The View from a Monastery - Softcover

The View from a Monastery by Brother Benet Tvedten, is a memoir of life in the Benedictine community at South Dakota's Blue Cloud Abbey. (This abbey was famously described by Kathleen Norris in both Dakota and The Cloister Walk.) Tvedten mines his 40 years at Blue Cloud for colorful stories about the routines, rituals, and leisure activities that have filled his life, and writes an engaging narrative about the liberation he has found in the restrictions of his Benedictine community. The View from a Monastery is perhaps most affecting in its descriptions of Tvetden's discernment of his vocation. Raised Protestant in a small town in North Dakota, Tvetden read Thomas Merton's The Seven-Storey Mountain as a teenager, which put him on the road to conversion--a painful decision for both him and his family. The first time his parents saw him with his head shaved (a requirement at the Abbey), they cried. The first time he had to spend Christmas apart from them, he cried. Most of Tvetden's stories about monastic life, however, are happier ones. He has immense affection and reverence for the foibles and eccentricities of his brothers, such as Father Francis (who raised wild birds in his cell) and Brother Lawrence (who sold bad paintings to unsuspecting tourists). With stories like these, Tvetden gives the lie to the popular notion that monasteries are little patches of sweet bye-and-bye here on earth. Instead, he gives readers reasons to take joy in the flaws of creation. "If you've heard that monks are saints, you've been told a lie," Tvedten writes. "Like everyone else, we're sinners. You may even be scandalized by some of the things that happen in the monastery. If you are running away from yourself, you won't escape here." --Michael Joseph Gross

Gentle musings on four decades of monastic life, by fiction writer and Blue Cloud Abbey resident Tvedten. Readers of Kathleen Norris will appreciate this insider's view of the monastery in which her books are set. Tvedten weaves the teachings of St. Benedict with the ebb and flow of daily events at his busy monastery. The chapters are quite short, each exploring some component of life in the monastery, from daily prayer to the animal-shelter dogs deposited at Blue Cloud. One of the most interesting perspectives the book offers is a result of the fact that Tvedten was a monk before and after Vatican II and eloquently recounts the ways that his everyday routine changed forever after the Council: Talking was permitted at two meals a day, bedtimes became flexible, some books were no longer forbidden, among other changes (e.g., whereas at one time National Geographic magazine was carefully edited whenever women's breasts were exposed, today ``the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated is placed in our reading room intact''). Tvedten finds it incomprehensible that young people who never experienced the Church before Vatican II should have such a romantic desire to return to the old ways. He, in contrast, has embraced changes to the liturgy and to the Church. Tvedten seems bent on having readers understand that monks are just everyday folks who shop at Wal-Mart and grumble about their workload (he jokes that the brothers take vows of poverty, chastity, and ``discussion''). Blue Cloud Abbey comes off as a place of great spiritual vitality despite the dwindling number (and advancing age) of its monastic residents. ``Numbers may determine the amount of work a monastic community can do,'' Tvedten concedes, ``but they need not detract from the quality of the monastic life.'' Through retreats, houseguests, and seminars, the abbey opens its arms wide for the curious public. Tvedten's honesty and genuine humility keep this memoir from becoming another pat homage to the simple life. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.