How to Live
What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community
byJudith Valente, Martin E. Marty, Joan D. Chittister
Book Edition Details
Summary
In a world echoing the chaos of ancient times, Judith Valente uncovers the enduring wisdom of The Rule of St. Benedict, a guide forged in an era rife with turmoil and mistrust. "How to Live" reimagines these timeless principles for today's fractured landscape, urging a return to community and contemplation over conflict and clamor. Valente's exploration reveals the transformative power of simplicity and silence, inviting us to question the relentless pace of modern life and discover a path to a more meaningful existence. With every page, readers are inspired to bridge the divisions of our age and embrace a life of purpose, rooted in the profound teachings of the past.
Introduction
Picture yourself standing in the doorway of a centuries-old monastery at dawn, watching robed figures move silently through candlelit corridors. The scene feels worlds away from our hyperconnected, anxiety-filled modern lives. Yet within these ancient walls lies wisdom that speaks directly to our contemporary struggles with burnout, broken relationships, and the relentless pressure to achieve more while feeling increasingly empty inside. In the 6th century, a young man named Benedict witnessed his civilization crumbling under external threats, economic inequality, and social upheaval. Sound familiar? Rather than despair, he crafted a revolutionary blueprint for living that has guided countless souls through turbulent times. His Rule isn't just for monks—it's a practical handbook for anyone yearning to live with greater purpose, deeper relationships, and authentic peace. This ancient text offers something our self-help culture desperately lacks: a sustainable path to transformation that doesn't promise instant results but delivers lasting change. Through practices like sacred listening, embracing community over competition, and finding balance between work and rest, we discover that the monastery isn't a place we visit—it's a way of life we can carry wherever we are. The invitation is simple yet profound: to live fully awake in a world that encourages us to sleepwalk through our days.
The Journey Begins: From Burnout to Benedictine Wisdom
A successful journalist arrives at a Kansas monastery weekend retreat, exhausted from chasing deadlines and managing family tensions. She expects to give a presentation on poetry and spiritual nourishment, but feels like a fraud—how can she teach others about feeding the soul when her own spiritual life runs on empty? That Saturday morning, sitting alone in the monastery chapel surrounded by blue stained glass, she notices the Latin inscription around Saint Benedict's outstretched arms: "omni tempore silentio debent studere"—at all times, cultivate silence. Suddenly, her life's central paradox becomes crystal clear. She had been traveling the country teaching contemplative living while her own existence lacked the very silence and solitude she advocated. The monastery sisters possessed something she desperately wanted: they balanced work with leisure, laughter with silence, productivity with prayer. Everything in their daily rhythm flowed from Benedict's ancient Rule, creating lives of sustainable meaning rather than frantic achievement. This moment of recognition reveals a universal truth about our modern condition. We often become experts at prescribing remedies we don't practice, teaching balance while living in chaos, advocating peace while our hearts remain at war. The Benedictine way offers an alternative—not a complete withdrawal from the world, but a reimagining of how we engage with it. When we discover that true transformation begins not with doing more but with being present, we take the first step toward a life that nourishes rather than depletes our deepest selves.
Sacred Practices: Silence, Humility, and the Art of Listening
When Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was asked how justices with passionate disagreements still managed to collaborate, her answer embodied ancient monastic wisdom: they listen to each other. Despite Justice Scalia's accusations of "jiggery-pokery" and legal "applesauce," Sotomayor saw him as "the brother I loved, and sometimes wanted to kill." The secret to their professional relationship wasn't agreeing, but truly hearing one another without assuming evil motives, even when they fundamentally disagreed. The Rule of St. Benedict begins not with "pray" or "worship," but with "Listen"—and not just with our ears, but with the "ear of the heart." This revolutionary first word suggests that genuine listening is an act of will, requiring us to actively incline ourselves toward others rather than simply waiting for our turn to speak. When a journalist friend received Saturday morning feedback that her passionate advocacy could come across as argumentative, her initial reaction was defensive anger. Only when she replayed mental tapes of recent meetings could she hear her own voice as others might experience it—passionate to her, but perhaps overwhelming to colleagues. The monastery practice of asking three questions before speaking provides a practical filter: Is what I'm about to say true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? The final question proves most challenging, as we waste countless words on complaints about weather, workload, and people who don't behave as we think they should. True listening creates space for wisdom to emerge, while mindful speech transforms ordinary conversations into opportunities for genuine connection and mutual understanding.
