Benedictine Options: Learning to Live from the Sons and… (2024)

This is an important book that needed to be written. It is the antithesis to the one-sided premise of The Benedict Option. It’s also a hospitable place for people (like me) who enjoy abstract, philosophical thinking made less airy by well-reasoned metaphor. I found this book's ideas amiable to hang out with— listening, reflecting, making connections, and stretching my intellect.

In my opinion no book should be expected to please everyone, and this one won't. This is not an easy read, and it doesn’t provide formulaic answers to life’s problems. The author reminds us that rigid formulas are a problem when humans attempt to use them to define THE RIGHT WAY for all humans to live.

Intellectually, Patrick Henry’s writing is elegant and exceptionally satisfying. It coheres seamlessly, gracefully. That's an accomplishment. I rarely experience the pleasure of gliding through a series of complex ideas--I generally have to work to grasp them. But when reading this book, I felt like I was being carried from thought to thought by a fair breeze. It felt like Benedictine hospitality in action. I appreciated not having to struggle against a head wind (using the sailing metaphor, I didn't have to keep adjusting my sails to tack this way and that) to get where the author wanted me to arrive.

In this voice, I sensed an authentic humility which I rarely find in academic writing. I tend to get rigid and defensive inside when I feel like I’m being preached at or talked down to by a white male. But this is a book I will reread and reflect on. I will use Patrick Henry’s words as a springboard for deeper exploration. I’ll choose to spend time with this new-friend of a book because it resonates with me, and it’s important to me—to my own writing, creative process, and to opening my heart wider to living a Benedictine way of life.

YOU PROBABLY WILL NOT LIKE THIS BOOK IF: abstract concepts and poetic metaphors are not your thing; you have never met a Benedictine monastic and know nothing at all about Benedictine spirituality (there are other books that will serve better as an entrance into your exploration--I recommend How to Live by Judith Valente and Staying Put, Listening Well, Being Changed By God: Benedictine promises for everyday people by Rachel M. Srubas); you have read The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher and you're completely convinced he is perfectly right, leaving no room in your already-made-up mind for discussion about where Dreher might be misguided or under-informed about the complex history of Benedict, Scholastica, and their 15 centuries of followers.

YOU PROBABLY WILL LIKE THIS BOOK IF: you are interested in contemplating the experimental, rhythmical, communal, ecumenical, and narrational patterns of the Benedictine charism; you believe that spirituality is more beautiful and meaningful when we use it as a kaleidoscope, not a formula; and/or you are a fan of the writings of Kathleen Norris and/or Thomas Merton.

For the audience for whom it was written, Benedictine Options is an important, delightful book.

A few years, Rod Dreher published his bestselling book The Benedict Option and people were introduced to a new way of living. While there is much to commend that book, there are some issues with it. First, Rod Dreher is not a Benedictine…and second he is much more closed minded than others would want to be.

Patrick Henry writes a corrective response to Dreher’s book in Benedictine Options by writing from inside the Benedictine community. He writes to explain how Dreher misunderstand the Benedictine understanding. Whereas Dreher wants people to retreat from the world, St. Benedict sought to engage the world and the Benedictine tradition is very much looking outward, not inward.

Dreher wants people to adopt a pseudo-monastic lifestyle and there is much that can be drawn on from the tradition. Henry points us beyond this to see the possibilities that the Benedictine tradition has to engage the world. Dreher’s pessimistic view comes through as the world is turning in a “cold, dark and dead” place. Henry says that this is not the option and the Benedictines are uniquely placed to help the world become a living and colorful place.

For those on the right, Dreher’s work is going to resound more closely to their own personally held beliefs while they will be suspicious of Henry’s book. Those on the left will truly love Henry’s work and be suspicious of Dreher’s work. For those in the middle, there is much to learn from both books and they should probably be read in tandem. For my own self, as much as I appreciated Dreher’s work, I believe that Henry is much closer to the tradition that St. Benedict might have us follow.

Henry’s work is easy to read and is a good introduction to the discussion. It is an easy read that leaves the reader mulling over his points.

I highly recommend this book for those who are looking to the answers to life.

Grade: A

While ostensibly a reply to Rod Dreher's depressing "The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation", the panoply of Benedictine monastic life (and its adherents) is worth reading again and again.

Having read this (and probably reading parts of it over and over) helped me see why I so loved the women who taught at my Benedictine sponsored college...almost 60 years later, my two years under their tutelage are still the most formative years of my life. Now I know better why that is.

I will certainly be reading Sister Jeremy Hall, OSB's and Godfrey Diekmann, OSB's writings...the tidbits the appear in this book make them worth my time to search out and carefully read.

There were a lot of lovely and helpful nuggets in this book about what this (Benedictine) monastic life can teach the rest of us (see my notes below). But I have two critiques - one, it seemed a bit disjointed to me and two, throughout the book he contrasts it to Rod Dreher's The Benedictine Option. This book was clearly written in part as a rebuttal to Dreher. I agree with Henry's premise, but I would have found it preferable if he had written one chapter as a rebuttal, and then just articulated his own thesis.

My notes and quotes:

The Benedictine Rule: a context in which a life can grow. It codifies and regulates an experimental way of life - a life that is always open to new options.

A question asked in The Brothers Karamazov: Is cynicism the only alternative to madness in a world so manifestly unjust?

The God who demands justice can be found only through a disciplined life of repentance and hospitality.

MLK denies that he and his followers are the creators of tension: We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. Patience does not breed complacency; knowing that things take time is no excuse for telling victims of injustice to wait to press their case.

In the monastic tradition, repentance fuses with humility to create an engine for social change, a spirituality for the long haul…it is here that monasticism may have its most important message for today’s church.

Benedict conceived his monastery as a lay community. Clericalism bedevils all the churches…

The abbot represents Christ in the monastery: ruler and servant, the one whose authority as ruler derives from identity and action as servant, the one who was made perfect through obedience, who emptied himself.

Praying the Psalms helps us learn that there are varieties of religious obedience: the confident, the despairing, the joyful, the sorrowing, the content, the angry, the king, the commoner…

Hospitality: hosts must know who they are before they can be good hosts, and they come to know who they are only when they extend hospitality.

You do not wait to live the Christian life until you have decided what it is.

Buddhism and Benedictine: Practice is the beginning, practice is the middle, practice is the end of living and knowing.

Saint John Henry Newman: “to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

To seek God after the monastic manner of life is truly to seek; it’s not just digging around in what you already know.

Discipline is the precondition for spontaneity.

Discernment is indicative of slowness, tentativeness, and collaboration, as opposed to speed and efficiency, absoluteness, competition, and control.

Real community is a gift, not something constructed.

True mystery is a reality that is simply too deep for us to master. It is to be embraced and loved and searched ever deeper without ever exhausting it.