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Along with my 37-year career as a trial attorney for injured victims of someone else’s negligent or purposeful behavior, I have been a mediator primarily helping divorcing couples reach agreement without lengthy costly litigation.  My mediation center, CivilAgreement Mediation Services, Inc., focused on reducing tension and hostility between two adverse parties while helping them reach a “win-win” they both could live with.

After a brief introduction about the mediation process, I meet privately with each of the parties and simply ask them, “tell me your story of how the two of you got to this decision to end your marriage.”  I can’t tell you how many times I heard one party say something along the lines of “everything was perfect for X number of years, and then he/she said, ‘I have to get away to a place where I can put energy into finding myself’.” 

The ”finding myself” announcement was often followed by anger and usually included “you are my wife/husband and the mother/father of our kids, that’s who you are! Stop it with all of this finding myself garbage/stupidity.”  I can’t tell you how many times my receptionist who handled the initial intake call would say, “Steven, another 19-year-marriage down the drain!”  Over one five-year span, every couple I saw had “been fine” until the kids went to college.  The empty nest meant that they had to interact only with each other, something they had not done since their courtship! 

So, when I first encountered The Merton Prayer’s “nor do I really know myself,” I more easily understood the plight of my mediation clients.  Who am I really, when all the exterior superficial trappings are dropped? The Merton Prayer’s clarion call, while not explicitly stated as such, is this:  one cannot regularly and honestly pray this prayer and remain superficial.  Not in your relationship with others.  Not in your relationship with God.  Superficiality bequeaths more superficiality.

“Finding myself” is a prerequisite for a successful partnership or a covenantal relationship (such as marriage).  Unfortunately, the human psyche is too often focused on the urgent needs of the daily routine so that quiet, focused, introspection just does not easily occur.  I love the spiritual discipline known as “Centering Prayer” and it has become a regular part of my walk with God.  For many years I was part of a group of people who once a week spent time together, alone, in total silence, just listening for God and trying to rid ourselves of the distracting clutter.  Post-pandemic I spend quiet time alone and hope to rejoin a group in the future.

Practitioners of “Centering Prayer” suggest that one adopt a code word which will allow me to climb out of distracting thought patterns such as:  making a mental list of the groceries I need to buy later, an idea for a work project which needs my attention, etc.  My code word is the Hebrew word shalom which most commonly is translated “peace” but which is far richer and deeper in its meanings of “health, wholeness,” things we all need much more of and much more often!

The next time you pray The Merton Prayer, linger a bit on “nor do I really know myself” and ask yourself, “How am I doing at finding myself?”

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

I was riding in the back seat with my granddaughter when the car hit a jarring bump and our driver, Julie, the mom of baby Aria Marie, surprised me by saying, “Oh my goodness, where did that bump come from?”  I sarcastically spoke up with “You just ran over the curb!  That’s where that bump came from!”  We all laughed and enjoyed the moment, since a curb is a pretty visible obvious thing we need to avoid, but no harm came to us or to the car.

Later, we talked about how some seemingly obvious things in life, for one reason or another, just miss our attention.  My wife Miran reminded us of an Old Testament story which involved people looking at the obvious with grave consequences if they failed to do so.  It is a strange part of Israelite history recounted in Numbers 21:6-9.  In the midst of successful warfare, God’s people started grumbling about the long journey Moses was leading them on, so God sent poisonous snakes into their midst. 

This odd four-verse-story shows at once God’s love and God’s judgment.  First, His judgment:  these snakes would quickly kill the disobedient since that is what poisonous snakes do, they bite people and bitten people die.  Next, His love which saved them from death by snake-bite was obvious and on display for all who would look!  A bronze serpent atop a staff held by Moses saved the Israelites from certain death.  All these unthankful grumbling Hebrews had to do was to cast their eyes upon the bronze serpent and, voila, they were saved.

When I repeat The Merton Prayer in my time of connecting to God, the first six lines can be a real “downer” until I get to that little adversative word, “but,” which turns things around.  Rather than wallow in the self-defeat of the opening lines, Merton takes us in a different direction with “But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you!”  As a child growing up in a somewhat legalistic church the only ways I learned to “please God” were to stop sinning and do good things.  The Merton Prayer lifts us up to a much higher standard of blessing by asking us to focus on that little bitty word “but,” which I call a fulcrum in this prayer since it changes the focus entirely. 

