Customer Reviews

The Abbey Up the Hill: A Year in the Life of a Monastic Day-Tripper

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I wasn't sure I'd like this book. Raised Catholic but no longer practicing, and not much of a seeker after things spiritual, I had little in common with the author but being a speechwriter and having a couple of friends who were helped by Alcoholics Anonymous. So, why read it? I'm curious about how people go about finding meaning and purpose in life -- whether in real life or in fiction, whether in religion or therapy, whatever it takes. In this quest to follow someone's personal journey to find meaning, I was not disappointed. As the author "chases the choices laid out for her" by her spiritual guide, Abbott Antony, I was drawn in by her disarming honesty about herself. The confessional nature of the book, however, is not expressed in a self-indulgent way. Far from it! The disarmingly honest moments are humorously self-deprecating in a way that I found more refreshing and engaging than Kathleen Norris's account of her sojourn with the Benedictines in Cloister Walk. With Abbey up the Hill, even if you know next to nothing about the Rule of St. Benedict, the Twelve Steps in AA, Episcopalians, or any of the other touchstones the author uses to fulfill her self-described "need to put things into her own words in order to trust them," you will not be lost in allusions, or illusions (for that matter), for long. While a chapter may begin with a reflection on a passage in the Rule that does not seem very clear at first, her journey through memory to find meaning or relevance to her own life never fails to draw you in and take you along. Even obscure allusions or difficult-to-comprehend Biblical passages, which may be off-putting at first, gradually become illumined as the author searches for, or sometimes seemingly stumbles upon, just the right metaphor or anecdote to make the meaning clear. It is her grasp of metaphor and analogy that I admired most. Her metaphors are not designed to impress us with their cleverness but seem to appear to her mind's eye as though a lamp comes on unbidden to elucidate self-discovery. Through her self-disclosures, you feel you're experiencing the journey to understanding along with her as you follow her thought processes. The symbolism she chooses seems ever so precise in characterizing the new insight gained. As she searches for understanding in her own "remembered-in-tranquillity" mistakes, misjudgments, and missteps, your understanding takes shape in step with hers. Advice: Don't be stalled by allusions that aren't clear at first. Persevere. By the end of the chapter, the point will be clear. She gets you there every time. In short, I recommend this book very highly.

Carol Bonomo has written a book for "the rest of us!" I have a lot of books on the spiritual life. Some of them are enlightening; some are even helpful. Most of them leave me with the feeling that the author has never stuggled with the problems of my life Not so with this book.

Bonomo uses both her personal journal and the Rule of St. Benedict to frame her spiritual journey. It is easy to follow her during the year as she makes her way "day-tripping" up to her local Benedictine abey. She engagingly weaves personal story, memories and her experiences as an oblate into a narrative that is intensely personal and yet deeply engaged with her chosen path: the Rule of St. Benedict.

For those unfamiliar with the Rule, this focus will be new and may therefore may occasionally seem strange or artificial. Why all the bother to focus on and struggle with one particular such way to God? The Rule of St. Bendict is not complicated, however, and the concepts would prjobably be familiar to anyone likely to pick up this book in the first place. Bonomo's real strength is that she does struggle. She takes this stuff seriously, and she invites us to take it seriously, too. Ultimately, this engaged me because, as Bonomo herself recognizes, the Rule points to Christ. To take it seriously and struggle to observe it is therefore to take Christ seriously and begin to participate in a fully Christian existence. There is real engagement here, and it shows in every page.

This is a very personal book which is nevertheless not ultimately about the author. I appreciated Bonomo's honesty and openess in talking about her struggles with alcholism, the death of her faither, and her sometimes wandering church life. Bomono makes no attempt to artifically smooth the rough edges of life. She obviously believes that God is not to found through generalities, but rather in the day to day struggle. Her growing commitment to and understanding of the Rule provides space for here personal story to also deepen and grow. Bonomo is searching for a way to understand herself and the world. I found it fascinating to watch Bonomo encounter Christ in this way. I am neither Roman Catholic nor a Benedictine myself, but I could see a lot of myself in all of this. I suspect this is because this book is ultimately about learning to see beyond self to the Christ in others. I think others may see that, too.

