How to Live

In a world where our phones buzz with notifications every few minutes, where we juggle multiple deadlines while worrying about the future, where genuine human connection seems increasingly rare, millions of people are quietly suffering from what we might call "modern soul sickness." We have more conveniences than any generation before us, yet anxiety and depression rates continue to climb. We're more connected digitally but feel more isolated than ever.

What if the remedy for our contemporary restlessness could be found not in the latest self-help trend or technological solution, but in the wisdom of a sixth-century monk who understood something profound about human nature? St. Benedict's Rule, written over fifteen centuries ago, offers a surprisingly relevant roadmap for finding balance, meaning, and peace in our chaotic times. This ancient guide doesn't ask us to retreat from the world, but rather to engage with it more thoughtfully, creating what the author beautifully calls "a monastery of the heart" wherever we are.

Exhausted from years of chasing bylines and awards, the author arrived at Mount St. Scholastica monastery in Kansas feeling like a fraud. She was scheduled to lead a retreat on nourishing the soul, yet her own spiritual life had withered under the relentless demands of her journalism career. As she sat alone in the monastery's oak-lined chapel that first morning, sunlight streaming through distinctive blue stained glass windows, something caught her attention. Above her was an image of St. Benedict with outstretched arms, surrounded by Latin words: "omni tempore silentio debent studere" – at all times, cultivate silence.

The irony struck her immediately. She had been crisscrossing the country talking endlessly about contemplative living while her own life was devoid of the very silence and solitude she advocated for others. The Mount sisters seemed to possess a secret she desperately needed. They balanced work with leisure, laughter with silence, prayer with practical tasks. Everything they did – from eating meals to washing dishes to caring for the sick – flowed from Benedict's ancient Rule. What these women had discovered was a way of living that she had been searching for her entire adult life.

Over the next three years, she returned repeatedly to this monastery on a hill, mining the Rule for wisdom she could apply as a wife, stepmother, writer, and working journalist. Here was proof that the contemplative life wasn't reserved for those behind monastery walls. Benedict's question from the Rule's prologue became her own urgent plea: "Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?" The answer was a resounding yes, and the journey toward that fuller life was about to begin.

This awakening reveals something profound about the human condition – we often travel great distances seeking what has been available to us all along. The monastery didn't offer escape from the world's demands, but rather a new way of meeting them with grace and intention.

The first word of Benedict's Rule isn't "pray" or "worship" or even "love" – it's "listen." This seemingly simple instruction carries revolutionary power, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor discovered when reflecting on her relationship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Despite their fierce philosophical disagreements that sometimes erupted into public disputes, the justices maintained respect for one another through one essential practice: they listened to each other. As Sotomayor explained to law students, "You may not like what they're proposing, but that doesn't mean they're doing it from an evil motive."

The author learned this lesson the hard way when a colleague called her on a Saturday morning to point out that her forceful advocacy in meetings was coming across as argumentative and condescending. Her initial reaction was anger and defensiveness, but then she began "listening with the ear of her heart" – replaying mental recordings of recent meetings and truly hearing her own voice for the first time. What she thought was passionate advocacy, others experienced as verbal aggression. This painful but necessary feedback transformed not only her professional relationships but her understanding of what it means to truly hear another person.

Benedictine listening extends beyond merely hearing words to understanding the person behind them. It requires what the author calls "mutual obedience" – a horizontal relationship where careful attention is paid to each member of the community as brothers and sisters. This isn't the passive compliance we might fear when we hear the word "obedience," but rather an active choice to lean into the wisdom that others bring to our lives, even when that wisdom challenges our preconceptions.

The deepest listening often comes through disappointment and unexpected detours, teaching us that the conversations that matter most are not always the ones we planned to have.

Standing at her office window overlooking St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the author would arrive at 9 AM, bury herself in newswires and phone calls, only to look up hours later to discover darkness had fallen. Like the narrator in A.R. Ammons' poem "Eyesight," she had missed entire days in her relentless pursuit of professional achievement. Her self-diagnosed "workaholism and over-achieverism" had reached such extremes that she once had to be hospitalized for malnutrition and exhaustion – a ridiculous state for a well-paid journalist in her twenties.

Benedict's Rule offers a radically different approach to work and rest. While monasteries must be self-supporting and productive, Benedict refused to let work overwhelm the human person. He carefully outlined specified periods for manual labor, prayer, reading, leisure, and eight hours of rest. When kitchen servers or others struggled with overwhelming tasks, they could request help "so they may serve without distress." Most remarkably, in a chapter called "Assignment of Impossible Tasks," Benedict gives workers permission to tell their supervisors when a job is simply too much: "They should choose appropriately the moment and explain patiently to the superior the reasons why they cannot perform the task."

