations of the institutional church, his critique of Christian missions and espousal of Zen) can also be mystically wise. Take these, for example: 

† ‘There comes a time when it is no longer important to prove one’s point, but simply to live, to surrender to God and to love’ (36) 

† ‘I have my own way to walk, and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me even though I do not know “what it is”’ (43) 

† ‘You can say absolutely nothing about the Church that can shock me. If I stay with the Church it is out of a disillusioned love, and with a realization that I myself could not be happy outside, though I have no guarantee of being happy inside either’ (44) 

† ‘Persons are known not by the intellect alone… but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are…’ (146). 

If you don’t have any Mertons on your shelves, pass this one for a while and begin with his best small book New Seeds of Contemplation. 

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Milton Jones is a funny man – with words and cartoons – who knows the foibles of the (British) church/es pretty well. His humour is very insightful. 

Samples: 

† ‘If being a Christian is about trying to be like Jesus on your own, you may as well be an Elvis impersonator’ (13) 

† ‘Christianity has done a lot of harm in the world, but only in the way that some men who wear certain football kits get into trouble – it doesn’t mean they’re actually part of the team!’ (13) 

† ‘As we know, Jesus was a very humble man who said “I am God”’ (15) (Of course nitpickers will want to argue with that, but you get the point). 

†  ‘Some people say “I really want to be used!” But if you ask them to put the chairs out they say “Now I’m just being used!”’ (18) 

†  ‘A perfect church would be a community of hermits’ (20) 

†  (English ‘passing the peace’): ‘Why don’t you turn to the person next to you and say… “This is really embarrassing isn’t it?”’ (21) 

†  ‘An Announcement:  “Would the owner of the Ferrari  number plate CSG 3P71 please sell your car and give the money to the poor”’ (23)

† ‘To say that Christianity is just one of several religions is a bit like saying that water is one of many types of drink – it’s a bit more fundamental than that’ (27).

And many more – 80 little pages of them, grist for your pastor’s church bulletins. 

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But if you can only afford one book this week, it’s this one: an excellent introduction to prayer by Bishop Stephen Cottrell. How to Pray was first published in 1998, then its second edition came along in 2003 (reprinted in 2004), with this (third) edition being printed in 2011. Except for Richard Foster, can you think of any/many authors on prayer who are that popular? 

Early we are invited to ‘pray as you can, not as you can’t’ as Dom Chapman famously put it. An equally well-known piece of wisdom is Gerard Hughes’ ‘Nothing so stifles prayer as our prayerful efforts. So the first piece of practical advice is: don’t try too hard’. 

This book was obviously written by a pastor rather than a mystic. For example: ‘How come most prayers that adults say begin with please, and most prayers children say begin with thank you?’

Something else in its favour: the good bishop has read the ancient and modern spiritual masters, so we have a sprinkling of the best advice from Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, through to modern pray-ers like Michel Quoist, Kenneth Leech (Stephen Cottrell calls him ‘Ken’: they must be friends), Henri Nouwen, et al. 

We have some excellent help in praying through the liturgical year, and there’s a terrific reading and resource list at the end – including, would you believe, a list of books about praying with children. 

Rowland Croucher     March 2012   

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