TF, I also just finished Seven Storey Mountain, and found it one of those most profound of autobiographies. I underlined a hundred paragraphs. It is the journey towards awareness and union with God that will call to the readers who travel a similar journey. I am not Catholic, but Christian, and have encountered God in much the same way as Merton, time and again. The born again experience, about which Billy Graham teaches, is an awakening of a soul that is dead to sin, then made alive by a conviction of sin and then receiving Christ as having paid for that sin, when we cannot do so. Swift and sudden changes occur... cursing habits suddenly stop, a conscience awakens, many ways of seeing life change. And the journey of knowing God progresses as one follows Jesus. Merton found that to make life meaningful, as have I. It’s a journey open to anyone, to me, to you. When one hears God call, it’s imperative to respond right away, as the Voice, if ignored, will become silent. He is all.
I’m finishing 7 Story Mountain, and it’s not just you. There are definitely parts that are profound and powerful, but he could have expressed the same message in about half the space. From what I understand, this was edited down from his initial draft by his friend and editor. Merton was a misogynistic upper middle class frat boy. While he clearly grew closer to God and developed some profound insights, he was still a product of his upbringing. That’s not an indictment, just an observation. I’m merely stating that he, and every other bishop, priest and religious are still human and fallible. Keep that in mind, and you can still glean insights from theological textswhile also recognizing the humanity in the authors. That, in it's way, makes their insights even more valuable.
"To each their own" (subjective)
Merton is from a very specific time in the Church that is damn near dead and whose needs are not the needs of this age- this is particularly evident in some of his more exploratory works, which as a fairly recent and fairly young convert do not strike me at all in this age of the world.
What did you read? His autobiography Seven Storey Mountain is fairly accessible and very readable. Books like Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander are denser in parts, but well worth the effort.
Don't know about an editor. He is a special read.
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