The Discipline of the Mountain

In The Discipline of the Mountain Daniel Berrigan offers ways of imagining our plight through the poetic vision of Dante's Purgatorio. There can be found a faithful vision, an alternative, a truthful image of God, of ourselves, of history. Berrigan employs free, poetic adaptation of the original--its themes, moods, discourses, encounters--with a prose commentary relating the text to political-moral issues of the present day. With its themes of lust and hatred, religious strife and ecclesiastical corruption, military power and oppression, the Purgatorio is an apt allegory of modern society. Thirteenth-century kings and princes shade into twentieth-century colonels and shahs and juntas. The Discipline of the Mountain is evocatively illustrated by Robert F. McGovern.What is God saying to us, what would he have us do, as a seemingly irreversible course leads humanity, like a blindfolded beast, towards the abattoir? Might there be ways of coping, ways which might properly be named spiritual, surpassing whatever the politics of the Left or Right might offer?--from the Introduction Let us hope that our country will become wise. But until it does---indeed, in order that it should---we as its citizens must act on the wisdom of our own conscience. That, to me, is the ultimate meaning of what Father Daniel Berrigan, in prose and poetry, says and leaves unsaid. -- Howard ZinnDaniel Berrigan is a poet and prophet for these times.--Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazineDaniel Berrigan is an internationally known voice for peace and disarmament. A Jesuit priest, award-winning poet, and the author of over fifty books, he has spoken for peace, justice, and nuclear disarmament for nearly fifty years. He spent several years in prison for his part in the 1968 Catonsville Nine antiwar action and later acted with the Plowshares Eight. Nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, he lives and works in New York City. Robert F. McGovern, whose woodcuts appear in The Discipline of the Mountain, is Professor Emeritus at Philadelphia College of Art and lives in Narbeth, Pennsylvania. In addition to illustrating several books, his work has appeared in New Covenant Magazine and the Catholic Worker.