Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom

Learning to Love is volume 6 of Merton's complete journals, covering 1966 to 1967, edited by Christine M. Bochen and published in 1997. It is one of the seven volumes of The Journals of Thomas Merton, the complete private journals published by HarperSanFrancisco in 1995-1998, which Merton had directed should not appear until twenty-five years after his death. These are the journals of his first full years as a hermit, which include his love for a young nurse he met in a Louisville hospital in 1966, his decision to end the relationship and remain a monk, and his continuing work and correspondence from the hermitage.