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Cloister Talks: Learning from My Friends the Monks

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Jon Sweeney captures the poetic and practical nature of the monastic life in his segmented memoir Cloister Talks: Learning from My Friends the Monks. Sweeney invites on a journey of mutual discovery, recording his conversations with monks over several years and how his own spiritual journey was shaped by the monks' advice.

Contrary to most opinions of the monastic life, the monks Sweeney befriends and entrusts as his spiritual advisers are practical, fun-loving, and astonishingly normal people. Monks do not view themselves as spiritually superior even if we sometimes do. Instead, monks view themselves as completing the vocation God has called them to.

God's calling is the most integral part of the monastic life. As one monk relates, only God's grace would ever enable a person to live the monastic life. It is not the "normal" life. Neither is it better than the normal life. Instead, it is viewed as a unique vocation God calls a select few into. God calls others into a variety of vocations as well.

The discovery of vocation and the experience of God's true calling in each person's life is what the monks' advice boils down to: walk the path God is showing you, be humble, be silent, enjoy life, and delight in God. This is what monks do, and this is what those beyond the bounds of the monastery should do as well.

The monastic life is not all spiritual ecstasy and enlightenment. There is a great deal of insecurity, frustration, and darkness as well. The monks are just like us. They have doubts and depression. They hurt and become sick. They travel and love. But their love is attuned fully to God and their brothers in a way that is far different than those beyond the monastery that have families and live in church communities. This difference is what makes the monastic life so special and so different. It is utter simplicity in our hectic world.

Even so, the monks never call for us to flee for the hills and live the hermit's life. Instead, we must find our own simplicity and devotion, walking our own pilgrimage before God in a way that finds wonder in silence, love, life, and play.

This book might disappoint those who are seeking monastic advise as a wondrous salve that will cure all their secular and worldly frustrations. The monks have advice for your frustrations, but they have their own in the monastery as well. The monastery is not a safe spiritual place. It is a place where people are stretched in their service before God, and this can lead to trying places.

I recommend this book instead to those that want to take a leisurely stroll through the teachings of monks filtered through the lens of one man's spiritual journey. There is really no beginning and not much ending, just a snapshot of a person on the Way being helped by the counsel of dear friends and spiritual advisors.

Not sure exactly what I expected from this book but I didn't find it. I neither finished it or kept. It went to our local thrift store in the hopes that someone else will be enlightened by it.