Hiking Through Purgatory
A Hiker's Guide to PurgatoryMichael Norton
How This Book Came to be Written
Welcome to the blog for "A Hiker's Guide to Purgatory," published by Ignatius Press!
In spite of its title, this isn’t really a guidebook or a work of theology. I guess you could call it an adventure story that happens to take place in the Afterlife. So you need to know right off the bat that it's written from a Christian (and specifically Catholic) perspective. But because I'm the kind of guy that I am, it's also kind of restless and quirky.
I think any place worth going to should have adventures. I believe that life itself is given to us in the form of an adventure – the adventure of discovering who we are and learning the part God has given us to play in this world and the next. I think the idea of adventuring is planted deep in the human soul. It resonates with us, and that’s why we thrill to a good adventure story.
Among Christians, the idea of Purgatory is almost exclusively a Roman Catholic teaching, but even Catholics don't always understand it. Some have been taught to regard it as a frightful place set aside for people who may not have behaved badly enough for eternal damnation but still hadn’t earned a free pass to heaven. But there have always been other threads of thought among Catholics (and even some Protestants) who have recognized the necessity of Purgatory -- as a place of healing and transformation rather than chastisement, a suburb not of hell but of heaven.
I wrote this book because I wanted to help people feel less frightened and less anxious about death and about what comes after death. In fact, strange as it sounds, I wanted to help them feel hopeful – even eager -- about the experience of Purgatory, to show it as something that could be, not just necessary but beautiful. Even exciting.
Look, if death does not snuff out the flame of our individuality, surely it will not extinguish our sense of adventure or our appetite for great undertakings. In fact, it may actually sharpen their focus, pointing them toward their most proper and fitting end.
That’s what happens to my main character, attorney and avid hiker Dan Geary, who sets out on a posthumous backpacking trek through Purgatory, that much-maligned and frequently misunderstood region where heaven-bound souls are liberated from the obsessions and self-deceptions acquired during their earthly lives.
As you might guess, I do a lot of hiking ad walking. Those are good things to do when you’re a writer because they give you time to think. And one of the things I kept thinking about was the idea of death. Specifically, about Life after Death. And this image kept coming back to me of a guy with a backpack standing in front of a steep grass-covered bluff – impossibly high and lofty – just standing there wondering what to do next. It seemed to me like a great way to begin an adventure story, and that’s what I ended up writing.
Also, as a writer, I was drawn to Purgatory’s potential for dramatic action. As a place of pilgrimage and journeying rather than a final destination. One thing heaven and in hell have in common is that once you’re there, well, you’re there. In Purgatory you’re still on the journey; you may know your final destination, but you don’t know how long it will take you to get there or what will happen to you along the way.
I thought it would be an interesting idea to describe Purgatory in a way that would resonate with people: a place that was beautiful and hopeful. But more important, a place where you would have adventures.
So why shouldn’t Purgatory be a place of adventuring? Purification suggests profound transformation – or, at the very least, a profoundly intense stage in the transformation – the conversion, if you will -- that has already begun in the soul of the believer. We Catholics very much stress the idea of continual conversion, after all. And no hero should ever emerge from a good adventure story without having been substantially changed in some way.
So that’s what I’d like to think we have here. An adventure story about Purgatory.
How This Book Came to be Written
Welcome to the blog for "A Hiker's Guide to Purgatory," published by Ignatius Press!
In spite of its title, this isn’t really a guidebook or a work of theology. I guess you could call it an adventure story that happens to take place in the Afterlife. So you need to know right off the bat that it's written from a Christian (and specifically Catholic) perspective. But because I'm the kind of guy that I am, it's also kind of restless and quirky.
I think any place worth going to should have adventures. I believe that life itself is given to us in the form of an adventure – the adventure of discovering who we are and learning the part God has given us to play in this world and the next. I think the idea of adventuring is planted deep in the human soul. It resonates with us, and that’s why we thrill to a good adventure story.
Among Christians, the idea of Purgatory is almost exclusively a Roman Catholic teaching, but even Catholics don't always understand it. Some have been taught to regard it as a frightful place set aside for people who may not have behaved badly enough for eternal damnation but still hadn’t earned a free pass to heaven. But there have always been other threads of thought among Catholics (and even some Protestants) who have recognized the necessity of Purgatory -- as a place of healing and transformation rather than chastisement, a suburb not of hell but of heaven.
I wrote this book because I wanted to help people feel less frightened and less anxious about death and about what comes after death. In fact, strange as it sounds, I wanted to help them feel hopeful – even eager -- about the experience of Purgatory, to show it as something that could be, not just necessary but beautiful. Even exciting.
Look, if death does not snuff out the flame of our individuality, surely it will not extinguish our sense of adventure or our appetite for great undertakings. In fact, it may actually sharpen their focus, pointing them toward their most proper and fitting end.
That’s what happens to my main character, attorney and avid hiker Dan Geary, who sets out on a posthumous backpacking trek through Purgatory, that much-maligned and frequently misunderstood region where heaven-bound souls are liberated from the obsessions and self-deceptions acquired during their earthly lives.
As you might guess, I do a lot of hiking ad walking. Those are good things to do when you’re a writer because they give you time to think. And one of the things I kept thinking about was the idea of death. Specifically, about Life after Death. And this image kept coming back to me of a guy with a backpack standing in front of a steep grass-covered bluff – impossibly high and lofty – just standing there wondering what to do next. It seemed to me like a great way to begin an adventure story, and that’s what I ended up writing.
Also, as a writer, I was drawn to Purgatory’s potential for dramatic action. As a place of pilgrimage and journeying rather than a final destination. One thing heaven and in hell have in common is that once you’re there, well, you’re there. In Purgatory you’re still on the journey; you may know your final destination, but you don’t know how long it will take you to get there or what will happen to you along the way.
I thought it would be an interesting idea to describe Purgatory in a way that would resonate with people: a place that was beautiful and hopeful. But more important, a place where you would have adventures.
So why shouldn’t Purgatory be a place of adventuring? Purification suggests profound transformation – or, at the very least, a profoundly intense stage in the transformation – the conversion, if you will -- that has already begun in the soul of the believer. We Catholics very much stress the idea of continual conversion, after all. And no hero should ever emerge from a good adventure story without having been substantially changed in some way.
So that’s what I’d like to think we have here. An adventure story about Purgatory.
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