Things of the Hidden God

If I had learned anything during the war, it was that our walk in the sun is brief, and so I resolved to wander from monastery to monastery, a sojourner in the world of last things.

So poet and journalist Christopher Merrill tells us near the beginning of this gripping account of the transforming pilgrimages he made to Mount Athos, in Greece, in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It was time for me to come to terms with the way my life had turned out: the love I had squandered, the misgivings I had about my vocation and my faith, the dread I felt at every turn.

In despair and out of a longing to end his spiritual desolation, Merrill became one of a handful of visitors permitted entry to Mount Athos-a mysterious land that for more than a thousand years has been the secret heart of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There, amid the beautiful terrain, the ancient rhythms, and the spiritual rigor of this holy place, he found a haven in dramatic contrast to the rest of the world.

As Merrill's story unfolds, we, too, hike the rough trails of Athos, exploring a place and a way of life scarcely altered since medieval times. We share encounters with monks, wolves, and spiritual seekers; visit Athos's twenty monasteries, where exquisite art treasures are sequestered; make our way to lonely hermitages that clutch the cliffs above the sea. And like Merrill, we come to consider existence in a new and different light.

Part journal of personal discovery, part meditation upon the history and traditions of the contemplative life, Things of the Hidden God takes us where the temporal and the eternal intersect, where community and solitude coexist, and where centuries-oldpractices provide insight for how to live today.