Community and Leadership: Building Relationships That Transform
At Mount St. Scholastica monastery, a simple sign-up sheet tells a profound story about community. When sisters need help with tasks—setting up celebrations, baking cookies, or addressing envelopes—volunteer slots fill within minutes. Unlike typical workplaces where people try to avoid additional assignments, monastery members eagerly offer assistance for even the smallest needs. Their willingness to help reflects William James's insight that "we are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface, but connected in the deep." Sister Molly Brockwell explains how conflicts get resolved without viewing disagreement as betrayal: "We can disagree with one another and not see that as a total betrayal or as a chance to hack the other person to pieces." An elderly sister with dementia, when asked about adjusting to monastery life, smiled brightly and said, "You'll do fine. Only the nuts stay." The wisdom in her humor suggests that authentic community embraces human eccentricity rather than demanding impossible perfection from its members. This ancient model of servant leadership challenges our culture's obsession with individual achievement. In monastic communities, rank comes not from wealth, education, or professional status, but from accumulated acts of service and years spent linking arms with others. When crises arise globally—refugees needing homes, neighbors facing illness, strangers requiring welcome—the question becomes not whether we can solve every problem, but whether we'll extend our hands to address the suffering directly in front of us, adding our light to the sum of light.
Finding Balance: Work, Rest, and the Path of Conversatio
A Wall Street Journal reporter in London became so absorbed in her work that she would arrive at 9 AM, bury herself in newswires and phone calls, then look up to discover darkness had fallen and another entire day had vanished. Like the poet A.R. Ammons who wrote about missing spring because his attention was focused elsewhere, she realized that some opportunities, once gone, never return. Her diagnosis was clear: workaholism and over-achieverism, diseases that promise fulfillment through constant motion but deliver spiritual malnutrition instead. Benedict's Rule offers a radical prescription for balance in an era when Americans work more hours than they did forty years ago, yet only nineteen percent take their full vacation allotment. The monastery's rhythm alternates between specified periods for manual labor, prayerful reading, meals, and rest—with eight hours designated for sleep. When someone receives an assignment beyond their strength, they can request reassignment without shame. The operative principle is "each according to need," recognizing that people aren't interchangeable parts in a productivity machine but unique souls requiring different forms of care and support. The French poet Charles Peguy captured our modern dilemma perfectly: "They have the courage to work. They lack the courage to be idle." True leisure isn't laziness but the sacred pause that allows creativity to germinate in the mind's fallow spaces. Like vineyard workers who must cut back branches to ensure a healthy harvest, we must periodically prune our overscheduled lives, asking what truly nourishes our souls versus what merely fills our calendars. The monastery motto "succesa virescit"—cut back, it will grow stronger—reminds us that sometimes less becomes more.
Summary
Through the lens of 1,500-year-old monastic wisdom, we discover that our contemporary struggles with anxiety, isolation, and meaninglessness aren't uniquely modern problems—they're timeless human challenges requiring ancient solutions. Benedict's Rule offers not quick fixes but sustainable practices: listening with the heart rather than waiting to speak, building community through small daily kindnesses, leading through service rather than domination, and embracing rest as sacred rather than seeing it as weakness. The path forward requires what monastics call "conversatio"—a continuous turning toward life with greater awareness and compassion. This doesn't mean becoming perfect; it means becoming fully human, acknowledging our flaws while still offering our gifts to the world. When we create monasteries of the heart within our busy lives—cultivating silence amid noise, showing hospitality to strangers, caring for our environment as sacred trust—we discover that transformation happens not through dramatic gestures but through countless small acts of attention and love. The monastery isn't ultimately a place we visit but a way of being we carry into boardrooms and kitchens, onto buses and into conversations with difficult neighbors. Each day offers fresh opportunities to practice the art of living fully awake, treating ordinary moments as vessels of the altar, and remembering that we are all fighting hard battles deserving of patience, kindness, and hope.
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