Living Faith Day by Day: How the Sacred Rules of Monastic Traditions Can Help You Live Spiritually in the Modern World

Living Faith Day by Day: How the Sacred Rules of Monastic Traditions Can Help You Live Spiritually in the Modern World. By Debra K. Farrington. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group/ Penguin Putnam Inc., 2000. x + 278 pp. $13.95 (paper).

Who would have thought that Christian solitaries from the Egyptian desert of late antiquity would speak with such authority to us today? Their voices resound in lively translations by Thomas Merton (The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century, New York: New Directions, 1960) and Benedicta Ward (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, Oxford: A. R. Mowbray, 1981). They serve as faithful mentors to author Roberta Bondi and feature as the subject of her book To Love as God Loves (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). Debra Farrington seeks out these fathers and mothers from the desert for their counsel on a lived spirituality. Why? They were solitary seekers-and so are we. Their temptations may well be our own.

Farrington makes a tight analogy. Drawing on work done by Robert Wuthnow in After Heaven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), she observes that in the 1970s and 1980s many Americans left the churches of their childhood and sought to negotiate their own relationship with the sacred, "much as the desert hermits did in third- and fourth-century Egypt. These hermits, acting as their own spiritual guides, were easily led to excesses and misdirection." They found that it was difficult to seek God "alone and without help" (p. 9). Their successes and failures in the spiritual quest might helpfully guide us.

Though the wisdom of the desert mothers and fathers inspires Farrington's book, she moves from their tutelage to examine the practical wisdom from other monastic rules past and present: John Cassian, Colm Cille and the Celtic tradition, Taize, the rules of St. Benedict, St. Francis, and St. Clare, and the Jerusalem Community. She invites her readers to create their own rule of life, uniquely suited to the individual yet dependent on the nurture of the sacraments and the discernment of a worshiping community. From the living witness of these historical rules, she distills eight areas to which every rule should attend: seeking God, prayer, work, study, worship, care for the body, reaching out, and hospitality.

These areas form sections of the book, and Farrington discusses each in a series of short chapters meant not so much to be read at a single sitting as considered over time. Each of these shorter chapters concludes with a series of practices which direct the reader. Throughout Farrington draws on the witness of Scripture, the reflection of ancient and modern theologians, and her own experience to demonstrate the enduring value of spiritual practices. Practices like prayer, regular exercise, hospitality, and service enlist the body to mentor the soul and spirit.

Some might object that Farrington's project is a do-it-yourself monasticism-a contradiction in terms. Yet she taps a deep hunger for a sustained and meaningful spirituality. For solitary seekers she opens a door to community. And for those who cling to churches whose corporate worship often registers as lifeless and routine, she offers the important complement of disciplined private practices.

MARTHA ELLEN STORTZ

Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary The Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, California

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2002
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