Every year I visit a monastery for a few days to retreat into a quiet environment and reconnect with the spiritual. This year I found myself at Blue Cloud Abbey near Marvin, South Dakota. There was a joyful spirit there which helped my find my smile and begin again to radiate the glow of Christ's love. These Benedictine monks present themselves wholly transparent to their visitors. They reveal their true personalities without reserve. They are, therefore, delightful and personable. It's refreshing, especially for a woman, to leave the daily duties of a household and career and be taken care of by a holy community who happen to be men. It sort of restores a woman's faith in the abilities of the opposite sex. I was given the gift of getting to know a few of these men before I met Br. Benet and found out through a fellow retreatant that he had written a book. I spent the next day reading it and was inspired with his ability to transcend joyful laughter as well as reverence through his skillfully written stories. I loved his honesty: "There are many false notions about monasticism. Pious people think that monks are holy. People who don't know much about religion think we are peculiar. The truth of the matter is that we are neither, though I have known individual monks who were both. Most of us are ordinary men who find that it is easier for us to be holy here than in some other place." I also loved the pictures he painted with words of his most memorable friends: "Brother Patrick was holy. His holiness was not the kind that is commonly associated with sanctity, but he was my kind of saint. He was not a plaster saint. He had a solid piety without being the least bit sanctimonious." Br. Benent then proceeded to describe this unusual monk who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and worked on the General Motors assembly line before joining the Benedictines. Br. Patrick's tendency to spin tall tales,especially regarding his war days and his pranks at the expense of the other monks made this monk a colorful person indeed. Even at his bedside, as he lay dying from inoperable cancer, his colorful spirit presented itself: ". . eager as ever to entertain all of the "brethren" (as he called us) who gathered at his bedside. Sitting on the edge of his bed and chain-smoking cigarettes ("Why not? I don't have lung cancer"), he regaled us with war stories and recollections of his youth in an upstate New York town where he could buy a bucket of beer for a nickel." Being Protestant, I found this book helpful in explaining Catholic practices, the difference between Trappists and Benedictines and the meaning of St. Benedict's Rule. But the most wonderful thing about this book is how Br. Benet has revealed the everyday life struggles and celebrations that are unique to monastic life but are not so very different from experiences that we all have in other communities. The mystery exists, however, that there is something special here. Not everything can be put into words; some things have to be experienced to be understood.

After visiting a few Benedictine monasteries, it was a delight to get a behind the scene view of life in a monastery. The short chapters make easy reading and although non-fiction, some of the "characters" in the stories could have been great fictional characters. The book helps a lay person better understand what leads a person to become a monk and what keeps a person on their path. Blue Cloud Abbey sounded like a place I would like too visit and I did two days ago as I returned from a trip out west. It's a peaceful beautiful place.

Wonderful read

Just got today

This was a surprising insight into a Benedictine monastery. The language was a surprise also-a bit more earthy than we expected, but not at all a put-off. Well written and entertaining.

Great book, love it.

Brother Benet Tvedten entered the Benedictine community of Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota in 1958. He has written other books such as How to Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job: An Invitation to Oblate Life,The Motley Crew: Monastic Lives,Share in the Kingdom: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict for Oblates, etc.

He wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, "I have lived in the monastery for over forty years, and I have witnessed this unending stream of tourists... There are many false notions about monasticism. Pious people think that monks are holy. People who don't know much about religion think we are peculiar. The truth of the matter is that we are neither, though I have known individual monks who were both. Most of us are ordinary men who find that it is easier for us to be holier here than in some other place." (Pg. 2)

He observes, "I soon learned... that the brothers were treated as second-class citizens in the monastery. They were forbidden by church law to hold certain offices, they could not vote on matters affecting the whole community, and they were restricted in the kinds of work they could do. St. Benedict would have been disqualified from being an abbot in a twentieth-century monastery because he was not a priest. Monasticism had departed from his idea of a classless society with equal rights." (Pg. 22)

He recalls, "When I came to the monastery, I knew that a candidate for this kind of life had to dispose of his personal property. I didn't own much, just a lot of books, and I gave away most of them. The few I brought with me were confiscated upon my arrival... I couldn't understand why books which were required reading in one Benedictine community were banned in another. Today my bookcase holds a lot more books than I brought with me to the monastery in 1958... Monks don't need the best, the state-of-the-art... This is also the truth: No matter how much monks give away, no matter how frugally we live, monks will never be poor." (Pg. 54-55)

He explains. "the possibility of becoming too intimate with a fellow novice was always present... In reality, everyone had a personal friend and still has. It is the most ordinary thing in the world... to confide in a special friend of one's own sex... These days the works of St. Aelred are widely read in monasteries... Abbot Aelred, who encouraged friendships among his medieval monks, has contributed greatly to dispelling all scorn for particular friendships... After all of those years in which the close relationship of one monk with another was fearfully equated with homosexuality, we listen now to a saint who might very well have been gay himself." (Pg. 56-57)

He notes, "The first reality a person faces upon entering a monastic community is an awareness that these are not the people with whom one would choose to live under normal circumstances. But St. Benedict tells us that regardless of the monks' differences, we are all equally loved by God and we must love one another." (Pg. 64) He explains, "When I was visiting with someone from the outside to whom I expressed several of my disappointments and frustrations, he asked, 'Why do you even stay in the monastery?' The answer is simple: I know I'm loved here. Regardless of my prejudices and eccentricities and differences and failings, I'm still loved. I'm with the right support group." (Pg. 173)

He admits, "Very few men enter our monastery these days, and of those who do, even fewer stay. Are numbers important to Benedictines? We were once a community of eighty, in the 1960s, but since then we have watched our numbers diminish. Numbers... do not detract from the quality of monastic life. St. Benedict seemed to think only twelve monks were necessary... A demographer has predicted that if no one makes final profession in our community within the next ten years, our membership will be reduced to twelve monks by the year 2009. There is no need to worry unless a community becomes so small that it is a burden to maintain a dwelling built for many monks." (Pg. 186-187)

This quiet, somewhat rambling series of thoughts will be of keen interest to anyone wanting to know more about what monastic life is like.