Exhibits

August 2017-January 31, 2018
Location: SCUA and Learning Commons, Du Bois Library

Brother David is one of the most important figures in the modern interfaith dialogue movement, leaving Mount Savior in the mid-1960s to study Zen Buddhism with Hakuun Yajutami, Shunayu Suzuki, and Soen Nakagawa. He was the first Benedictine to learn directly from Buddhist teachers and received Vatican support for his bridge-building work in 1967. When not in seclusion, Brother David has served as a teacher of contemplative prayer, the intersection of Zen and Catholicism, and gratefulness as a spiritual practice. Through many books and articles, lectures, and residencies in spiritual centers like Tassajara and the Esalen Institute, Brother David has developed an influential philosophy and much of the current popularity of mindfulness and Zen-influenced living and activism owes a debt to his teachings.

The Brother David Steindl-Rast Papers include Brother David’s extensive published and unpublished writings, sermons, memoirs, personal journals, correspondence, photographs, recordings, and videos of his teachings. His papers extend back to his youth in Vienna, documenting his childhood and experience during the war, including a complete run of Die Goldene Wagen, the children’s magazine published by Brother David’s mother Elisabeth Rast.

August 2018 – Winter 2019
Location: SCUA and Learning Commons, Du Bois Library

Following on the heels of the Summer of Love, 1968 seemed like a world apart. It was a year of social experimentation and optimism, but also a year of rebellion, assassination, political agitation, and violence. It was a year of Nixon and Agnew and hippies and revolutionaries. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, the exhibit will draw upon the social change collections in the Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and University Archives to explore a watershed year in American history.