"After five months in DC – when the thrill of my free fall had been replaced by the predictable bruises, cuts, and broken bones – I walked into a used book store near Dupont Circle. A friend had recommended that I read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It was not on the shelf, but in the place where it would have been was a book I knew nothing about: The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. I remember thinking, 'It's about a mountain. The author's surname beings with M. That's close enough.' So I bought it.
"That was early in December 1969. Merton, I soon learned, had died almost exactly one year earlier. But as I read his autobiography, he came alive for me, as he had for millions of readers who'd never met him. I didn't feel that I'd merely discovered a new author worth reading. Instead, I felt I'd met a kindred spirit who understood me better than I understood myself, a fellow traveler who could accompany me on the strange path I had chosen. Or had it chosen me?
"Wanting to learn more about my new friend, I set out to read everything he wrote. As Merton devotees know, this would become a lifetime project. The man published at least seventy books, and that counts only those published while he was alive – I've lost count of how many more have been published since his death. I believe his posthumous literary output is the first known case of 'perish and publish.'
"A few years after I began reading Merton, I learned about his correspondence with Louis Massignon, a French scholar who introduced Western readers to the life and work of al-Hallaj, a ninth-century Muslim mystic. Massignon felt that his relation to al-Hallaj was not so much that of a scholar to his subject as it was 'a friendship, a love, a rescue.' He did not mean that he had rescued al-Hallaj from historical obscurity, but that that the Muslim mystic had reached out across time to rescue him.
"That's what Merton did for me as I read and reread The Seven Storey Mountain. I'm still reading him almost fifty years later, stil finding friendship, love, and rescue – essential elements in serving as a messenger of hope. Imparting hope to others has nothing to do with exhorting or cheering them on. It has everything to do with relationships that honor the soul, encourage the heart, inspire the mind, quicken the step, and heal the wounds we suffer along the way.
"For nearly half a century, Merton has illumined the path and companioned me on my journey, offering life-giving ways to look at where I've been, where I am, and where I'm headed."
