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Monastic life

13 November 2023

8 min read

There’s much more to ‘monk mode’ than productivity hacks

In the heart of London Lianne Howard-Dace spent a year trying to live a simpler, slower life with others.

Lianne Howard-Dace

Lianne Howard-Dace is a writer and trainer, with a background in church and community fundraising.

A group of young people wearing white habits stand and laugh with each other.

Community of St Anselm members and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

CoSA.

Six years ago, I stood in white, full of nervous excitement, in front of a priest to make a vow. But it was a prayer robe, not a dress, and the priest happened to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was not getting married but joining a religious community.

The Community of St Anselm (CoSA) was founded by Archbishop Justin Welby in 2015, and I was amongst the third cohort of young Christians, aged 20-35, committing to spending a year together. Some of my fellow community members came from across the globe, entirely stepping away from their everyday lives. They spent the year living in Lambeth Palace, devoting their time to prayer, study and service. Others, like me, remained in our homes and jobs, whilst also trying to reorientate our lives around those three worthy pastimes.

By committing to a pattern of living, giving up on the idea that I was in control and limiting my choices I found much liberation.

In my experience, much of life - and the Christian faith in particular - is counter-intuitive. It would be a logical hypothesis to suppose that restricting your life in this way – agreeing to reorientate towards living by a set of rules and to fall into a structured way of being – would be stifling. And yet, like thousands before me, I found the complete opposite to be true.

Our culture upholds choice; we are told that the ability to choose is the ultimate expression of freedom. And whilst this may be true with big choices – where to live, who to live with, what work to do - our brains don’t cope as well with a lot of day-to-day options as we might be led to believe. In a 2000 experiment, psychologists observed that a supermarket display with 24 different types of jam generated a lot of interest but not many sales. In contrast, a display with just six different types of jam meant people were nearly ten times more likely to go on to make a purchase. If, like me, you’re prone to spending inordinate amounts of time deciding what to have for dinner, I’m sure you can relate.

Monks and nuns have understood this human tendency to get overwhelmed and expend energy on small decisions - suffering from what we now call decision fatigue - for many centuries. Whilst we may find the idea of a rigid schedule and a limited menu and wardrobe austere, not having to make those decisions every day can free up mental energy for other things. It’s the same reason why some tech entrepreneurs espouse the idea of wearing the same black turtleneck or grey t-shirt every day.

Whilst my own experience of religious life was not as extreme as those who make a life-long vow, I did find that in committing to a pattern of living, giving up on the idea that I was in control and limiting my choices I found much liberation. The chatter in my mind quietened a little. I became more comfortable in my own skin. I felt more and more like my truest self.

Attempting Cal Newport’s monk mode productivity hack by turning off our digital devices for the morning - or listening to a podcast from former Hindu monk, Jay Shetty - is as close to encountering monasticism as many of us get. CoSA draws on wisdom from several saints who themselves founded religious communities: St Benedict, St Francis and St Ignatius of Loyola. Whilst trying to emulate their way of life wasn’t always easy, I seized the opportunity to go deeper and threw myself into the intensity of the year.

As a teenager I was always late to morning tutorial, despite being able to see my secondary school from my house. During my time in the community, I struggled to shake this habit and would usually be rushing to Lambeth Palace each Monday evening, arriving after those who had travelled from as far as Oxford, Poole and Canterbury, despite only working 10 minutes down the road.

Those evenings were spent eating, talking and praying together and quickly became the highlight of each week for me. A time to put aside the day-to-day stresses and just try to be present with the other members of the community. We finished each gathering by praying compline, or night prayer, in the crypt at Lambeth Palace. In Celtic Christianity there is a concept of ‘thin spaces’, places where the boundary between heaven and earth seems a little more permeable. The cool, silver-lit crypt at Lambeth is one of those places for me; it seems to crackle with sacred potential.

We also took three retreats in an Abbey during the year, near a stretch of wild Cornish coastline. Precious time away from the bustle of the city. Away from the demands of life admin and meetings and untameable inboxes. The strapline - for want of a better word – of the Community of St Anselm is “A year in God’s time”, and I think that actually sums it up pretty well. We spent a year trying to live a simpler, slower life. A life marked by prayerfulness and the sufficiency of God, rather than the bigger, better, hustle culture pressures of modern living.

