This powerful book was prompted by an invitation Matthew Fox received to
speak on the centennial of Thomas Merton's birth. Fox says that much of
the trouble he's gotten into -- such as being expelled from the
Dominican Order in 1993, after thirty-four years, by Cardinal Ratzinger
(who later became Pope Benedict) -- was because of Merton, who prompted
Fox to attend the Institut Catholique in Paris to undertake a doctoral
program in spirituality.
Fox reimmersed himself in Merton's journals, poetry, and religious
writings, finding that Merton's marriage of mysticism and prophecy,
contemplation and action closely paralleled that of Meister Eckhart, the
thirteenth-century mystic who inspired Fox's own Creation Spirituality.
In A Way to God, Fox explores Merton's pioneering work in interfaith,
his essential teachings on mixing contemplation and action, and how the
vision of Meister Eckhart profoundly influenced Merton in what Fox calls
his Creation Spirituality journey.