Point Vierge - James Finley & Alana Levandoski

Alana: In December 2016, I set out to work on a musical album centered around James Finley’s acclaimed book, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere After long discussions with Jim about Thomas Merton, I decided to plunge into the deep waters of Merton’s own works. I had read Seven Storey Mountain and New Seeds of Contemplation and credit Merton with drawing me into contemplative Christianity, but I soon realized that I had not gone deep into Merton’s person. It took nearly a year of daily sitting with Merton’s work and listening to Finley’s audio teaching, Thomas Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere (from Sounds True), to get to the place where I felt I could unleash the creative process of composition.

 Point vierge, French for the “virgin point,” or as Jim calls it, “zero variance,” is a term Merton used to get at the mystical metaphor for the door that is everywhere and nowhere. This is so far the calling of my life: to poetically engage with that which cannot be created or uncreated, that “point of nothingness that belongs entirely to God.” In order to have a starting point, I decided to marry story with this idea, to convey the search and intuition Merton had for this point vierge.

I am interested in not separating this point of nothingness from Thomas Merton’s humanity. To me, it seems that people connected and resonated with Merton because he engaged with real life in the flesh and was wary of hiding behind a false letting go of one’s story. He showed us that fully living one’s story is part of how we let go of previous notions of our story. So, I attempt to reach that point of nothingness through the tangible ordinariness of narrative. I share Jim recollecting his own time in the monastery, speaking of how Merton taught and led him as he lived out his own story.

"A masterpiece both in the spiritual and artistic arenas." - Cynthia Bourgeault, author, teacher, The Wisdom Jesus, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene

Click on this link to hear Jim and Alana talk about Track 3 Havana

Track 1: Mother/Father
Track 2: Immense Depths
Track 3: Havana
Track 4: Little Flower
Track 5: To Disappear Into God
Track 6: John Paul
Track 7: Fourth and Walnut
Track 8: The General Dance
Track 9: We Do Not Attend
Track 10: Only Fireflies
Track 11: Stange Islands
Track 12: Here is Something Christian

Track 13: What We Are
Track 14: Bangkok
Track 15: Palace of Nowhere
Track 16: Latin Missal In The Hermitage