The Monastic Heart: 50 Simple Practices
for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life
SISTER JOAN CHITTISTER
(HODDER & STOUGHTON, 160 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • tel 020 7799 4064

Sister Joan Chittister (pictured) joined the Benedictines in Erie, Pennsylvania, 70 years ago. She was 16, and the monastic tradition has nurtured her ever since.

During a busy and distinguished life as writer and lecturer, prioress and president of the US-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious, she found she longed to share the treasures of monastic tradition with the world, and decided to write this book “to turn monastic language into language people can understand in their own lives … to take every monastic concept there is and translate them to lay life”.

The Monastic Heart begins with grace and clarity, and at a crisp pace, summarising the traditional features of monastic life: cloister, choir, bells, “statio” (“being where you are supposed to be before you need to go there”), antiphons, processions, and so on.