Christopher Merrill

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 that for more than a thousand years has been a land apart. Merrill's journal of self-discovery explores the land and the more than 20 Eastern orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos.

This is a record of the encounter of the poet, Christopher Merritt, with himself, while on several pilgrimages to Mt. Athos in Greece. The Anglican Merrill brushes up against Eastern Orthodoxy's deep sipiritual life as well as its scruples against women and non-Orthodox. Merrill is a fine writer, and I felt I journeyed with him over the very hilly landscape, by locked monasteries, and experiencing the liturgy sometimes from afar, and then up close.

An American poet and professor, an active Episcopalian, encounters Greek Orthodoxy at Athos. Not sure at first about the future of his marriage and chosen profession, he finds his way and ends up embracing both. He realizes that monasticism and marriage are alike in requiring discipline and commitment.