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Title: The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0-15-601086-0 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 04 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (61 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: food for the soul
Comment: Most reviewers have touched on my own reflections. The book is not meant to be a scientific journal (re: one reviewer wrote Merton should have studied Newton's laws of motion). The story is one man's own spiritual journey---take it or leave it---but don't dismiss it because it doesn't cover the disciplines you find most fulfilling and awarding. Science is grand---but it does little to account for the life and light in the soul; that is why Merton turns to the poets and contemplatives in his yearning for truth or for some kind of answer to the longing in the deepest parts of him. Anyone satisfied with believing only what they can touch,see, feel may not enjoy this book. It is the transcendents Merton is concerned with when he realizes time and again materialism and atheism leave him empty and spiritually bankrupt.
Take Merton's book for what it is. A man's spiritual journey. If you want a man's scientific journey or a man's journey from religious dogma to secular dogma---read something else.
Rating: 5
Summary: a wry blessing..
Comment: Thomas Merton's early years gave no clue as to the vast richness of spirit and intellect he would develop through out his life and share through his writings. He was the son of an itinerant painter, had an upbringing with little or no religious character, was a nondescript student, a rabble rouser.. not even a Catholic.. who at a point in his early manhood left the fast life of New York and knocked on the doors of a Kentucky monastary, to give over his life to austere celibacy and contemplation.. and profound internal enrichment. Seven Story Mountain has been compared to the Confessions of Augustine, but these books are of different timber. Merton's is a story told at a personal level, of a spiritual journey in a modern context. It does not try to compete with Augustine's intense intellectual and theological reasoning, preferring to dwell on the peace and joy of religious life, and more generally the meaning and responsibilities of all lives. You can't read this book without being charmed and blessed by the proximity to this rare bit of humanity and devotion in our very secular and material age.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great autobiography of this important Monastic figure
Comment: Just about anyone interested in purchasing this book is more than likely somewhat familiar with some of Merton's other works. He was perhaps the 20th century's greatest Christian contemplative mind we had the privilege of reading. This is due to the fact that so many people have expressed over the years that Thomas Merton is the reason they were drawn to the Christian faith. Even people of other religions respect this man's skilled and wise approach to otherwise dogmatic dialogues. One of the reason's this autobiography is so wonderful, is that most of us can relate to it's contents. This is not a person who just achieved some sort of "holy lifestyle" without going through some tribulations in his earlier years.
What draws one to Thomas Merton is his simplistic writing. In this book we find out what causes produced the effect of wanting to join the Abbey of Gethsemani down in Kentucky for him. From his years growing up in France, then on to England. Back to new York. And then, he found his home. That home was the Abbey of Gethsemani. Merton is able to bring people closer to Jesus, because he makes the story alive. Relevant to this very life in a modern era, not just a society that we are all too disconnected from by now (the society during the times of Jesus). This book is so applicable to 2004, not withstanding the fact that there are a great many of his years not documented in this work stemming from it's publication to his Death in Thailand.
Recalling a sad time soon after his acceptance of Christianity, Merton quotes God's caution to the Israelites, "For the Land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt," and remarks that he had "made the terrible mistake of entering the Christian life as if it were merely the natural life invested with a kind of supernatural mode by grace." He slowly and nervously was to learn God was dreadfully more than some mere underwriter of value. In this book Merton shows a hungriness, a drive to understand the meaning of life. The secret to living a completely holy life, immersed in servitude to our Creator. This hungriness we can all relate to, it is the drive to understand truth.
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Title: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton ISBN: 081120099X Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: November, 1974 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0374513252 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 29 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0385092199 Publisher: Image Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1971 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0156027739 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 28 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0814605486 Publisher: Liturgical Press Pub. Date: December, 1956 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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