On Reading The Seven Storey Mountain

In writing about yourself, you enter the recorded framework of human experience. Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain exemplifies this perfectly. In this spiritual classic, often discussed as a modern-day Confessions, the thirty-one year old Merton unveils the interior life and experiences that led him to become a Trappist Monk. His tone in this memoir is energetic, comic, and utterly honest. 

One of the most unexpected experiences in reading this book is how often my mind wandered back to meaningful moments from my life. The vignettes Merton shares call upon one’s own memory to reflect. This is interesting because St. Augustine even devoted a substantial portion of his Confessions to an exploration of memory. What is memory? And how does our attitude toward those memories impact our present moment and shape us? Why? I’m still puzzled by this. But as a good writer, Merton’s contemporary homage to St. Augustine is a reflection of human experience. St. Augustine, Thomas Merton, and each of us, are products of our own time, and yet are all connected by the broader framework of human experience: joy, suffering, longing, everydayness, anger, solitude, and prayer. We are a people of memory, of history. I was constantly thinking back on my own memories as I read; just as Merton thought about his; and just as St. Augustine thought about his. 

It was a unique experience to read The Seven Storey Mountain; learning as much about Merton as I did about myself. The simplicity of his way of life stands as an invitation to deeper contemplation of grace. In the present distracted moment, it can be difficult to see how grace is moving about us. When viewed from a distance though, you’d have to be blind to not recognize how much influence is has had and will have in our memories: our past, our present, and our future.