Carol Bonomo

Artist, crafter, diarist, recovering alcoholic, Episcopal, Catholic, spiritual gypsy. These are some of the ways that Carol Bonomo has described herself. Like many of her generation, she had trouble finding a spiritual home. "I'm one of those 'seekers' who doesn't know what she's looking for, and wouldn't recognize an answer to the meaning of life if I tripped on it in the dark," she says.

Her spiritual adventures included becoming a Benedictine oblate--a lay person vowing to live according to the sixth century Rule of St. Benedict. In "The Abbey Up The Hill" Bonomo wrote a month-by-month journal on her first year as an oblate. The book won "Best Spiritual Book of the Year" from the San Diego Book Awards in 2002. She followed this with "Humble Pie", a personal understanding of the 12 steps of humility as laid out by St. Benedict in his Rule. She has also written "My Soul To Keep: Tools For Staying in a Changing Church".

Bonomo lives in southern California with her husband, cockatiel and ukulele collection, and has just finished writing the ending to the Abbey Up The Hill.