The Seven Storey Mountain

Posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Aside from the significance of the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy to me, as cited in Rule #4, Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain — imagery also taken from Dante’s work — served in my early spiritual development. 

As a seventeen year old I read Merton’s autobiographical account of his conversion and decision to enter the Trappist Monastery after a wild youth with full attention.  The story made such an impact that when I purchased a copy in Warsaw ten years later, I could tell exactly who I was and what I was thinking ten years earlier.  Not many books have affected me similarly.

Merton and his voluminous writings served to introduce me to contemplative prayer and extended my appreciation and respect for Eastern spirituality that has sustained and enriched me to this day.  If you have not known of Merton, let me whet your appetite with a short quote from the epilogue to Seven Storey Mountain.

Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.

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