Seven Storey Mountain, Session One

Without good excuse, I blinked, and it has been several years since I've posted. I have still been writing, just not much making its way here. But the nudge to return to this format has been there. And a revisit to a book that has personally meant a great deal to me seems like as good a place to start as any. We've had the good fortune of assembling a small group of folks in the Pensacola area to read through Thomas Merton's acclaimed autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain. St. Francis Episcopal Church in Gulf Breeze has been good enough to host us in their library. I find myself incredibly grateful to be able to return to and discuss this great book with friends. I was first introduced to Merton's writing by one of my mentors, Steve Echsner, a man who has quietly had a great deal of influence on me. It has been nearly fifteen years since I first read Seven Storey Mountain. And I am often a little reticent to read a book for the second time, as I rarely enjoy it as much as I did at first. The writing is even better than I remembered. I'll be posting over the next few months on each section of our readings, which we have broken up into nine bi-weekly chats.

First, the power of understanding our scaffolding can't be understated. Merton's young life was unconventional in many respects. And this was certainly the case as he moved around as a child, in great part following a bohemian artist in the form of his father. Living in many different locales, often without his parents in the immediate vicinity, clearly had a profound effect on his personality. And there is a great deal of irony in the fact that he would later go on to lead such as stable (geographically, at least) life. For nearly all of us, taking the time to deeply reflect on our early years can pay dividends. 

Second, Merton points soulfully to his relationship with the Privats, a kind French family in the Province of Auvergne, where he spent a fair amount of time around eleven or twelve years old. "In a way, they were to be among the most remarkable people that I ever knew." Like all of us, Merton was formed by geography and people. He writes tenderly of the Privats, and their simplicity. " . . . I was glad of the love the Privats showed me, and was ready to love them in return. It did not burn you, it did not hold you, it did not try to imprison you in demonstrations, or trap your feet in the snares of its interest." His insight here is piercing, and opens a fascinating thought experiment as to nearly any relationship the reader has engaged in. To be able to love and not constrict is a balance of extraordinary fickleness. In a day and age which worships personal complexity, speed, and overstimulation - this couple was rooted in something different. Merton again, "I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural grace within, and from the habitual union of their souls with God in deep faith and charity." And yet Merton points out that it never occurred to him to profit from their example at the time. Yet, their example clearly left fingerprints on him. A profound reminder that we often leave influence without awareness - on both ends of that equation. 

Finally, I was deeply moved by Merton's description of his relationship with his younger brother, John Paul. Like all older brothers, even Thomas Merton was a terror in some of his interactions with John Paul. Merton writes, "When I think now of that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field, about a hundred yards away from the clump of sumachs where we have built our hut, is this little perplexed five year old kid in short pants and a kind of leather jacket, standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and 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 get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell him to play in some other place. He does not move." This scene has stayed with me for days. The ways in which we bruise those who are closest to us, sometimes oblivious - sometimes not. And the power of love in standing firm, even amidst hard-heartedness and pride. It is only later, when John Paul, at the risk of his own safety, gently defuses what would have surely been a fit of violence by a gang of local teens against Merton and his friends, that they quietly cease in chasing John Paul away.