The Seven Storey Mountain

You could say this was my Lenten reading this year, though I didn't plan it to be. I had read it many years ago and it didn't make a very big impression on me, except that I remember feeling that Merton was a stern, sad person who had had what sounded like a deprived childhood. I'm not sure why I picked it up again.The first 100 pages or so I struggled through. Merton wrote beautifully about the interesting characters of his childhood and the landscapes he remembered, but would then suddenly condemn a whole group of people as heretics without explanation, or condemn himself for holding Protestant beliefs as a child. I wished he could tell the story of his childhood without the moralizing. As the book progressed, though, the moralizing stopped, the story remained, and although I have little in common with Merton apart from being an adult convert to Christianity, I could understand him better and appreciate his story. It also helped to remind myself that he was all of 33 when he wrote The Seven Storey Mountain, and had many years left to learn to have mercy for himself and others. What I think is really wonderful about this book is that he allows the reader to see the whole process, internal and external, of his conversion, with all his uncertainty, doubts and mis-steps. By the end of the book, I found myself rejoicing with him that he had found his home at last.

Merton' autobiography of faith is a good story but it is really slow for the first half of the book. It begins getting interesting once Merton enters graduate school and he has his first encounter with pre WWII communism. When communism and graduate school does not satisfy Merton's spiritual/intellectual quest he begins to look towards the Catholic Church. An intriguing section towards the end of the book has to do with Merton's involvement with the friendship club in Harlem before America joins WWII.

Thomas Merton tells the tale of his life in this book. He was born into a not-especially devout Catholic home in France. He sought to fill the emptiness he felt inside himself with various things, including runs at Communism and intellectualism and youthful pleasure, but it was only after he stumbled into Catholicism and life at one of the most restrictive Catholic monasteries that he found great peace.