The Seven Storey Mountain

“My father and mother […] were in the world but not of it—not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.”

When Merton says that his parents, who were artists, were in the world but not “of” the world, he is applying a Christian ethical ideal to them on the basis of the ethic-spiritual integrity that is demanded by art. In several places in the book, Merton thematizes the idea that art is an analog to religion. We speak of artists having calling, for example, as Merton suggests here, that elevates them above the world of ordinary society. The practice of art is a way of participating in the spiritual path.

“The church had been fitted into the landscape in such a way as to become the keystone of its intelligibility. Its presence imparted a special form, a particular significance to everything else that the eye beheld. […] The whole landscape, unified by the church and its heavenward spire, seemed to say: this is the meaning of all created things: we have been made for no other purpose than that men may use us in raising themselves to God, and in proclaiming the glory of God.”

Merton’s description of the church’s location in the landscape emphasizes the centrality of spirituality to human life: God at the center of community and nature. He writes that “all created things” are given their meaning this way, and their meaning is to be useful to humans on their journey toward God. Merton is drawing on centuries of Western religious discourse about the relation between the world and the transcendent. One kind of relation discussed in theology is analogy. (See the quotation above for an example.) Important for the book’s overall plan, he also highlights the idea of an ascent. Recall that the “seven-storey mountain” of the book’s title comes from Dante.