Listen with Your Heart
Listen with Your Heart: Spiritual Living with the Rule of Saint Benedict
By M. Basil Pennington, OCSO
Edited by Br. Chaminade Crabtree, OCSO
Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007
Review by Carl McColman
Many books are available on the Rule of St. Benedict and how it applies to modern life. Esther De Waal, Joan Chittister, Michael Casey, Laura Swan, Norvene Vest and Elizabeth Canham are just a few of the writers who have offered their take on the Holy Rule for readers in our day. Almost without exception, all of these books are aimed at the layperson — either the Benedictine oblate, or else a person with no formal ties to a monastic community whatsoever, but who would like to unpack the wisdom of Benedict for their secular postmodern lives.
Right away, one can see the value of this collection of chapter talks from Basil Pennington during his tenure as the Abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia: this is a book about the Rule of Saint Benedict written by a monk, for monks. “Written” might not be the best choice of words, for this book is an anthology of transcripts (several of these talks have also been collected in their original form as a two-CD audiobook). Those of us with secular vocations are basically invited to “listen in” on the kind of teachings that is normally reserved only for those in the cloister. (more…)
Quote for the Day
No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. These pages seek nothing more than to echo the silence and peace that is “heard” when the rain wanders freely among the hills and forests. But what can the wind say when there is no hearer? There is then a deeper silence: the silence in which the Hearer is No-Hearer. That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude.
— Thomas Merton, from the preface to the Japanese Edition of
Thoughts in Solitude, excerpted in Echoing Silence:
Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing,
edited by Robert Inchausti
