What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Be: A Monk and a Journalist Reflect on Living & Dying, Purpose & Prayer, Forgiveness & Friendship
The spiritual seeker's guide to living with authenticity and integrity in troubled times. This book is a dialogue between two spiritual seekers--one a Trappist monk and the other a married professional woman. It is two people stuttering to articulate life's universal questions from diverse contexts and perspectives. Brother Paul writes as one steeped in silence and the daily rhythms of the ancient prayer practices of monasticism. Judith Valente writes as a professional woman attempting to bring a sense of prayer and contemplation to a scattered life in the secular world. Valente uses the story of Brother Paul's interview for a PBS documentary as a jumping-off point: When asked the purpose of the Trappist life in the modern world, he said that it is to show you don't need a purpose. The purpose of life, he said, is life. You're to live your life. How to Be offers a window into two people living their lives on purpose (or not) and struggling to come to terms with the big issues everyone faces: faith, mortality, mystery, prayer, and work. It is a book that provides insight and inspiration for those walking the spiritual path--particularly for those interested in the contemplative path.
Audio CD
Published November 9, 2021
25 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
Judith Valente
19 books39 followersJudith Valente is an award-winning author, poet, and journalist. She is a sought-after speaker and retreat leader on living a more contemplative life, discovering inner wisdom through poetry, and finding meaning in your work. She is a lay associate of the Benedictine monastery Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, KS, which is the subject of her award-winning 2013 memoir, "Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith," chosen by Religion Newswriters Association as one of the three best spirituality books of that year.
Her new book "How to Be: A Monk & a Journalist Reflect on Living & Dying, Purpose & Prayer, Forgiveness & Friendship" is a dialogue between two spiritual seekers exploring life'scomplex questions. Her co-author is Brother Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk of the famous Abbey of Gethsemani who knew the great spirituality author, Thomas Merton.
Her 2018 book, "How to Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community" has been used by book group members throughout the world seeking to live a more contemplative life in the secular world. She is also co-author with Brother Paul Quenon of "The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked and Overwhelmed," winner of a 2013 Catholic Press Association Award.
She is a former on-air correspondent who covered faith and values for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on national PBS-TV. She also worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and was twice a finalist for the Pulizter Prize in journalism. She has won numerous broadcast awards, including two Edward R, Murrow Awards, arising from her work as senior correspondent and investigative reporter for the NPR affiliate, GLT Radio. She also was a correspondent for Chicago Public Radio. She currently contributes articles to National Catholic Reporter and U.S. Catholic magazine.
Ms. Valente is also a poet whose poetry chapbook, "Inventing An Alphabet," was chosen by Mary Oliver for the 2005 national Aldrich Poetry Prize. Her second collection, "Discovering Moons," was published in 2009.
Ms. Valente holds a B.A in English and classical languages from St. Peter's University in Jersey City, NJ, and an MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is married to former Illinois Judge Charles Reynard, also a poet, with whom she co-edited the 2005 anthology, "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul," winner of an Eric Hoffer Book citation. The couple operates an alfalfa farm in central Illinois, where Judith is a member of the Grand Prairie Master Naturalists, a group that cares for the Illinois prairie. She is also on the board of the International Thomas Merton Society.
Her new book "How to Be: A Monk & a Journalist Reflect on Living & Dying, Purpose & Prayer, Forgiveness & Friendship" is a dialogue between two spiritual seekers exploring life'scomplex questions. Her co-author is Brother Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk of the famous Abbey of Gethsemani who knew the great spirituality author, Thomas Merton.
Her 2018 book, "How to Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community" has been used by book group members throughout the world seeking to live a more contemplative life in the secular world. She is also co-author with Brother Paul Quenon of "The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked and Overwhelmed," winner of a 2013 Catholic Press Association Award.
She is a former on-air correspondent who covered faith and values for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on national PBS-TV. She also worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and was twice a finalist for the Pulizter Prize in journalism. She has won numerous broadcast awards, including two Edward R, Murrow Awards, arising from her work as senior correspondent and investigative reporter for the NPR affiliate, GLT Radio. She also was a correspondent for Chicago Public Radio. She currently contributes articles to National Catholic Reporter and U.S. Catholic magazine.
Ms. Valente is also a poet whose poetry chapbook, "Inventing An Alphabet," was chosen by Mary Oliver for the 2005 national Aldrich Poetry Prize. Her second collection, "Discovering Moons," was published in 2009.
