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Showing posts from February, 2013

Thomas Merton

My quotations from Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain ("God in Her mercy" below) generated interesting responses. The writer of this first pleasing comment wishes to remain anonymous, but I will say it is a religious person. Jeanette, I didn’t ‘catch on’ to the fact that it was Thomas Merton’s experience.  I suspected it might have been yours!!!!  I loved your sense of who ‘you’ were as woman, a much larger sense than most of us would allow ourselves to ‘take on’ as belonging to women! And I loved thinking…after discovering that this was a male experience. . .that such feminine qualities could also be masculine qualities!!!  Thanks.       I agree with Steve’s analysis and response:              God, of course, has no gender. The metaphor of a patriarch was used millennia ago and through tradition and inertia, it has stuck with us. There is nothing wrong with using the female pronouns, but it is a little jarring to read and hear until you get used to it. Steve