This momentous experience convinced him that the silence of the Cistercian Order was what he craved. However, when he was twenty-seven he made a retreat to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. With his baptism he began entertaining thoughts of monasticism but his desire to enter the priesthood in a Franciscan monastery came to nothing, and he remained a lay teaching member of the order for some time. Gradually Merton recognized his need for faith and became a Catholic. His year at Clare College, Cambridge, was indulgent, and although Columbia University to which he went next suited his temperament better, it did nothing to assuage his restlessness. Travelling in his early years with his artist father in the United States, France and England, Thomas Merton prided himself on his worldly accomplishments. The complete and unedited edition of Thomas Merton's famous autobiography, one of the greatest works of spiritual pilgrimage ever written.
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