Ms. Valente holds a B.A in English and classical languages from St. Peter's University in Jersey City, NJ, and an MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is married to former Illinois Judge Charles Reynard, also a poet, with whom she co-edited the 2005 anthology, "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul," winner of an Eric Hoffer Book citation. The couple operates an alfalfa farm in central Illinois, where Judith is a member of the Grand Prairie Master Naturalists, a group that cares for the Illinois prairie. She is also on the board of the International Thomas Merton Society.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 12, 2021
An old-fashioned art (letter writing) meets two grace-ful practitioners
Aristotle's observation about friendship (perfect friendship is “made up of men [sic] who are good and alike in virtue; for each alike wishes well to each other… they are good in themselves” (1156b 7–9).) came to mind more than once as I read these letters. Both the journalist and the monk, the woman and the man, are mature spiritual thinkers who nevertheless have doubts and struggles. They sometimes uphold one another and occasionally gently challenge each other. Their conversations about meaning, life and death would make good material for daily spiritual practice. I know I will return to this book as I continue to tread a path that is shorter going forward than it is behind me. Such a rare thing, a precious thing, is the love of friends for each other, especially friends of different genders and ages. What they have in common is a love for Thomas Merton and Gethsemene monastery. This origin of their friendship explains some of why they are "alike in virtue." Judith, the journalist, brings in the many demands of the secular world, while Paul, the monk, accepts this reality while giving his distance from it as a gift, allowing both correspondents to examine any subject from multiple angles. I thought often that these two exemplify the best of Jean LeClerq's lovely book title: "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God." And you won't find a better example of philia, the love of friends, from C. S. Lewis' classic work The Four Loves.
Aristotle's observation about friendship (perfect friendship is “made up of men [sic] who are good and alike in virtue; for each alike wishes well to each other… they are good in themselves” (1156b 7–9).) came to mind more than once as I read these letters. Both the journalist and the monk, the woman and the man, are mature spiritual thinkers who nevertheless have doubts and struggles. They sometimes uphold one another and occasionally gently challenge each other. Their conversations about meaning, life and death would make good material for daily spiritual practice. I know I will return to this book as I continue to tread a path that is shorter going forward than it is behind me. Such a rare thing, a precious thing, is the love of friends for each other, especially friends of different genders and ages. What they have in common is a love for Thomas Merton and Gethsemene monastery. This origin of their friendship explains some of why they are "alike in virtue." Judith, the journalist, brings in the many demands of the secular world, while Paul, the monk, accepts this reality while giving his distance from it as a gift, allowing both correspondents to examine any subject from multiple angles. I thought often that these two exemplify the best of Jean LeClerq's lovely book title: "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God." And you won't find a better example of philia, the love of friends, from C. S. Lewis' classic work The Four Loves.
April 6, 2022
In this "storied-how-to" book, authors Judith Valente and Paul Quenon, OCSO exchange heart-warming letters that reveal how platonic, kindred-spirit relationships can be magnifiers of spirit, enlightening and intensifying our ideal selves.
Storied-how-to books do not perpetuate toxic optimism or reinforce the harmful delusion that we can and ought to control our lives. Instead, a storied-how-to is “a gentle, open invitation, full of hospitable storytelling that allows us to find ourselves in its pages. As we read…we are challenged to reflect on our own fears and to imagine a way to a better self, a better story” (Kathleen Norris, in her forward to How Not To Be Afraid by Gareth Higgins).
How To Be is a testimony to the old-fashioned act of letter writing as a way to facilitate meaningful, heart-to-heart connection and understanding. It approach the question, "What does it mean not just to survive, but truly live?" by bringing the certainty of death to our attention. Knowing death is before us, these authors remind us, is key to illuminating the value of life.
Within these pages are good stories of hope and resilience, not devastating stories of annihilation and despair. These are stories in which, as Gareth Higgins writes in How Not To Be Afraid, “boundless hope and proportionate lament exist alongside finite trouble.”
I offer these quotes from the book, hoping they will inspire you to read these correspondences for insights into the complex joyful-sorrowful reality of being human, and assurances that friendship helps us survive our challenges and traumas:
Friendship … is a face-to-face relationship… I am interested in you for your own sake and you are interested in me for my own sake…[friendship is]a pure, disinterested desire that others be who they are meant to be, and an abiding love even if they fail.
In this too-often cruel and fractured world, being kind represents quite a big accomplishment.
Suffering can, at best, open us to empathy, to awareness, and to participation in the vast suffering of countless others in the world.
Although I continue to hope, I no longer have a clear image of what I am hoping for.
We exist in a triune vessel of past, present, and future. All is simultaneous.
