James H. "Jim" Forest was born on November 2, 1941. His parents were both atheist communists, and Forest converted to Catholicism as an adult. He encountered the work of Dorothy Day while serving in the Navy and was inspired to leave the Navy in 1961 as a conscientious objector and become involved with Day's Catholic Worker community, working as managing editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper. During this time, he also became acquainted with Thomas Merton. Dorothy Day encouraged Forest to write to Merton, and the correspondence established a friendship. In the mid-1960s, Forest visited Merton in Kentucky, thinking of moving on from the Catholic Worker to become a monastic, though he ultimately did not follow that path. Merton dedicated his book Faith and Violence (1968) to Forest.

In the early to mid-1960s Forest founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship alongside Daniel Berrigan, SJ. Later he worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It was through this work that Forest became acquainted with Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh. From 1969-1970 he served a short prison sentence as a consequence of his involvement in the "Milwaukee Fourteen," a group of Catholic priests and lay people who burned draft cards stolen from the Brumder Building in Milwaukee. In 1977, Forest moved with his family to the Netherlands, where he served as General Secretary for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and continued his involvement in the peace movement, focusing on the Cold War and nuclear disarmament. In 1988, he joined the Russian Orthodox Church, and eventually founded the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

Throughout his career, Forest wrote about pacifism and important figures in the peace movement. His published work includes Love is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day (1986); Living with Wisdom: A Biography of Thomas Merton (1991); Praying with Icons (1997); and The Ladder of the Beatitudes (1999).

Jim Forest died on January 13, 2022 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands.

Sources:

Brussat, Frederic; Brussat, Mary Ann. "Review of Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton by Jim Forest". Spirituality & Practice.

Forest, Jim. "Autobiography." In Communion. http://www.incommunion.org/jfbio.htm. (Active 12/10/01)

Forest, Jim. Living with Wisdom: A Biography of Thomas Merton. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Forest, Jiim and Nancy. Jim & Nancy Forest, https://jimandnancyforest.com/. Accessed 2024 March 27.

Mott, Michael. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.

Sooy, Nicholas, “The Remarkable Life and Witness of Jim Forest,” In Communion: Website of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, https://incommunion.org/2022/01/27/the-remarkable-life-and-witness-of-jim-forest/. Accessed 2024 March 27.

Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915 in Prades, France to Owen Merton (an artist from New Zealand) and Ruth Jenkins Merton (an artist from the United States), and grew up in New York, Bermuda, France, and England. Merton studied both in Europe and America, and he received a BA and an MA in journalism from Columbia University in 1938 and 1939.

In 1938, Merton converted to Catholicism. He taught for two years at St. Bonaventure College in New York before entering the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), in 1941. He made his simple vows in 1944, and solemn vows in 1947. He was ordained a priest in 1949 and took the name Father M. Louis. At Gethsemani, Merton served as Master of Scholastics (1951-1955) and Master of Novices (1955-1965), before retreating to a hermitage on the grounds of the abbey in 1965. Merton became a prominent author of both poetry and prose, initially gaining international renown for his 1948 autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. While maintaining his strict devotional life, he prolifically wrote books and articles on a wide variety of subjects, such as Catholic spirituality, civil rights, literary criticism, monastic renewal, pacifism, and Zen Buddhism.

Merton died suddenly on December 10, 1968 while attending the first Pan-Asian Monastic Conference in Thailand.

Sources:

Shenker, Israel. "Thomas Merton is dead at 53; monk wrote of search for God." The New York Times, December 11, 1968.

"Thomas Merton’s Life and Work," The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. https://merton.org/chrono.aspx. Accessed 2024 March 27.