Obvious, yes, but oh so tiny and, just like the curb Julie ran over and the staff with a bronze serpent on top held by Moses, oh so obviously important for safe navigation in life.  Both the curb and the serpent-on-a-stick are very small compared to the large mountains and rivers of pain, despair, worry, and fears we often see looming huge in our lives. Can Merton’s words here be true?  Can our desires to please God really please Him, even if we imperfectly work out those desires in our lives?  Merton says Yes! I say Yes!  I bear witness to how this amazing prayer with this amazing promise has brought me such joy and peace! Even when, and especially when, I did not have a clue where some of the big bumps in my life came from!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

In 1993 I felt called to start my own law firm and no longer work for other attorneys.  I established The Law Office of Steven A. Denny, P.C., [LOSAD] and rented a tiny office in the back of a larger firm which was run by friends of mine who graciously let me set up in their empty space. Three years earlier I had first encountered The Merton Prayer and had made it a daily part of my connecting to God. 

I literally had “no idea where I was going” while feeling confident that God had led me into this venture.  I certainly “could not see where that road was leading” and “could not know for certain where that road would end.”  A step of faith? Absolutely. Naïve optimism? Also absolutely.  Confidence fueled by parents who had embedded the “you-can-do-whatever-you-set-your-mind-to” principle in me from childhood?  Again, absolutely.  I felt called to a “ministry” of legal representation where each client gave me a chance to help them obtain a fair and appropriate compensation for their injuries.  I calculate that for every medical malpractice case I have accepted over the years I have turned down between 25 and 50 people who asked me to represent them.

And now, nearly 30 years later, LOSAD is still alive and helping “the little guy” receive justice from those who harmed them.  At the bottom of my firm’s letterhead are these words, “Striving for Justice in an Imperfect World,” and when I began my new firm there were very few income producing cases; somehow, perhaps understandably, being a former minister turned lawyer resulted in many pro bono cases which pulled at my heart strings but were not covering LOSAD’s overhead expenses. And then I went to a fund raising event for a local ministry where I listened to an amazing speaker, a pediatric neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins who just one year earlier had published his memoir titled “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.”  The next day I bought the book and read it in two days, marveling at the role God had played in Carson’s life.

One week later I received a call from a woman whose 15-year-old daughter had just died after undergoing brain surgery to remove a tumor.  The grieving parents brought me over 500 pages of medical records and the picture I saw horrified me.  The surgical team “closed” their procedure and then the doctor noticed that one sponge was “unaccounted for” which meant it was left inside the young girl’s skull.  The surgical team reopened the girl’s brain and searched in vain for the missing sponge and in so doing put her into a coma which led to death soon thereafter.  This case required a pediatric neurosurgeon as my expert in order to obtain “the keys to the courthouse door” since Illinois law required a “Certificate of Merit” to be obtained from a neutral doctor before a civil lawsuit could be filed.

I called Johns Hopkins and spoke with a secretary in Carson’s office, asking her if he ever worked with a lawyer in a medical malrpactice case, to which she said, “rarely, but if he feels there was egregious negligence, then yes, occasionally.”  Literally a half hour later my phone rang and this is what I heard, “This is Ben Carson, can I help you?”  After regaining my surprised composure, I told him what had happened, he said making the correct sponge-count before closing the surgical site is basic surgery protocol, he would be happy to be my expert for this case, he asked me to send him the records, two weeks later he signed the “Certificate of Merit”, eight weeks later the hospital attorney settled the case for a very large amount (which covered LOSAD overhead for several years!), and my journey on this road has never wavered thereafter.

Isaiah 30:21 says, “Your own ears will hear [the LORD].  Right behind you a voice will say, ‘This is the way you should go,’ whether to the right or to the left.”  This verse is my favorite Mertonian verse of all the ones cited in my book which support the words of The Merton Prayer.  May you hear that soft voice of the Holy Spirit this week as you make choices of which “way you should go, whether to the right or to the left.”

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

Sitting in the car in a grocery store parking lot with my window down. An older man from the store collecting the shopping carts came by my window and he cheerfully said, “You made the right choice!” It took me a second to catch what he meant.

I was not alone in the car since my wife had asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her or stay in the car with our sleeping seven-month-old granddaughter! I chose childcare over shopping, and the grocery store man had seen the baby beside me which led to his comment. 

I wonder how many choices each day we make. 100’s? Maybe 1,000? Insignificant choices like what clothes to wear; what to eat for breakfast; what phone call to answer or let go to voice mail; what to say to our neighbor; or what book to read next. 

The Merton Prayer is all about choices — both significant and seemingly insignificant choices.  In my opinion Merton was primarily talking about the significant life choices which always could lead to “God Pleasing” results. Which career path to follow; which person to marry; which church to join; which college to attend; which state/city/country to live in; or which charity to volunteer with.  Of course, there always can be cross-over between these two choice-arenas. Perhaps one’s choice of clothing to wear may displease God (I can think of such examples). Perhaps my comments to a neighbor can please God. 

