A Monk's Alphabet: Moments of Stillness in a Turning World

Monastic literature has inspired and challenged the world outside the cloister ever since monks started putting their thoughts on paper well over fifteen hundred years ago. With his Monk's Alphabet, Father Jeremy Driscoll brings the genre into the twenty-first century, offering a collection of compact and thought-provoking essays on life, faith, and the world around us from the perspective of someone whose existence is structured around the unfolding of the interior life.

The 187 meditations are arranged by short titles in alphabetical order to emphasize that the reader can approach them in random fashion, without preconceived ideas, to be surprised by where they lead the heart and mind.

"If I am a monk," Father Jeremy says, "that means also that I am just a man, connected with all other men and women in my time . . . and in other times. I am searching, like we all do. I struggle to believe, like we all do. Life is lovely, life is hard—this is true for me like it is for us all. That is why I think to share my alphabet. Not because monks are different and so worth a visit to see them in a zoo, but because my monastic life has given me the space to think about things that we all care about and all have to face."Jeremy Driscoll