This wisdom stands in stark contrast to modern workplace cultures where employees receive calls on Thanksgiving and Easter, where being an "Amabot" – working with machine-like efficiency – becomes a twisted badge of honor. Benedict understood that people aren't interchangeable parts. The monastery was to offer variety at meals so everyone could find something nourishing, extra food for those doing physical labor, and special consideration for children and the elderly. The operative principle was "each according to need," not "maximum productivity at any cost."

The ancient metaphor of pruning grapevines illuminates this balance beautifully: vines will grow enthusiastically without much effort, but they won't produce valuable fruit without the careful touch of the vinedresser who cuts back excess branches to allow nutrients and sunlight to reach what matters most.

When Eva Kor was ten years old, she and her twin sister were torn from their parents and imprisoned at Auschwitz, where they became subjects in Josef Mengele's horrific medical experiments. After surviving the war and building a life in Indiana, Eva could have spent her remaining years consumed by hatred. Instead, she made a choice that stunned the world. She tracked down Nazi doctor Hans Munch, who had worked at the camp but hadn't participated in experiments on children. When they met in Germany decades later, he asked for her forgiveness – and she gave it to him. "I was finally free," Eva later said. "I was finally in charge of my own feelings."

This extraordinary act of forgiveness demonstrates what Benedict understood about human relationships: forgiveness isn't primarily about the person who wronged us, but about our own freedom. Eva carried her anger "like a sack of stones" until she chose to set it down. Her story illustrates the Rule's practical wisdom about relationship repair – that making amends is more important than punishment, that consequences should match the seriousness of the offense, and that the entire community should support those experiencing difficulty rather than simply shunning them.

The author's own family demonstrates how grudges can become inherited curses. Her father and uncle didn't speak for decades, creating a chasm that prevented her from knowing her cousins until both men were in their eighties. When they finally reconciled, neither could remember what had driven them apart. Similarly, her ongoing estrangement from her brother over their mother's funeral arrangements shows how pride and hurt feelings can calcify into permanent barriers, even when the original wound seems minor in retrospect.

Benedict's chapter on "The Reception of Guests" extends this healing wisdom outward, teaching us to welcome strangers as Christ himself. This isn't mere courtesy but spiritual practice, as demonstrated by communities that have sponsored refugee families or by individuals who practice the simple monastery porter's greeting: "Thanks be to God" and "Your blessing, please."

The deepest transformation happens when we realize that every person we encounter – whether family member, stranger, or someone who has hurt us – is fighting their own hard battle and deserves both our compassion and our blessing.

The Latin phrase "conversatio morum" doesn't appear explicitly in Benedict's Rule, but it infuses every chapter like morning light filtering through monastery windows. Usually translated as "conversion of life," it represents the heart of Benedictine spirituality – not a dramatic moment of transformation but a daily turning toward God and toward our truest selves. When the author confessed to Sister Thomasita that she liked herself better at the monastery than at home, where she still lost her temper with her beloved husband, the wise sister offered profound comfort: "You are living conversatio. Your struggle, that's the conversatio."

This insight reframes the spiritual journey from a destination we reach to a path we walk. The desert fathers and mothers often called themselves "beginners," understanding that conversatio operates like Russian nesting dolls – as soon as it opens one door in the heart, there's another to walk through, and another after that. It's the slow, steady work of water etching away at a shoreline, creating change that's often imperceptible in the moment but undeniable over time.

Contemplation, far from being an otherworldly pursuit, becomes accessible through simple practices: writing daily haiku poems to capture moments of awareness, taking walking meditation breaks during busy workdays, greeting interruptions with "Thanks be to God" instead of "What fresh hell is this?" These small acts of attention accumulate into what poet Edward Hirsch calls "living like a mystic" – pulling on a sweater, walking across a park in snow, counting trees as if each were a stop on a pilgrimage.

The Rule reminds us that we're always beginners because growth never ends. An elder monk once told a discouraged young brother, "The spiritual life is this: I rise up and I fall down. I rise up and I fall down." The young monk stayed and persevered, finding hope not in perfection but in the promise that our hearts can eventually "overflow with the inexpressible delight of love."

Through stories of transformation discovered in monastery chapels and corporate boardrooms, in family conflicts and international courts of law, this exploration of Benedict's ancient wisdom reveals that the contemplative life isn't an escape from the world but a more engaged way of living in it. Whether it's Eva Kor choosing forgiveness over hatred, Justice Sotomayor choosing listening over winning arguments, or ordinary people learning to balance sacred work with holy rest, the Rule offers practical guidance for creating what the author calls "a monastery of the heart" wherever we find ourselves.

The genius of Benedictine spirituality lies not in its complexity but in its beautiful simplicity: listen with the ear of the heart, welcome strangers as holy guests, work without becoming consumed by work, forgive as a path to freedom, and embrace the ongoing conversion that turns us, slowly but surely, toward love. These ancient practices don't promise to eliminate life's struggles but to transform our relationship with them, helping us discover that every moment offers an opportunity for awakening, every encounter holds the possibility of blessing, and every day presents a new chance to begin again.