The Monastic Heart by Sister Joan Chittister

A stimulating and stretching read which aims to invite readers to create a monastery within themselves: it would make a good Lent or Advent book

The Monastic Heart - 50 Simple Practices for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life
By Sister Joan Chittister
Convergent Books
ISBN: 9781 399 80085 3
Reviewed by Sue Clements-Jewery

 
The author Joan Chittister, now 86 years old, has been a member of a Roman Catholic Benedictine Community in Pennsylvania, USA for 70 years. An internationally acclaimed speaker and the author of over 60 books, her past roles include prioress of her community and president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, she has her own website and Wikipedia entry. 

The Monastic Heart is her latest book. I confess to having heard of her reputation as a passionate advocate on behalf of women’s issues, church renewal, and the spirituality of animals (to name but a few of her concerns) but until I opened this book I had read none of her writings. A lot of catching up to do…
 
 The Monastic Heart was an idea suggested by Joan’s friend over lunch in 1996:

‘You should turn monastic language into language people can understand in their own lives’.

It has taken 25 years to come to fruition. Joan wrote their ideas down on the back of the lunch menu and forgot all about it for a long time, writing dozens of books before she came back to this one.
 
The book has 50 chapters, each one five or six pages long, and ending with a section entitled: Integrating the practice. Its aim is to invite readers to create a monastery within themselves so that without setting foot in a religious community we can become deeper, richer, freer people simply living an ordinary life extraordinarily well.

The fruit of the author’s maturity and wisdom, it manages to be both simple and profound. This is not a book to be read from cover to cover before going on to something else but one to be read a chapter at a time, and savoured. And reflected and acted upon.
 
Currently there is a renewed interest in religious communities of various kinds right across the Christian spectrum. This book underlines the value of belonging to a specific community and living by a rule. It is catholic in both senses - first of all it reflects the Roman Catholic community which has been the author’s home for most of her life, so there are chapter titles with Latin names (Statio, Lectio) and others featuring candles, incense, Marian hymns. Some Baptist readers may find these a barrier but do not be put off.

It is also catholic in the wider, universal, sense, it is for all Christian disciples not just those who carry the RC label, as each chapter’s title amplifies the technical term (eg Statio: Involvement) and the content has a broader application.
 
A stimulating and stretching read, it would make a good Lent book or even one for Advent.
 

Sue Clements-Jewery offers Pastoral Supervision and is a meditator