Atkinson's 'Soul Searching' follows Merton's journey

Oh, Father Louie , though you left this life to soon you have touched so many lives, lost souls, people of different beliefs and non - believers in Christ.

Anthony Palevo

Atkinson's 'Soul Searching' follows Merton's journey: "The short life and spiritual exploration of Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton is the subject of a new documentary by Louisvillian Morgan Atkinson, whose previous film, 'Gethsemani,' looked inside the Kentucky abbey where Merton lived for 27 years.
'Soul Searching, the Journey of Thomas Merton' relies on interviews and Merton's journals to provide details about the Catholic monk's early life in New York, his spiritual awakening, a midlife crisis involving his love for a beautiful nurse and his accidental death by electrocution while attending a 1968 conference in Bangkok.


Atkinson will discuss the hour-long film at a 7 p.m. screening next Monday at the Clifton Center Theater, 2117 Payne St. The program is sponsored by the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living, which is at the Clifton Center. Admission is free, but a $10 donation toward the Merton Institute is suggested.
The documentary, produced for about $150,000, will be broadcast on KET in the spring. It is the seventh film by Atkinson to be shown on the public TV network. Other works aired on KET include 'Gethsemani'; 'Metro, Act One,' about Louisville's merged government; and 'A Way of Life: Basketball in Kentucky.'
Funding for the new film was provided by KET, the Kentucky Humanities Council, the Louisville Institute, the Kentucky Arts Council and more than 75 individuals. Steve Staley of Louisville served as director of photography, and jazz musician Dick Sisto, who was a friend of Merton's, composed the music.
To make the film about the author of the autobiographical best-seller 'The Seven Storey Mountain,' Atkinson traveled to New York City, New Mexico, the redwood forests of Northern California and to the Abbey of Gethsem"