Back to the grocery cart man. Me: yes sir, I agree that I made the good choice to be with the baby! He: how old is she? Me: 7 months. He: I have five grandchildren and I thank God every day. Me:  Amen sir, I agree. This little one is a gift from God. He:  God bless you my friend with a blessed day. Me: God bless you too!

To me this exchange led to a “cross-over” choice from the mundane to the significant.  I felt truly blessed by this conversation and couldn’t wait to share it with my wife when she got back to the car. And I believe that this encounter was God-pleasing! As we face many of our 1,000’s of choices today I pray that God will be pleased with our choices! 

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

I am not alone in suffering from a malady known as Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS).  It strikes most often at the beginning of my attempt to go to sleep. Medications usually help, although some nights I must walk in circles in the living room or ride five miles on the stationary bike before attempting to get back to sleep.  In my tenth year with RLS there now has developed what the doctors call “augmentation” — which means that RLS can strike at any time of the day, not just nights. 

            As I write these words it is 9:00 in the morning and I am 37,000 feet in the sky, safely (?) inside a big metal tube known as an airplane.  I have learned how to cope when restless legs take over. I stretch, I bounce them up and down, I stand to retrieve things from the overhead storage and then stand again to put them back, I walk the aisle to the farthest restroom even when no urge exists, then 30 minutes later I walk that aisle again, and I count the minutes until this flight lands in San Francisco!  I pray “Lord please send a tailwind so we can arrive sooner!”  

            When RLS augmentation hits I am miserable! And it has hit me on this plane trip bigly -a new unusual word I first heard in the 2016 election debates – and I am very uncomfortable.  So, guess what happened just now? The young woman in the seat next to me, who had not spoken a word for two hours, spoke to me and said, “I feel for you sir, my grandmother has the restless legs condition too. She has to move her legs just like you are doing!” 

            Two things then happened simultaneously: I realized how my erratic movements must appear odd to people around me; and I remembered that I really am getting old!   Nevertheless, she truly was a blessing to me, and we chatted and laughed as I bounced my legs up and down!  I was not prepared for what came next. 

As we talked with me standing in the aisle and she sitting in her seat, for what seemed only 5 minutes, my legs had become totally calm!  I believe God sent this angel whose grandma helped me overcome a serious RLS attack. My “angel” had noticed the calm also.  “Wow! We always try to engage grandma in a serious or fun conversation, and sometimes her RLS just stops!” My angel and her grandma— the best meds ever! Sometimes the promise of The Merton Prayer that God “will never leave me to face my perils alone,” not that RLS equals a “peril,” might be fulfilled by a seat mate on a plane who just could be an angel in disguise bringing healing to a bout of RLS!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

My mother was an amazing musician, one of those specially gifted humans who could hear three measures of a new song, sit down at a piano, and play the whole song without ever looking at a piece of sheet music.  Have you ever known anyone who could do that?

As a child I was mesmerized as our family gathered in the living room to sing hymns or Christmas carols with mother accompanying us at the piano.  Someone would ask to sing a song, mother would say “sing me a few bars,” and then she would play the whole thing.  I never understood how she could do that; to me it felt like a miracle, and I viewed mother as a having a unique talent.

And then memories of my mother came flooding back to me as I watched my two youngest children in their cello lessons which they began at age 5. They both had the same teacher and one of her techniques was called “ear training.”  She would take the child’s cello out of their hands, turn it so that they could not see which string she was plucking, she would play a note, and they were expected to say what that note was.  My son Jonathan was incredibly blessed with “perfect pitch” and as a six-year-old he would always get the ear training notes correctly identified. 

One Saturday morning, as Jon identified note after note his three-year-old sister Elena sat on the floor in the corner of the lesson room playing with blocks.  Jon took a few seconds to answer one of the notes and from the corner of the room his sister blurted out “C sharp.”  The teacher and I both turned and looked at the little sister who just kept playing with her blocks, and the teacher said, “Oh my, we just might be needing to start Elena in cello lessons very soon!”

To which I heard myself say, “They have clearly inherited the musical genius of their grandmother!”  Those perfect pitch musical genes totally bypassed my DNA makeup – my ears don’t work that way!  Is it too anthropomorphic to suggest that “God has perfect pitch?”  God hears every note produced by our hearts, the sour ones, the off-pitch ones, the pure ones, and the beautiful ones. 

