SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

The author of that extraordinary best-seller The Seven Storey Mountain has given us an altogether different kind of a book, the kind that we might more readily expect to come from the pen of a Trappist monk. It is, as the author says, ""a volume of more or less disconnected thoughts and ideas and aphorisms about the interior life."" It is in the line of the meditations of the mystics of the church and ""expresses the preoccupations that are more or less on the minds of all contemplatives."" While many have written on the subjects covered in this devotional book such as prayer, solitude, faith, humility, freedom, few have the gifts of expression possessed by Thomas Merton. It is his literary ability that has made Seven Storey Mountain so popular. Accordingly, this book will undoubtedly find a wide acceptance not only among Catholics but also among other Christians seeking a deeper spiritual life. Should be included in any list for Lenten reading.