Recommend: The Seven Storey Mountain

It’s an uncomfortable, wonderful experience to read an author who views the world in stark contrast to my perspective. That’s been my experience with The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton.

There’s much to discover in Merton’s autobiography. I hadn’t realized that Dante’s Inferno, from which Merton took his book’s title, doesn’t end with the circles of hell, but with a climb up purgatory. I also learned the names of prayer times; for example, nighttime prayer is called Compline (pronounced complin). But the best was Merton’s humble ability to communicate his thoughts and feelings as a young man when he wrote his book later in life.

How difficult it is to remember the emotions; the fears and the passions of my youth! Merton exhibits astonishing insight and humility by writing his early life with such genuine veracity that I could not distinguish whether he held a conviction as a writer or only at the age he was in the timeline. He never hedges his true beliefs at a young age, even if they were ludicrous or half-formed, nor does he apologize for them.

I had not realized the book was an autobiography when I purchased it. Nor that I would find his description of the daily office so compelling that I would begin to attempt a similar practice myself. It was the Holy Spirit who prompted me to read this book about fifteen years after it was recommended to me, and I am grateful for his timely direction. Definitively recommend.