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<\/a><\/p>\nIt started with a pocket watch.<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1994, after my mother\u2019s funeral, my sister, an aunt and I spent a few days in my mother\u2019s apartment sorting through her things and dividing up what would go where.\u00a0 We came across a jewelry box, buried in a dresser drawer. I popped it open and inside was a small round object in a velvet bag.\u00a0 I looked inside; it was a silver pocket watch.\u00a0 Inscribed on the back were the initials: \u201cBro. J.\u201d\u00a0 I showed it to my aunt.\u00a0 \u201cAny idea where this came from?,\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n She nodded.\u00a0 \u201cThat was your father\u2019s,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cI remember when he got it.\u00a0 They were gifts for all the brothers one Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, I had known that my father had been in the Christian Brothers for a few years shortly before the start of the Second World War.\u00a0 But the details were always sketchy.\u00a0 \u201cBut why does it say \u2018Bro. J.\u2019?,\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was his name,\u201d she replied.\u00a0 \u201cBrother Jerome.\u201d<\/p>\n Well.\u00a0 I turned the watch over in my hand and processed that bit of information.\u00a0Brother Jerome. <\/em>I wound the stem.\u00a0 It began ticking. \u00a0It still kept perfect time.\u00a0 I slipped it back in the velvet bag and stashed it away with my things.\u00a0 I wanted to keep it.<\/p>\n A few days later, over coffee, I mentioned the story of the pocket watch to my father-in-law, and he asked me if I\u2019d ever read \u201cThe Seven Storey Mountain\u201d by Thomas Merton.\u00a0 I told him no.\u00a0 He explained that he had read it in high school, back in the 1950s.\u00a0 It described this swinging young bachelor\u2019s conversion to Catholicism and how he finally decided to become a monk.\u00a0 \u201cHe was even a communist for a while,\u201d my father-in-law said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a great read.\u201d\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d check it out.<\/p>\n Well, he decided to make it easier on me.\u00a0 A couple weeks later, he sent me in the mail a paperback edition of \u201cThe Seven Storey Mountain.\u201d\u00a0 Not long after, I sat down started the first page.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.\u00a0 Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I was hooked.\u00a0 I continued reading.\u00a0 And in some ways, I\u2019ve never stopped.<\/p>\n Nearly 20 years later, the book remains a touchstone in my life, and I\u2019ve read and re-read and marked up that copy of the book at least a dozen times.\u00a0 Every reading brings me something new, throws a bright light on some other corner of my life, and puts my own faith journey into context.<\/p>\n Why does Merton\u2019s book have such a hold on me? <\/strong>Part of it, I know, is because his story is so modern and so relatable.\u00a0 I\u2019ve told more than a few people: \u201cUnder only slightly different circumstances, that could have been me.\u201d\u00a0 The book recounts how this jazz-loving, girl-chasing pseudo-intellectual hotshot was climbing the literary ladder and working on his Master\u2019s at Columbia when he discovered, to his astonishment, the writings of William Blake.\u00a0 He began delving more deeply into the Catholic Church.\u00a0 In 1939, he converted, and two years later, he joined the Trappists \u2013 giving up everything to live in a world with nothing, embracing as he put it \u201cthe four walls of my new freedom.\u201d\u00a0 He never thought he\u2019d write another word again.\u00a0 But he did \u2013 beginning with the story of his conversion, \u201cThe Seven Storey Mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n The book became a sensation \u2013 the first religious book to hit the New York Times bestseller list \u2013 and spawned hundreds if not thousands of vocations in the 1950s.\u00a0 I am convinced it also helped ignite my own vocation to the diaconate, spurring me to discover more writings by Merton and take some private retreats at Trappist monasteries, where I began to hear God\u2019s whispering call with greater clarity.\u00a0 The rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n The book, I think, came into my life at a moment when God knew I was ready for it. <\/strong>It just speaks to me.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been only too happy to listen.<\/p>\n Merton has fallen out of favor with some Catholics these days, who see him as a little too eager to do things like converse with Buddhists and study Zen.\u00a0 But the fact that his landmark memoir is included in the \u201c25 Books Every Christian Should Read\u201d gives me hope.\u00a0 He will endure.\u00a0 His voice will continue to be heard.\u00a0 He may even inspire more vocations like my own, stirring undiscovered yearnings and shocks of recognition among young men who encounter in Merton someone very much like themselves.<\/p>\n Thank you, Thomas Merton.\u00a0 Thank you, also, to the editors of \u201c25 Books.\u201d<\/p>\n And thank you, of course, Brother Jerome.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It started with a pocket watch. In 1994, after my mother\u2019s funeral, my sister, an aunt and I spent a few days in my mother\u2019s apartment sorting through her things and dividing up what would go where.\u00a0 We came across a jewelry box, buried in a dresser drawer. I popped it open and inside was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,18,11537,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-great-links","category-patheos-book-club","category-thomas-merton"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>And I wanted to know more about the mysterious life my father had led back in the 1930\u2019s.\u00a0 What was it like to be a brother back then?\u00a0 How did he live?\u00a0 And why was a man born \u201cGeorge\u201d known for several years as \u201cJerome\u201d?<\/p>\n<\/a>Now, I\u2019m happy to see it\u2019s been included in the compendium of \u201c25 Books Every Christian Should Read,\u201d<\/a><\/strong> now being discussed in thePatheos Book Club.<\/a><\/strong> Thomas Merton thus joins such lofty company as St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Blaise Pascal and St. Benedict.<\/p>\n