SUSAN MCCASLIN
​Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminine
Wood Lake Books, 2018
https://www.woodlakebooks.com/books/inventory/Books/All-Books/Superabundantly-Alive
Print: 9781773430355
Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminine is a unique, unified, multi-genre work that includes dialogue, imaginary letters, poems, and reflective essays by two established Canadian poets. Taking cues from Merton himself, Susan and John establish a playful, jazzy, dialogic tone — superabundantly alive. This book invites participation for those who already know Merton's work and for those who are meeting this whole and broken, prophetic, whimsical, paradoxical prophet and visionary for the first time.
Robert Lax once described Merton's poetry and the man himself as "superabundantly alive." McCaslin and Porter prove the truth of this description in their enchanting account of the writer-mystic who now comes into his second century of stature and significance, in the words of Boris Pasternak, "[a]live and burning to the end.
"Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminineis a refreshing addition to Merton studies. As this book bears witness, each person who reads Merton attentively finds a magic mirror in which he or she sees both a familiar and a transfigured face – a face of surprise, a face unmasked, a face freed from fear."
--Jim Forest, author of Living with Wisdom: a biography of Thomas Merton
"Susan McCaslin and J. S. Porter have given us in this book their heart-felt appreciations of Thomas Merton as gifted and imperfect human being, brilliant writer, and intimate friend of his readers. Their synergy as collaborators is infectious: fresh, personal, sassy, substantial. They invite us, their readers, to join with them in 'the general dance of the universe' to which Merton invites us all."
--Donald Grayston, past president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada and the International Thomas Merton Society
"This splendid gallimaufry by two poet-essayists is part riff, part meditation, part invention, part testament, but withal, a brilliant kaleidoscope of impression, insight, and inquiry. The many lineaments of love, desire, and memory, the many strands of 'lived theology,' and the many stages of human and divine maturation are explored with a fetching honesty. A liberating read."
--Michael Higgins, Vice-President for Mission and Catholic Identity, Sacred Heart University, CT; and author of Jean Vanier: Logician of the Heart (Liturgical Press, 2016)
"… Superabundantly Alivegives us a wholly unique reading of Merton's legacy, a "theology of encounter" in flesh and freedom… Approach this book with "beginner's mind" and you cannot help but be drawn into the fire of divine-human vulnerability, rendered vividly, theopoetically, iconically, in a kind of literary-visual mandala – always evocative, sometimes provocative, and everywhere reverberant with hope. McCaslin and Porter have penned one of the finest and most original works on Thomas Merton in many years. It is not just Merton who gazes from these pages, but it is Wisdom-Sophia, the God of grace and mercy, who dares us each moment into loving communion and solidarity with the world.
--Christopher Pramuk, author of Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton (Liturgical Press, 2009), awarded the International Thomas Merton Society's 2011 Thomas Merton Award
"Using different lenses and creating their own 'word dance,' seasoned writers McCaslin and Porter offer us a potpourri of fresh insights about Merton that creates both artistic tribute and epistolary conversation with Tom and with 'M.' – an unconventional approach that maintains its 'centre of prayer-poetry-praise.'"
--Dr. Monica Weis SSJ, professor emerita of English at Nazareth College, former Vice President of ITMS, and author of Thomas Merton's Gethsemani (with Harry L Hinkle) (UPK, 2005) The Environmental Vision of Thomas Merton (UPK, 2011), and Thomas Merton and the Celts: A New World Opening Up (Wipf and Stock, 2016)
"Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminineis a strong, distilled meditation on the life and oeuvre of a remarkable poet-monk whose works of spirit illuminated a turbulent period of 20th century American history.
In a compelling series of essays, the authors navigate the many corners of the 'uncaged mind' of this pragmatic mystic – gender equality, the wisdom of the East, capitalism, war and peace, the relationship between solitude and community, the sacred feminine – with great verve and clarity. They point out Merton's love of and sensitivity to nature, which would qualify him as a precursor in the ecological field.
The book is particularly insightful on Merton' s ongoing journey toward the true self, his evolution from flight from the world toward openness and engagement with the social and political problems of his era and what it ultimately means to be fully alive and awake… The authors also explore Merton's brief love affair with 'M' near the end of his life, calling it a breakthrough in his spiritual journey [which] helped him bridge the duality of male/female into an inner wholeness.
In sum, the authors of this thoughtful, readable study show the reader how Merton, by sharing his brokenness, inspires all of us to embrace our wounded selves as we each climb…toward mystery and greater love. Superabundantly Alive offers a rich encounter with the heart-mind-soul of a modern spiritual master."
--James Clarke, poet and retired Ontario Superior Court Justice who has published over twenty collections of poetry, including Stray Devotions (Novalis, 2018)
by Ross Labrie, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia
This is a bright and spirited homage to Thomas Merton's life and writings by two Canadian authors, Susan McCaslin and J.S. Porter. In comparison with the usual biographical analysis, we see these two writers lifting their wings as it were, held aloft by Merton's powerful current. In this, they join significant figures in Merton's life, such as those immortalized in McCaslin's poetic "Grotto of Sophia Ikons." One admires these authors' inventiveness as in J.S. Porter's transposition of Merton into the "paved desert" of Las Vegas where the scene is altogether similar to the consumer culture that Merton presciently depicted. Above all, one sees the legacy of Merton's devotion to language, which at times assumes a hybrid shape reflecting minds filled with Merton's speech. The book is given its thematic direction by Merton's enlarged awareness of woman in the 1960s following his romantic episode with a nurse, Margie, in what turned out to be the final years of his life. In particular, McCaslin argues that in the prose poem, "Hagia Sophia," Merton, who had lived in a community of men for most of his life, came to link the recovery of the feminine to the "world's salvation." With a balanced eye, the writers of this book do not hesitate to query Merton posthumously, with McCaslin questioning Margie regarding the relationship with Merton. "Did you ask yourself if he "loved the idea of falling in love more than the act of loving?" Accompanying the feminist theme is the pervasive suggestion that Merton's life was a commitment to growth, to an always "surging, expanding process." Well said.