I highly recommend this book to people who are contemplative readers who find nurture and sustenance in the acts of reading and writing, and to those who are interested in exploring letter-writing as a way to deepen a friendship.
Storied-how-to books do not perpetuate toxic optimism or reinforce the harmful delusion that we can and ought to control our lives. Instead, a storied-how-to is “a gentle, open invitation, full of hospitable storytelling that allows us to find ourselves in its pages. As we read…we are challenged to reflect on our own fears and to imagine a way to a better self, a better story” (Kathleen Norris, in her forward to How Not To Be Afraid by Gareth Higgins).
How To Be is a testimony to the old-fashioned act of letter writing as a way to facilitate meaningful, heart-to-heart connection and understanding. It approach the question, "What does it mean not just to survive, but truly live?" by bringing the certainty of death to our attention. Knowing death is before us, these authors remind us, is key to illuminating the value of life.
Within these pages are good stories of hope and resilience, not devastating stories of annihilation and despair. These are stories in which, as Gareth Higgins writes in How Not To Be Afraid, “boundless hope and proportionate lament exist alongside finite trouble.”
I offer these quotes from the book, hoping they will inspire you to read these correspondences for insights into the complex joyful-sorrowful reality of being human, and assurances that friendship helps us survive our challenges and traumas:
Friendship … is a face-to-face relationship… I am interested in you for your own sake and you are interested in me for my own sake…[friendship is]a pure, disinterested desire that others be who they are meant to be, and an abiding love even if they fail.
In this too-often cruel and fractured world, being kind represents quite a big accomplishment.
Suffering can, at best, open us to empathy, to awareness, and to participation in the vast suffering of countless others in the world.
Although I continue to hope, I no longer have a clear image of what I am hoping for.
We exist in a triune vessel of past, present, and future. All is simultaneous.
I highly recommend this book to people who are contemplative readers who find nurture and sustenance in the acts of reading and writing, and to those who are interested in exploring letter-writing as a way to deepen a friendship.
May 6, 2022
Lots of wisdom packed into these letters.
January 19, 2022
The wonderful art of letter writing between two amazing people, a journalist, and a Trappist monk.
Lovely words of wisdom in poetry and prose. Insight and wisdom about living, dying, purpose, and prayer, forgiveness, and friendship.
A precious book I added to my personal book shelf.
Lovely words of wisdom in poetry and prose. Insight and wisdom about living, dying, purpose, and prayer, forgiveness, and friendship.
A precious book I added to my personal book shelf.
January 11, 2022
When the pandemic outlasted its early distractions, like making sourdough bread and learning guitar, more basic questions forced themselves to the surface. These questions are succinctly summarized in the title of a book by Judith Valente and Paul Quenon –How to Be.
The epistolary work shows two friends confronting the large questions that Emily Dickinson once noted “nibble at the soul”--questions that the routines and preoccupations of ordinary life allowed most of us to keep at bay. In How to Be, Valente, a journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Brother Paul Quenon, a poet and member of a Trappist Abbey, exchange ideas, doubts, fears and joyful discoveries in an exchange of letters over the course of several years.
Begun before the arrival of the virus, the letter writing exercise deepened through the life changing months of the pandemic. Questions of faith, friendship and the meaning of love are among the issues the writers examine. The epistolary method allows for a thoughtful exchange. There are no pat answers here.
If you have cleaned out all of your closets, organized your memorabilia and given up on sourdough bread, it may be time to really get something done. In How to Be, Valente and Quenon demonstrate that looking at ourselves and life’s thorny questions can be nourishing, exhilarating and satisfying beyond measure.
The epistolary work shows two friends confronting the large questions that Emily Dickinson once noted “nibble at the soul”--questions that the routines and preoccupations of ordinary life allowed most of us to keep at bay. In How to Be, Valente, a journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Brother Paul Quenon, a poet and member of a Trappist Abbey, exchange ideas, doubts, fears and joyful discoveries in an exchange of letters over the course of several years.
Begun before the arrival of the virus, the letter writing exercise deepened through the life changing months of the pandemic. Questions of faith, friendship and the meaning of love are among the issues the writers examine. The epistolary method allows for a thoughtful exchange. There are no pat answers here.
If you have cleaned out all of your closets, organized your memorabilia and given up on sourdough bread, it may be time to really get something done. In How to Be, Valente and Quenon demonstrate that looking at ourselves and life’s thorny questions can be nourishing, exhilarating and satisfying beyond measure.
