Almost every year I pull out Seven Storey Mountain (the autobiography of Thomas Merton) and read it. It’s one of the few books I have read multiple times. I have a fresh (used) copy so I can try to read with fresh eyes instead of floating to my markings and skimming too much.

This first paragraph is such a grasp of the human soul:

On 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. 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. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.

Lord, heal our souls. Let us realize your image that shines in each of us!