Review Storey Mountain

Review Storey Mountain

In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's first book,  

Thomas Merton was brilliant, skilled at literary criticism, a poet, analytical and creative. His sense of self, however, was a mixture of deep introspection and a measure of self-loathing. His spiritual seeking led him to a short stay with Trappist monks in Kentucky. As a result, he gave up his worldly career and embarked on a journey of spiritual seeking as a brother at the monastery.

The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a Trappist. Although his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions, Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble, and concrete. The best reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

I have read and reread this book several times, and I always enjoy going back into the first half of the 20th century and taking the journey to faith with Thomas Merton, as he moves from childhood to self-absorbed teen to a dabbler in communism, to writer/intellectual, to searcher, to Catholic, to Trappist monk. What a journey!

Storey Mountain