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Sacred Heart University’s Vice President for Mission and Catholic Identity Michael W. Higgins – photo by Tracy Deer-Mirek 9/8/14

In this, the 50th anniversary year of Merton’s death, the archivist of the Merton Collection at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY, Dr. Paul M. Pearson, and scholar Dr. Michael W. Higgins, of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, will be the featured speakers at a retreat titled “Thomas Merton and the Spiritual Imagination” at Wisdom House retreat center in Litchfield, Conn., on Sept. 7 and 8.

Pearson curated an exhibit of Merton’s photographs, titled “A Hidden Wholeness: The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton,” which will be on display for the first time in New England, through early November. Merton’s advice on photography, “Stop looking and start seeing.” Pearson will speak at the exhibit’s opening event on Saturday, Sept. 8. It is free and open to the public. A book Pearson edited, Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton, is forthcoming from Paulist Press.

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Merton scholar Dr. Michael W. Higgins, author of The Unquiet Monk: Thomas Merton’s Questing Faith, a copy of which will be given to each retreatant, will lead the retreat, an exploration of Merton’s literary, moral, and mystical imagination.

Asked in our interview what Merton would make of current Roman Catholic events, Higgins said he would be as “forthright and fiery” as when he sometimes found himself “on a collision course with the bishops” and others in authority.

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For information about the retreat, see wisdomhouse.org.