If this book has any fault, at least for me, it is perhaps less a fault than a limitation. The Rule and this particular Abey obviously helped Bonomo make an important spiritual transition. This does not mean than she idealizes this particular abey, although she is certainly grateful to Abot Anthony for his help. It does means, however, that Bonomo sometimes writes like any new convert. This can be very engaging and Bonomo is certainly not blind to faults, hers or anyone elses. Still, it brought back the early Thomas Merton for me. This book sometimes has a similar freshness, and, perhaps, at times, a similar lack of perspective. The Merton of the Seven Story Mountain was not the same Merton as the person who wrote the Asian Journals. Readers of Esther de Waal will not find here the ease and sophistication of someone fully conversant with the Benedictine tradition and its role in the western Church.

On the other hand, I personally hope Bonomo never looses the her freshness and sense of discovery. I really liked this book. I highly recommend it. It is serious. It is funny. It is personal. It is written by someone who has the soul of an artist without being at all "artsy". It is a good read and it may make you look at your own life differently. I know it did that for me.

The cover was pretty and the author grew up in the state where I now reside, so I read it. As I opened to the first page I thought "I hope I like it. I hope I understand it."

I was engrossed from the beginning. The author has a gift for words and she frames them beautifully in a completely readable style. She is the Andee (being a woman) Rooney of spiritual journeys. She has an acerbic wit and she uses it skillfully in spinning her tale.

She seems to scream "Let me in. Don't shut me out." But the doors keep closing on her, sometimes as a result of her own actions. She begins to feel that she is somehow different from others but she cannot put her finger on it. She does not even quite fit into a traditional church. She longs to find her spiritual home and to be accepted into its life.

This sets the tone for her journey. But it is not an easy path. Doors still keep closing to her and more rejections block her way. In pain, which she shares with the reader, she continues her search for acceptance and for faith. She is persistent, but she is not always patient. She keeps expecting and not finding more from life.

In the meantime, I LOVED the stories of the desert fathers which were interwoven with her own very personal story. I found their 6th century advice sage, funny, and occasionally hilariously out of step with life as we know it today.

The author of the book spoke directly to my heart. I cried for her and I rejoiced with her. She delivers the Gospel of hope. If I can do it you can too. Hang in there.

A Good Read...Even for a Southern-California WASP

Even for a young woman who's attended only a handful of Catholic masses, had never heard of St. Benedict, knows she should keep a diary, but doesn't, and grew up where "the desert meets the ocean" (a place that the author initially hated), The Abbey Up the Hill was a pleasure.

Bonomo is open enough to talk about her own demons and the painful and boring parts of worship and devotion, while at the same time underscoring the fact that she takes all of this stuff seriously. She is on a path, though it isn't her first, and it may not be her last.

With this book, I saw, smelled, and tasted the monastery. I felt the sharp winter winds coming off the Pacific as Bonomo journeyed along the prayer path, and my own fingers started tapping in agitation as she struggled through yet another trying service. I also experienced her pleasure as she curled up in the oversized chair in the oblate library for her private study, and was touched by the true reverence she feels for her abbott.

Although the ritual and Catholic "baggage" is foreign to me, the basic search for meaningful connections, affirmation, and a sense of home that Bonomo describes speaks directly to me, and to anyone who ever felt they still had something to find.

The Abbey Up The Hill: A Year In The Life Of A Monastic Day-Tripper by lobbyist and speech writer Carol Bonomo is her personal memoir and testimony as a recovering alcoholic and depicts her compelling quest for spiritual enlightenment. It was her restless search for a spiritual home which brought her into contact with the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as an attempt to become a lay associate of the Franciscans, and then, at last, to a Benedictine abbey where she found her spiritual home, a state of acceptance, and a hard won wealth of personal insight. The Abbey Up The Hill is recommended as an emotionally moving, sometimes humorous, occasionally poignant saga presented with a reverent love and a spirit of appreciation.

