The Seven Storey Mountain
by Thomas Merton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas MertonEdition: Paperback
Published: 1999-10-04
ISBN: 0156010860
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Harvest Books
Book Reviews of The Seven Storey Mountain
Book Review: After "The Confessions," maybe the best-ever 'autobiography of Faith'
Summary: 5 Stars
Today I delivered a gift copy of this book to a widow, "Grace" whose husband had been my late father's closest childhood friend. A week earlier, Grace had asked: "Have you ever read Thomas Merton's SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN? I read it in 1953; and found it very moving. I'd love to find a copy and read it again."
When I presented her with a new copy of this edition, I asked if I could read aloud my favorite passage (early in the book) concerning Thomas Merton's `little brother' John Paul (five years younger) who, like his older brother was a French-born, American citizen.
Late in the book Thomas Merton tells us how John Paul was compelled early in WWII to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (and trained right here in Manitoba! John Paul Merton had been flying bombing runs over a real sandy desert on the prairie just outside nearby Camp Shilo, where today's Canadian Artillery Officers still train. My late father was flown at Canadian Army expense each year, late in life, to address the graduating officers at that camp: Small world!)
Just before leaving for overseas, John Paul flew to see his older brother Thomas and, not incidentally, be Baptized, and welcomed into the Catholic faith. Then he left for England (and was killed in action the next year, when his RAF bomber went down over the English Channel).
His death provides the moving culmination to this book - bringing the reader `full circle' from the moment (back on page 25) when Thomas Merton introduces us to John Paul. (What follows is the passage that moves me to tears when I read it aloud to a friend.)
------
"One thing I would say about my brother, John Paul: My most vivid memories of him, in our childhood, all fill me with poignant compunction at the thought of my own hard-heartedness, and his natural humility and love.
"I suppose it's usual for elder brothers, when they are still children, to feel themselves demeaned by the company of a brother, four or five years younger, whom they regard as a baby, and tend to patronize and look down upon.
"So when Russ and Bill and I (older brothers all) made huts in the woods out of boards and tar paper . . . we severely prohibited John Paul, and Russ' younger brother Tommy and their friends from coming anywhere near us. If they did try to come and get into our hut, or even to look at it, we would chase them away with stones.
"When I think now about that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field a hundred yards away from our hut, is this little perplexed five-year-old kid in short pants and a kind of leather jacket, standing quite still; his arms hanging down at his sides.
"He is gazing in our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does not go away. We shout at him to go away, beat it, go home, and wing a couple more rocks in that direction. We tell him to play some other place. He does not move.
"And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away.
"The law written in his nature tells him he must be with his elder brother and do what he is doing, and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in his case.
"Many times are like that, and in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us, for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We `will' to separate ourselves from that love; we reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, because it does not please us to be loved . . . "
[Thomas Merton immediately recalls an astounding event] "when our `gang' tried to antagonize the extremely tough Polish kids who had formed a gang in nearby Little Neck (approaching their headquarters) and "from a very safe distance we would challenge them to come out and fight" (but) "nobody came out - perhaps (that day) there was nobody home."
But then came the day, Merton recalls, "one cold and rainy afternoon, when we observed that numbers of large and small figures, varying in age from 10 to 16, most of them very brawny" gathered outside the Merton home, "20 or 25 of them. There were four of us."[hiding inside].
"The climax of the situation came when Frieda, our German maid, told us that she was very busy with housecleaning and we must all get out of the house immediately. Without listening to our extremely nervous protests, she chased us out the back way . . . we made our way through back yards to the safety of Bill's house" [a block away, with a clear view across a field, of the Merton home].
"And then an extraordinary thing happened. The front door of our house opened. My little brother John Paul came walking down the steps with a certain amount of dignity and calm. He crossed the street (and) walked toward the Little Neck gang. They all turned towards him. He kept on walking and walked right into the middle of them.
"One or two of them took their hands out of their pockets. John Paul just looked at them, turning his head to one side and then the other. And he walked through the middle of them and no one ever touched him.
"And so he came to the house where we were. We did not chase him away."
-------
The book closes with a poem written by Thomas Merton upon learning of his brother's death in the North Sea: "I learned that John Paul was severely injured in the crash but managed to keep himself afloat, even tried to support the pilot who was already dead.
"He was very badly hurt; maybe his neck was broken. He lay in the bottom of the dinghy in delirium. He was terribly thirsty. He kept asking for water. But they didn't have any. It didn't last too long. He had three hours of it and then he died. His companions had more to suffer, and were finally picked up and taken to safety five days later. On the fourth day they had buried John Paul at sea."
The chapter concludes with Thomas Merton's poetic requiem for his "dear brother" asking their Maker to,
"Take my breath . . .
and buy yourself a better death . . .
And buy you back to your own land
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb.
Hear them and come,
They call you home."
Thomas Merton died 40 years ago (on the 20th anniversary of his book's first publishing) while attending a conference of Eastern and Western monks in Thailand (electrocuted by a faulty table lamp in his Bangkok hotel room).
This "Fiftieth Anniversary Edition" includes a delightful "Note to the Reader" from William H. Shannon, founding president of the International Thomas Merton Society, who recalls that, from the very first day in print (October 4, 1948) the book was "an instant success: Hailed as a modern day version of the `CONFESSIONS' of St. Augustine, it has continued to sell and sell and sell."
As Evelyn Waugh, no easy critic, wrote prophetically: It "might well prove to be of permanent interest in the history of religious experience."
Buy a copy and see for yourself (I highly recommend this edition).
Mark Blackburn
Winnipeg Canada
Summary of The Seven 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, 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." --Michael Joseph GrossA modern-day Confessions of Saint Augustine, The Seven Storey Mountain is one of the most influential religious works of the twentieth century. This edition contains an introduction by Merton's editor, Robert Giroux, and a note to the reader by biographer William H. Shannon. It tells of the growing restlessness of a brilliant and passionate young man whose search for peace and faith leads him, at the age of twenty-six, to take vows in one of the most demanding Catholic orders--the Trappist monks. At the Abbey of Gethsemani, "the four walls of my new freedom," Thomas Merton struggles to withdraw from the world, but only after he has fully immersed himself in it. The Seven Storey Mountain has been a favorite of readers ranging from Graham Greene to Claire Booth Luce, Eldridge Cleaver, and Frank McCourt. And, in the half-century since its original publication, this timeless spiritual tome has been published in over twenty languages and has touched millions of lives.
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