A key event in Merton’s life took place not in the silence of the cloister but on a bustling street corner in the middle of a city. Like all Trappists, Merton rarely left the abbey, but on occasion he had a good reason to venture into the world. Such an errand brought him to downtown Louisville, Kentucky, in March 1958, when he had been a monk for well over sixteen years. On that late winter day, as he reached a street corner, something amazing happened. “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization