If we’re wise we find a book like this one … with every hope we ever dreamed, and every word we remember of its insights, and all the joy and possibility it ever brought to all our wishes and all the promises we promised before these times to celebrate the rest of life. — From the Afterword by Joan Chittister

Mary Lou Kownacki, who died in 2023, was a Benedictine nun, a poet, a longtime activist in the Christian nonviolence movement, and blogger of “Old Monk’s Journal,” a 12-year collection of personal and spiritual writings. Her column was the best-loved feature of the Monasteries of the Heart website.

In this lovingly chosen selection of these reflections, some written near the end of her life, she offers timeless wisdom on faith, community, monastic life, and the things that truly matter.

In one of her entries, Kownacki writes:

I found this lovely quote by Terry Tempest Williams from her Ode to Slowness in which she dreams of making a living by watching light like Monet and Vermeer and being “a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind where each dialect is not only heard but understood.”

Isn’t that a beautiful profession —watching light and being a caretaker of silence. Someone should be paid to do it. Hmmm … Maybe that’s what monks are for.

As you know by now, I’m always trying to figure out who or what monks are. So I was grateful to come across this definition by Cistercian monk Dom André Louf:

What is a monk?

A monk is someone who every day asks:

“What is a monk?”

Now there’s a koan for you. God willing, I still have a few years left to figure it out. Of course, if I figure it out, I may no longer be a monk.

In a reflection called “Hold Fast to Beauty,” Kownacki asks what to do in times of despair and hopelessness:

The church knows all about the power of beauty. Amid the most horrific of human circumstances — betrayal, torture, mutilation, crucifixion, murder — we are given a beautiful story. Once a year the church presents us with the Easter story, awash with angels of light, sweet-scented perfume, an empty tomb, a garden of promise, and the resiliency of the human spirit to overcome any force of evil. …

Yes, it’s beauty that we must hold fast to. It’s beauty — in words, painting, music, nature, and in the stories of scripture — that can transform despair into confidence and helplessness into hope. It’s beauty that reveals our common humanity and gives us the courage to roll away the stone and rise anew each day.

One of her editors writes of these entries, “They chronicle a wise, outrageous woman’s insights into her professional and spiritual life, the evolution of monastic life, and ultimately, her own mortality and desire to live fully while undergoing treatment for a rare and aggressive cancer. Her stories and commentaries offer material for lectio divina that will last a lifetime.”

Robert Ellsberg is the publisher of Maryknoll’s Orbis Books.