The Seven Storey Mountain Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition

And books about Buddhism and mysticism and the Torah and freaking Thomas Merton.

check out the Seven Story Mountain. That's I think his autobiography? Maybe not.

And the documentary is so compelling That it prompted me to go out And read his book The Seven Story Mountain And which, you know, to coin a phrase Change my life

Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain Isn't it? I mean you must have come across that Oh, dozens So many

He's a sort of a lost young man Who lives a fairly disillude life Born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University And Stumbles on the trapest monks And finds a location in the water A child is well and there he was

And you know over in the UK and then in the United States And he has a kind of aimless sad life Early on and he finds the monastery And he's happy

I mean isn't it true that later on he was kind of embarrassed by that book Because it is that it has that zeal of a convert He was he was he was He said I don't know the man that wrote that book

It's pretty amazing the number of really interesting monastics in particular who were led down that path by Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain.

So many. Yeah, here's a book written in the 40s that still speaks to people and I think you know, for those who don't know what it's about, you know, he's a sort of a lost young man who lives a fairly disillude life born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University and stumbles on the trappest monks and finds his vocation in enters.

And the documentary is so compelling That it prompted me to go out And read his book The Seven Story Mountain And which, you know, to coin a phrase Change my life

Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain Isn't it? I mean you must have come across that Oh, dozens So many

He's a sort of a lost young man Who lives a fairly disillude life Born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University And Stumbles on the trapest monks And finds a location in the water A child is well and there he was

And I think you know I've you know conducted Book clubs and retreats and given talks And stuff like that and I think one of the things That people like about Merton is his passion He's very black and white You know early on, you know, a world-bad Monastery did but they can write this out

He was he was he was He said I don't know the man that wrote that book

It's pretty amazing the number of really interesting monastics in particular who were led down that path by Thomas Martin's book The Seven Story Mountain.

So many. Yeah, here's a book written in the 40s that still speaks to people and I think you know, for those who don't know what it's about, you know, he's a sort of a lost young man who lives a fairly disillude life born in France studies in England finally comes to Columbia University and stumbles on the trappest monks and finds his vocation in enters.

Thomas Merton, seven story mountain, his autobiography was published when he was a young man in his middle 30s, 1948.

He began as a perfectionist and ended somewhere else much more understanding of his own frailty and just willing to even put it on the page knowing that we'd be sitting here talking about it years after his death but he didn't he didn't worry that too much.

I read the seventh story mountain after I had read some of his other work and I didn't really enjoy it. I mean if I'm that it's obviously there's a great deal in it but I the tone of it is somewhat self-righteous and you all you describe this later epiphany video that he had I think maybe a decade after he wrote the seventh story mountain where he sort of accepted himself as a full human being.

I bought *Seven Story Mountain*, one summer day, a couple of years later, in the middle of an internship.

What year are we talking here? This is the mid-80s, that was in 1985. It took the book home, which has knocked out by it.

As so many people have been the power of the narrative, the genuineness of his searching, but especially for the Catholic reader. This sense of strangeness and recognition.

Here's this guy who comes from no belief at all, who becomes a Catholic, and then the next thing you know he's becoming a trapeze monk. And reading the book as a Catholic you think, is this really my religion? It sounds just so wonderfully strange and powerful.

I was just knocked out by it, and I tried to follow his path really for a year, so I made a little space in the library that was a kind of monastic meditation space with books all around.