Every time I pray the words – “nor do I really know myself” – I am comforted instantly by the FACT that God totally knows me, and He never misidentifies any notes from my heart.  Also, every time I pray the phrase “but I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You” I am so warmed, encouraged, and comforted by this claim that my “desires” are “in fact” pleasing to God. 

May we enjoy a wide variety of musical joys:   chirping of birds, the howling wind, Mozart symphonies, cats meowing, a babbling brook, booms of a thunderstorm, pounding rain on a tin roof, to the believer all evidences that God is near.  And thank you Lord, that none of these require that we have perfect pitch!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

While visiting Louisville, Kentucky, in addition to seeing the world’s largest baseball bat (at the Slugger Factory) and visiting where the Kentucky Derby every year leads women to wear the most amazing hats on the planet, be sure and find the corner of Walnut and Fourth Streets.  A historical marker has been placed at this location by the state of Kentucky – but it is not commemorating some civil war battle or a historically significant event which is recorded in the history books for Kentucky’s school children.

Amazingly, and perhaps unique in all of America if not the world, this historical marker honors the site where a Trappist Monk stood on March 18, 1958, looked out at the people crossing the streets, saw in each of these strangers the imago Dei, and had an epiphany which has now been the focus for contemplation by Christians ever since.  Listen to Merton’s words:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.  It was like waking from a dream of separateness. … This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being [hu]man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate.  As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are.  And if only everybody could realize this!  But it cannot be explained.  There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.… If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time.  There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. …But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.” Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York:  Image, 1968) 156-158.

When is the last time you felt like you were “walking around shining like the sun?”  To me the two little words “if only” hold the key to how Merton’s epiphany could indeed put an end to war, hatred, cruelty, and greed.  If only we could truly see others as bearers of the imago Dei, if only.  I pray that this week each of us could live out “if only” on the streets where we walk!

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

Perhaps the most succinct and powerful six words in The Merton Prayer are “Nor do I really know myself.”  As a trial attorney I am regularly tempted to bring my “cross examination” techniques home and pound my family with such blistering words.  Awkward, at best, right?  Devastating to a healthy family relationship, at worst, right?  “Stop it, you are not in a deposition or a trial!” are words I heard, not infrequently, from a spouse or from children as they got older!

With age comes wisdom, hopefully, and at some point, I began practicing a “breath prayer” which really helps me stop inflicting such pain on my family – “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, help me think and feel before I speak.”  Thinking before speaking was not good enough, I discovered; I needed to go one step further and ask myself, “how will this person hearing my words feel if I say x, y, z?”  The answer to this second question usually resulted in my NOT saying the words which were right there on the tip of my tongue!  I shared this recently at a workshop on The Merton Prayer and one participant commented later that while he loved Merton’s prayer, he would also strive to implement “The Denny Prayer” in his daily life! 

Solomon knew this so well – in Proverbs 18:13 – “Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.”  Sorry to say that only later in life have I really come to “know myself” and realize that I always need to bridle my sharp tongue by stopping, thinking, and analyzing how my unspoken stream of words could make others feel. 

I recall a story the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung told in his wonderful book Memories, Dreams, and Reflections about a patient whose family could not stand to be around him.  Dr. Jung’s prescription for his patient was this:  spend one hour alone in silence every day for a week.  At the next appointment the patient beamed with praise to Dr. Jung, “That was marvelous.  I loved this assignment.  I went to my study, and the first night I saw a book on my shelf by Herman Hesse which I had not read for years, and I spent several hours reading it.  Another night I grabbed a Mozart album I had not listened to for years and thoroughly loved listening to his music.” 

Dr. Jung was horrified and said, “No no no, I told you to spend an hour in silence by yourself, not with Herman Hesse or Mozart!”  to which the patient said, “Oh my goodness, that would be awful, just to sit there by myself in silence for an hour!  There is no way I could do that!” to which Dr. Jung said, “and yet that is the persona you inflict on your wife and children!  If you cannot stand to be alone with yourself, then how on earth do you expect them to enjoy being with you?”   Ouch.  This patient clearly “did not really know himself.”

May The Merton Prayer help you look inward to learn more about yourself than you ever saw before; and then may you be blessed with a stronger connection to God and to your own True and False Selves.

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

I just attended the adult ed class at my little Presbyterian church and the speaker was a young man in his 20/30’s who vulnerably shared his “faith journey.” He several times mentioned how “figuring out” where God was leading him was a constant focus of his spiritual energy.  I kept thinking to myself, “Thomas Merton would say to this young man, ‘Join the Club – that’s what we humans are regularly trying to figure out, and that’s why I wrote the prayer!’”

