Make peace before the sun goes down - Roger Lipsey

A
fascinating account of Thomas Merton's conflicted relationship with his
abbot, Dom James Fox-by an esteemed modern Merton scholar.

In the
1950s and '60s, Thomas Merton, a monk of the Trappist monastery of
Gethsemani in Kentucky, published a string of books that are among the
most influential spiritual books of the twentieth century--including the
mega-best seller The Seven-Storey Mountain. He was something of a
rock star for a cloistered monk, and from his monastic cell he enjoyed a
wide and lively correspondence with people from the worlds of religion,
literature, and politics. During that period he also explored and wrote
extensively on Buddhism, Sufism, art, and social action. The man to
whom he owed obedience in the cloistered life was a much more
traditional Catholic, his abbot, Dom James Fox. To say that these two
men had a conflicted relationship would be an understatement, but the
tension their differences in orientation brought actually led to
creative results on both sides and to a kind of hard-won respect and
love. Roger Lipsey's portrait of this unusual relationship is compelling
and moving; it shows Merton in the years his imagination was taking him
far beyond the walls of the monastery, and eventually, literally to
Asia.

Roger Lipsey is a biographer, art historian, editor, and translator. He is the author of An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art; Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton; and most recentlyHammarskjld: A Life,hailed as the definitive Dag Hammarskjld biography.

"A
minor masterpiece of moral restraint and historical reconstruction, and
by my lights, a moving portrait of Thomas Merton's heroic, lifelong
struggle with pettiness and bureaucratic restraint. Lipsey gives us a
side of Merton seldom seen-Merton the employee and company man-and
surprisingly this reveals aspects of the writer's character not visible
from any other perspective. A milestone in Merton scholarship."-Robert
Inchausti, editor of The Pocket Thomas Merton and author of Thomas Merton's American Prophecy

"Roger Lipsey's premise that Thomas Merton and Dom James Fox were each other's unsolved koan is deftly illustrated in this, the most complete and illuminating study of Merton's middle monastic years. His engaging writing combines (in the matter of Merton's indult) the intrigue of a John le Carr novel with a poetic closing as beautiful as any requiescant in pace ever sung."-Bonnie Thurston, Merton scholar and author of To Everything a Season: A Spirituality of Time

"Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down is an enthralling book which I read straight through in two sittings. It describes in detail the dysfunctional relationship between Thomas Merton and Abbot James Fox over a period of some twenty years. Both men were powerful, each in his own way, competitive and deeply flawed. Though neither would admit it, they were probably too much alike to cohabit without friction. Because they were men publicly dedicated to a spiritual life much of the arm-wrestling was hidden under a faade of piety and politeness. Merton's attitude is well known from his private journals; the position of Abbot Fox had to be sought in the archives and in the memories of those who knew both. Roger Lipsey's narrative makes it possible for readers to arrive at a more nuanced perception of the tangled webs these two men wove around themselves and to interpret the relationship in a more balanced way. This study is essential reading for any future Merton biographer."-Michael Casey, OCSO, author of Sacred Reading and Toward God