Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain

When I first picked up this book, I have to admit I was turned off by its apparent self-indulgence and what seemed to me like self-righteousness. However, since I am a true Mt. Athos fan, I picked it up angain, and found it to be a wonderful description of the Holy Mount with all its warts and a surprisingly honest spiritual autobiography of a man struggling to find God and himself (and his family). If one reads this as a tourist or traveler's guide, I think one will be disappointed, and may well be confused. However, as an exploration of God and the people who pursue him relentlessly. This is a fascinating read. The photo on the cover is extremely well chosen as an emblem for what the book is about. The book provides a window onto the mountain and into the author's soul and life. And as with any view from a window, you only get a very partial picture of the actual reality.

Previous reviews seem to focus solely on Merrill's condemnation of Serb atrocities in Bosnia,and that is a shame, for this is one of the wisest and most learned books I have encountered in many years. Painfully honest and forthright about his dissatisfaction with marriage, vocation, and faith, Merrill is as much pilgrim as poet. He is also a remarkable researcher: the book is filled with the sort of history that takes a narrative sweep, building toward Athos in the late 20th C. There is something in the coalescence of gorgeous prose and spiritual hunger that elevates this book to that of a classic.

Christopher Merrill's book invoked in me truly mixed feelings. On one hand, it is (probably) the most recent account of a pilgrimage to, and through, the Mount Athos peninsula, therefore a valuable source of information for the aspiring pilgrims (I was really sorry to learn that Athos now has not only electricity but also cars, the worst plague of our times.) The book also contains a large number of solid and useful historical and theological data. On the other hand, though, Merrill is surprisingly conventional (this is to say, cliche) in his opinions about the so-called "anti-semitism" in Christian history, the Serbs as the only bad guys in the breakup of Yugoslavia, and in his unqualified admiration for Western democracy. This is probably the result of his North American upbringing; he himself quotes the words of the Jewish-Russian poet Joseph Brodsky to the effect that Americans have no sense of history or geography. As for the accuracy of historical information in "Things of the Hidden God", I have spotted only one serious error: Merrill clearly implies that the Jesuits have run the papal inquisition while in fact it was the Dominicans. This is strange as Merrill himself had been employed for several years by a Jesuit college. Merrill seems to be quite put off by some of the Athos monks treating him as a third-class visitor because of his Protestant affiliations. However, the Orthodox approach their religion in a completely serious manner, and they do not prefer being nice over being principled. This is one of the most valuable features of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, especially in comparison with the modern "cafeteria Catholics" who see nothing absurd in supporting abortion or homosexual "marriages", or with many Protestant churches that function solely as social welfare organizations. To sum up, Merrill's book is definitely worth reading but much more for its prose and the hard facts then for its take on Orthodoxy.