Choosing which fork in the road to take is our constant dilemma and we make those choices repeatedly, perhaps even daily. In my life I have had very many such decisions to make; most were made “pre-Merton” which is so interesting for me to use the “hind-sight” of the rear view mirror and, voila  — there is The Merton Prayer.  In the book I quote Merton from his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain as he rode the train from New York to Kentucky just three days after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  He said, in essence, “I am at a fork in the road and have no idea which road is ahead of me:  either the military or the monastery.  And God, who is leading me, knows that I will be fine with either since You are with me!”  Ironic, right?  Merton was himself “pre-Merton” since his famous prayer had not been written yet!  It is easy for us to see the seeds of his famous prayer in his vulnerable train-ride contemplation!  [For his actual words see page 14 of The Merton Prayer: An Exercise in Authenticity.]

When I finished my PhD doctoral exams and sent out my resume to a dozen schools to teach Biblical Hebrew, I felt “Mertonian” confidence that God would lead me on the right road to the right university where I could teach Semitic languages and finish my PhD.  But instead, God slammed that door closed!  I got 2 job offers to schools I had not even applied to:  the Universities of Alaska at Sitka and Wisconsin at Baraboo, both of which were offers to teach undergraduate political science!  I screamed at God, “That is NOT the road I chose!”  Recovering from my devastation was made more difficult when one of my professors who had written a glowing recommendation letter for me said, “So sorry Steven, you picked a bad two decades to try to break into this field.  None of the current professors are retirement age yet, so no openings for you!” 

With the “road” of being a bible scholar closed, God led me to a position in a large Chicago hospital which clearly was “the right road.”  From there I got a free ticket to law school and now have had a wonderful 36-year career as a trial attorney representing the “little guy” who was injured by someone else’s negligence!  One client posted a review where he said, “Mr. Denny sees his attorney work as a calling, not just a job!”  Greater confirmation I could never receive that God did indeed lead me on the “right road.”  May The Merton Prayer keep you focused on God rather than self.

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!

Merton’s “But I believe that the desire to please you does indeed please you” may be one of the most radical phrases in The Merton Prayer.  As a child I grew up being taught and totally believing that the ONLY ways to please God were to do good always AND to not sin!  And this later rubric always let me down since I – as everyone reading this blog – am a sinner and can never live a life this side of heaven without sin. (“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23).

As an adult, I find incredible liberating joy at this phrase of The Merton Prayer.  These words force me to contemplate and question how I could possibly please God with every ounce of my being.  I also wonder how the contemporary church as the living body of Christ is doing at “pleasing God” in everything that it does!  These powerful words of the German martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer are at once stunningly relevant and convicting: 

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.”

What will it take for the church, in all of its thousands of Christendom flavors, to actually live out the witness of Bonhoeffer’s quote?  I recently read a book titled Church of Cowards:  A Wake Up Call to Complacent Christians (by Matt Walsh, Regnery Publishing, 2022) in which the author documents and decries the apathy of our 21^st century church in America.  Complacent Christians are hardly striving to “please God in everything we do.”  I was shocked recently to learn of the incredible growth of Christianity in China.  Only one-half million Christians existed in China as recently as the 1949 revolution and founding of the Peoples Republic of China, and today there are over 60 million Chinese Christians.  The projection by one scholar is that by 2030 there will likely be over 200 million Christians in China, which will make China the most Christian nation on Earth, eclipsing America.  (Yu Jie, “China’s Christian Future,” First Things, August 2016)

Check out what Yu Jie, a very strong professing Christian, endured as a consequence of his friendship and support of a fellow Chinese dissident who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:  he was arrested, spent several years in jail and later in house arrest, was tortured regularly, all of his fingers were broken, he was taken from prison to a hospital which refused to treat him, when he finally was treated elsewhere he came very close to dying, and he had actually given up and prayed for God to bless him in death as a martyr.  I read that and I had two reactions:  first, I clouded up with tears for what this brother Christian partly, if not significantly, endured for his faith; second, I shudder with shame at how easy and cheap my grace position of salvation is in the American church.

Bonhoeffer was right:  cheap grace won’t cut it, at once it is worthless and a fraud. We are called by Merton to “desire to please God in everything we do, and to try to do nothing apart from that desire.”  The interesting question which is begged is this: Would Merton’s call to “desire to please God” be seen by Bonhoeffer as cheap and insufficient? God’s salvation plan for humankind had nothing cheap about incarnating his son for a cruel torturous death on a cross.  May The Merton Prayer help us strive to focus on pleasing God with every ounce of our being and may we abandon the spiritual lethargy which allows us to placate our souls with mindless and heartless rituals.

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!