Customer Reviews

Beyond The Walls: Monastic Wisdom For Everyday Life

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ever since 1954 when I visited my first Trappist monastery, I wanted to be a Monk. I'm not. I'm a married father of eight children. Paul helped me realize that I too can be a Monk. Just live the spirit of the Monk in the world. It's the new monastic way.

The courage with which Paul shares his struggles and success with monastic wisdom for daily life is refreshing. His candor and vulnerability invite the reader into his life and to an examination of one's own life in light of Paul's reflections. I've been to Mepkin and it was an absolute delight to "see their faces" and "hear their voices" through Paul's wonderful descriptions. This is one to be savored time and again. I strongly recommend it to the spiritual wayfarer looking for solid guidance and a kindred spirit struggling with the Spirit.

Wilkes offers us an invitation into monastic spirituality, not for monks this time, but for you and me, for our daily lives, right where we live, in the midst of day-timers, cell-phones and soccer practices. For another book like "Beyond the Walls", look up THE FAMILY CLOISTER: BENEDICTINE WISDOM FOR THE HOME, by David Robinson (New York, NY: Crossroad, 2000, 192pp., trade paperback). Welcome to the cloister without walls!

Mr. Wilkes takes the essentials of monastic life and demonstrates how the practices of the monks he has come to know can be incorporated into his own life as a layman with a family. These essentials, such as prayer, discernment, stability, community, are neatly arranged in individual chapters or essays. This is a beautiful, thought-provoking and spiritual book.

This book contains a lot of substance in terms of applying monastic principles to daily life. It is well thought out and I extracted some useful information from it.

However, being a Traditional Catholic, certain things in the book were major sources of irritation for me. The author regards Karl Rahner and Teilhard de Chardin as brilliant theologians! There is also a lot said about Catholic Monks learning from Buddist Monks! This book is definately a product of post concilliar thinking.

Your position on eccumenism will determine whether you like or dislike this book.

Monasteries can be found in America, something that many Catholics don't know. "Beyond the Walls: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life" is an updated edition of Paul Wilkes' look at Monastic life and wisdom that he compiled ten years ago during his visit to Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. Discussing the modern Catholic Church as well as wisdom that can be taken from the most devout of followers, "Beyond the Walls" is a thought provoking and faith assuring read, highly recommended.

Paul Wilkes is a career journalist with a special interest in religious topics, particularly Roman Catholic. Throughout his early life he was fascinated with monasticism. At one time he spent nearly a year at the monastery at Gethsemani, hoping to find his vocation. It turned out to be married life. Years later, as husband, father, and writer, he embarked on a book project that would again take him into a Trappist monastery, this time Mepkin, near his home in South Carolina. Beyond the Walls: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life was published in 2000 and is this year being re-released as an anniversary edition.

For one year, Wilkes spent several days a month at Mepkin, participating as fully as possible in the monks' activities. Beyond the Walls is structured on the 12 monthly visits, with each chapter devoted to one monastic virtue, such as detachment, mysticism, and prayer. Wilkes relates the monastic experience to secular world, sharing his own efforts to carry over the aura of the monastery into his personal life.

The fourth chapter looks at the vow of stability, defined as a commitment to trust in the goodness of God and a belief that we can find holiness, happiness, and fulfillment in the here and now. Stability has less to do with place than with a state of mind, writes Wilkes. Monks take present opportunities seriously "because nothing much is going to change. ...Time is at once willingly submitted to--and transcended."

Today's culture is populated with those who worship activity, which often leads to disorientation in the face of change. By contrast, those seeking stability have a solid center that allows them to see clearly who they are and what they are doing. They experience what Wilkes calls the two faces of stability: when to stay and when to go. They are able to let go of situations that threaten their connection with God on the one hand, and to work through dark and troubling times on the other.

Those who embrace stability can bring peace and solace to their surroundings. "Stability does not ask, it gives," Wilkes writes. "It does not judge, it accepts. It instills a deep confidence. It is God's presence manifested in the world."

The chapter ends with the author back at home, mentioning stability to his young son, who asks what that means. "Being someplace and doing the best you can," Wilkes answers.

I have had a hard time thinking of this book by it's main title: Beyond the Walls. I have been calling it (in my mind) Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life which is, of course, its subtitle.

I had hoped for more personal stories of life at the monastery, and then life outside the monastery with the author putting his monastic lessons into practice. While there was a good bit of that, there was also a lot of philosophizing which I often found tedious. I felt as if I had to slog through the theory to get to the next practical application.

Nonetheless, the lessons learned were valuable, and I'm glad I own this book.

This book was absolutely, absolutely horrible. Only the rare nugget of interesting or useful information stopped me from flinging it against a wall. Repeatedly.

Basically, it contained page after page of meaningless, empty religious-speak. It's presumption that [X] -- whatever [X] happened to be at the time, say an adventuresome spirit, or interest in life or whatever -- was impossible without god or faith was annoying in the extreme.

I found myself at the end reacting towards the author the same way that his sons did in one chapter at dinner -- rolling my eyes and snickering at his spouting religious nonsense yet again.

If I could give negative stars, the author would owe me a universe.