Sister Edith OSB who blogs at Monastic Musings and who is a Professor of Sociology at the College of St Scholastica in Duluth, was selected to be a featured speaker at the recent meeting of the American Benedictine Academy where it sounds like they talked about very serious structural aspects of this 1,500 year old religious order.
My talk on Saturday afternoon focused on Learning to Love as the central vocation of Christians - the trademark by which Jesus says his followers will be known. Vatican II renewed our understanding of the vocation of marriage as a path to holiness, as is monastic life, both founded on the command to love one another.
Sociologists have spent decades studying what builds up the love in a marriage, and what tears it down, and their findings might be helpful to monastic communities. The first idea was realizing that there are various types of love - combinations of intimacy (getting to know you), passion (desiring to be with you), and commitment (willing to stay with you), exploring how these types of love might look in the monastery.
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John Gottman's research focuses on different styles of disagreement in marriage.
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How Well Do You Know Your Partner - Self-questionnaire to reveal how well we know the hopes and struggles of those around us in the monastery? [snip] Read all from Monastic Musings
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