I enjoyed this and was inspired. Not that it's a touchy-feely, ickily romanticized view of monastic life. Quite the contrary. Bonans's own complicated past (a bit EST, lots AA, childhood and adult Episcopalian before converting) enriches her meandering if ultimately rewarding exploration of her own present situation (lobbyist-speechwriter) in a very affluent part of North San Diego County that just happens to be down the hill from the Abbey. Married but no kids, she luckily can take off many weekends or quick breaks for retreats but also gets stuck in SoCal traffic as her job takes her all about, far from the abbey's perch. She has a mink coat, but puts off buying an (admittedly pricy) four-volume edition of the Divine Office. She lives by a golf course but prefers wandering at the Abbey looking for rocks to add to her garden. She works out on the treadmill while applying to her very worldly career the moderation of the Rule of St. Benedict, through which this account becomes an extended and loosely relevant but never superficial commentary--in the year 2000 spent in and out of the Abbey's walls. In an image that sums up her condition, she yaks on her cellphone as she navigates the hairpin turns up to drive into the abbey atop the hill.

She never lets her crankiness get too overwhelmed by bouts of fervent piety, and for this her story rings so much more clearly to those of us similarly skeptical of those claiming instant and irrevocable rather than painfully slow and lifelong "conversion of manners," as Benedictines call it. She learns that Catholics have to be in it for the long haul. I envy her her faith, and recognize her tendency towards observance rather than participation, for she is the one at the edges of the crowd or the congregation, wondering as much as worshipping.

Her type of perspective is rarely charted--no road to Damascus moment occurs here, although Paul is her favorite saint, and her ties formerly to the also local Franciscans do raise her receollection of a call heard in a lonely church such as Francis heard at San Damiano. Throughout, her comparisons of Franciscan and Benedictine spirituality and expression deepen her reflections intelligently and often wittily, but she does no go for the cheap laugh or glib aside. She's a deft enough author to force her reader to learn to be patient, too, and to find that many of her at first rambling or cryptic stories take the whole book to fully unfold. The style and arrangement at first are distancing, but her compassion and humor, carefully rationed, do eventually pay off with a thoughtfully impish examination of piety as lived--eventually partially in the Abbey as a frequent guest, if still far more often outside its appealing and also rather enigmatic (for how else can this appear to us left on the outside?) austere, de-consumerized, detached way of life.

A nasty, HR-refereed, run in with a cruel boss parallels and compels her attempts to become more quiet and true to a calling that expects its oblates to cultivate endurance rather than exuberance, reserve over energy misspent, and sets a goal that--as with repeated reps in weightlifting (that she does early each morning) comes gradually into view as toughening one's stamina--for the soul as well as for her body. She looks at nature in an almost Franciscan manner of acceptance and embrace, but learns to temper this with a concentration on the local and the unprepossessing that enriches her quest as a lay Benedictine. She observes her adopted California climate wonderfully, but also realizes that the truest beauties lie within the spiritual regimen that beckons (when it does not repel when she rises at 5 a.m. to say prayers and then work out--both proving equally necessary), and which opposes so much of the luxuriant and expensive so-called life of creature comforts lived among sky-high real estate all around her. She will not leave the country-club lifestyle for an abbey up a hill, but she does learn which is more likely to reward her exertions.

(P.S.: She lists in her notes that she should get around to reading Augustine's Confessions, but I would not advise for her--despite her accustomed love of the KJV--the Pusey translation straight outta Victorian England. The (early-Merton?) 1940s Frank Sheed or the recent Garry Wills versions she'd like much better, I predict.)

This is actually quite a wonderful book. Bonomo is a great writer, though I probably wouldn't actually like to spend time at a monastery with her. She is curmudgeonly and fussy, but so many of the good writers are (think Paul Theroux). This will please anyone interested in monasticism, and spirituality in general. An obscure gem.

When you read the book it feels like you are picking up Carol's journal (and you are). It is basically the well written ramblings of an Oblate. The author infuses quotes from the Bible, Rule, and Desert Fathers in with her life experiences. I found I didn't relate too well to some of her experiences and didn't care much for the author's attitude, hence the lower grade. She is one of those people who comes to Mass late and leaves early, which makes me think, "And they're off!" The author whines a lot throughout the book, I kept reminding myself that the author suffers from mental illnesses: alcoholism and depression. It wasn't that inspiring for me personally, but it could be for someone else.

If you like Kathleen Norris' Cloister Walk, then this book will run to your taste. It is in the same light-fluffy-rambling-journal style genre. It is worth checking out of the library or buying if you have the extra cash lying around, but in, my opinion, it isn't "library - keep me" quality.