cover image The Orchards of Perseverance: Conversations with Trappist Monks about God, Their Lives, and the World

The Orchards of Perseverance: Conversations with Trappist Monks about God, Their Lives, and the World

David D. Perata. St. Therese's Press, $17.95 (201pp) ISBN 978-0-9672135-0-7

Perata first visited New Clairvaux Abbey, a Trappist monastery in California, as a boy more than 30 years ago and has returned almost every year since. His interviews with the monks in this cloistered community--many of whom watched him grow up--are direct and genuine, as one friend talking to another. Perata chooses an oral history format and wisely preserves a sense of each speaker's personal idiom, which lends veracity to the text, while 86 photos give faces to the voices. The monks discuss their original decisions to enter a cloistered community and the spiritual journey each has taken while there. Father Timothy, as well as many of the other monks, stresses that ""we're just ordinary people"" who have been ""blessed with a vocation."" Some, such as Brother Adam, humorously find God in the circumstances of daily life, even to the point of saying, ""Aw, Deo gratias"" instead of cussing. Many stress that spiritual growth within a monastery always happens within community, or as Brother John calls it, ""bumping into each other continuously throughout the day."" These men, speaking in simple words, make abstract and mystical concepts accessible to a wide audience. Perata's winning book demonstrates an extraordinary spirituality in the monks' ""ordinary"" lives. (Jan.)