A Good Life: Benedict's Guide to Everyday Joy

"There is no shortage of good days," writes Annie Dillard. "It is good lives that are hard to come by." Reflecting on what makes a "good life," Robert Benson offers a warmhearted, humorous guide to enriching our lives with the wisdom of Benedict, a 6th century monk. Each chapter is shaped around a Benedictine principle: prayer, rest, community, and work, and reveals the brilliant and infinitely practical ways that Benedictine spirituality can shape our lives today. Benson is honest and wise, sharing his own failings and the constant tension that he feels between the demands of the temporal and the spiritual. For anyone who feels caught in a web of conflicting priorities, or who finds the pace of modern life more draining than fulfilling, A Good Life will come as a welcome treat for the soul.

Robert Benson writes and speaks on living a more contemplative and prayerful life in a modern world, about the search for and the discovery of the sacred in the midst of our everyday lives. An alumnus of the Academy for Spiritual Formation, he is also a member of the Friends of Silence and of the Poor, an ecumenical order of lay people. Robert is the author of many books including In Constant Prayer, A Good Life: Benedict's Guide to Everyday Joy, and A Good Neighbor: Benedict's Guide to Community.