July 6, 2022
I was rather slow to pick up this book, considering that I motored through the Valente's other two books in the spring, and I'm not entirely sure why. So, I decided a couple of weeks ago to pick it up and I'm glad I did. This is written in the form of letters between Valente and Paul Quinon, a monk at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. They are set just before the outbreak of the pandemic and in the early stages, and reflect on life, vocation and so much more.
The letters are really quite lovely. They show great vulnerability and honesty and really resonated with much of my own experience over the last few years. I enjoyed their reflection and the genuine kindness in the correspondance. They take up each of the writer's daily struggles and reflect, really reflect on what those struggles mean. And I find that an irresistible combination.
I read these slowly, I'll note. I think that really is the best way. Read a couple at a time and take time to reflect on how it fits your life. You won't regret it .
The letters are really quite lovely. They show great vulnerability and honesty and really resonated with much of my own experience over the last few years. I enjoyed their reflection and the genuine kindness in the correspondance. They take up each of the writer's daily struggles and reflect, really reflect on what those struggles mean. And I find that an irresistible combination.
I read these slowly, I'll note. I think that really is the best way. Read a couple at a time and take time to reflect on how it fits your life. You won't regret it .
January 24, 2024
This is a beautiful book that I used as devotional reading during my holiday. It is a gentle, thoughtful exploration of many different aspects of the spiritual life, told by means of a correspondence between journalist and writer Judith Valente and Brother Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Brother Paul draws from the writings of Thomas Merton, who was his novice master and spiritual director a the abbey.
The book lends itself to a slow, meditative read since it is divided into many short sections and, as a correspondence, can be read simply one letter at a time.
This is a great book for anyone on a spiritual journey.
The book lends itself to a slow, meditative read since it is divided into many short sections and, as a correspondence, can be read simply one letter at a time.
This is a great book for anyone on a spiritual journey.
December 21, 2021
This book is “a small taste of eternity” as Judith and Br. Paul invite us into stories of ancient wisdom lived in contemporary contexts. Modeled through letter writing and spiritual friendship, they tackle some of the biggest questions: change and stability, humility and purpose, time and eternity, life and the afterlife. This book preserves ageless monastic wisdom as monasticism itself is evolving before our eyes. People of all spiritual backgrounds and across generations will find insight on how to live through challenging times, personally and societally, in these pages.
September 16, 2022
I love the epistolary format, but have never read one like this on spiritual issues. An unlikely pair, a monk and a journalist, befriended each other and over time shared their thoughts on many topics: work, living and dying, friendship, cultivating silence, to name just a few.
Each topic is only a few pages long, but rich with insights, historical references, and lived experiences. Nothing preachy there. And at the end, there are brief summaries and then questions to challenge the reader’s own experience.
Each topic is only a few pages long, but rich with insights, historical references, and lived experiences. Nothing preachy there. And at the end, there are brief summaries and then questions to challenge the reader’s own experience.
November 21, 2024
This book is correspondence between a journalist and a Trappist monk. Brother Paul has been a Trappist monk since 1958. Weighty matters are discussed via exchange of letters. This is the kind of book where you want to dog ear pages and underline passages. Paul's many years of quiet and prayer bring forth heady ideas. I also see what an ordinary person he is and strives to be only that. The book is a fairly quick read and provides much food for thought.
October 22, 2024
I love letters. This book is a series of letters between a Judith Valente, a writer/Benedictine oblate, and Brother Paul, a Trappist monk. Both have great wisdom, and I enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversation. It's presented topically, not chronologically, which was a little different, but I'm sure there was a reason for it.
February 4, 2025
There’s a box set of with the author’s how to be and how to live titles. This one is better because of the interesting letter correspondence with a monk. Wish she mentioned even as a caveat at the beginning of the unusual relationship of a woman with a celibate monk for many years. I wouldn’t recommend this title to folks who aren’t solid in their faith as they might get confused.
March 12, 2022
This is a wonderful collection of letters between two spiritual friends. In their letters they discuss life, purpose, change, loss, death, eternity, prayer, and friendship. A beautiful book meant to be read slowly and savored.
February 25, 2024
This book was a balm to my frazzled soul. Beyond the beautifully written words, the authors' insights about life truly moved me to relook how I'm making use of this short existence on this side of eternity. Such a blessing to have stumbled upon this read!
April 24, 2022
Pleasant, thoughtful. Slow-paced as letter-writing should be.
October 12, 2023
Nice, but not one I would reread or dwell on.
November 26, 2023
A needed remind about many things. Impermanence and awareness, among others.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews