This essay examines the relationship between the Christian tradition of contemplation and social action.It takes as Soprano/Concert Ukulele its paradigm the life and writings of Thomas Merton (Fr Louis), an American Cistercian monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, who became one of the most widely-read and influential spiritual writers as well as Christian social commentators of the mid-twentieth century.Merton, who often wrote through an autobiographical medium, gradually moved away from an early emphasis on contemplative withdrawal to a belief that the monastic life is a form of counter-cultural Stock Saddle solidarity with those who struggle for social transformation and justice.The essay more broadly explores the theological basis for a coherence of mysticism and action in contrast to some misinterpretations of the Christian language of interiority.It concludes with an exploration of the relationship between contemplation and politics in a number of twentieth and twenty-first century theologians, both Catholic and Protestant.