We went into these new relationships acknowledging that we wouldn’t agree on everything, but actively deciding to love each other anyway.

Only the most disciplined of us can maintain healthy habits, like daily prayer and reflection, on our own. It’s easier to go to the gym with a buddy. The upcoming book club meeting nudges us to keep reading. I think that’s what drew me to join CoSA; I knew I needed mutual accountability and support to sustain the spiritual disciplines I craved in my life.

In the community’s Rule of Life – the guidelines we each agreed to follow during the year – there is a line “We choose on another” and this has had a profound effect on me. The idea that we chose to put our shared life in the community ahead of everything else for that year has shaped me deeply. I have forged some amazing friendships through the community, but before we had even met each other, or learned to like each other, we chose to love each other in all our diversity and difference.

I do find that church is one of the places I am most likely to encounter people who are different to me – particularly intergenerationally – but even in finding a place of worship, there can be a tendency to seek out one that ticks as many of one’s personal preferences as possible. In the weeks leading up to joining the community I had been unsure what to expect. Having not grown up in a Christian family, would I feel left behind? Coming from a less-wordy type of church, would I get lost in the orders of service? Would everyone think I was too socially liberal? Would I find them too conversative?

The act of choosing one another put all of that aside. In stepping out of our everyday lives, we also stepped out of our respective echo chambers. We went into these new relationships acknowledging that we wouldn’t agree on everything, but actively deciding to love each other anyway. It was hard at times, but I came to see that whilst people had come to different conclusions on issues to me, they had done so no less thoughtfully. I came to see that we had much more in common than the things which society would say should separate us.

In smaller ways too, I believe it is possible to choose to love others around us. We can choose to recognise the humanity of the person who is rude to us on the bus.

I usually hate household chores, but some of my fondest memories from the year are chatting in the Lambeth Palace kitchen whilst putting away cutlery or singing together whilst washing up on retreat. By sharing the load, we learned ways to find joy in the smallest of things. And, by getting stuck into the mundane tasks of living and being together, we learned to see the humanity in each other.

It’s no coincidence that those in long-term religious life call each other sister and brother; it’s certainly the best analogy for community life I can think of. As a child I was excited for the arrival of my siblings before I had even met them; I knew that it was my role as big sister to love them unconditionally. I’m not sure, if we weren’t related, whether my path would have crossed with my sister and brother as adults. Yet, they are some of the most important people in my life.

In smaller ways too, I believe it is possible to choose to love others around us. We can choose to recognise the humanity of the person who is rude to us on the bus. We can choose not to assume the worst about someone’s post on social media. We can choose to share a kind word with a colleague, even if we don’t think they’ll ever return the favour. I’m not saying that it’s easy, or that I always manage it myself, but it can be done.

In community, on the days you have doubts about the things you are saying in morning or evening prayer, you know that your fellow members are lifting you up with their words, they are lending you a little of their belief. Learning to be held by others in that way is just one of the many gifts I took from my year in God’s time. I also learned that I do not need to be or do anything in particular to be loved by God or by others. That working out faith and belief with other people can reveal things you never would’ve found alone.

In September, the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the ninth cohort of CoSA in a commitment service at Lambeth Palace. Young people from as far away as Sri Lanka, Australia and Zimbabwe made the decision to spend the next year living differently, making time for God and each other in new ways. And I, along with 23 others from around the world, Zoomed into the service and made a new commitment too.

This year, for the first time, there is an opportunity for alumni of CoSA to become members of a dispersed community, the Chapter. Like third order Franciscans or Benedictine oblates, we will attempt to stay linked to the life of our community, alongside our everyday routines. I’m looking forward to being more intentional about re-engaging with the daily rhythms and lessons I learned in my year in community. We will have a less intensive programme of events to help us feel connected and will follow a simplified Rule of Life that focuses on learning from Jesus, seeking reconciliation and unity in the Church, serving with compassion and, of course, choosing one another. I’m excited to see what the year holds.

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Christmas survival

14 December 2023

7 min read

The shadow under the Christmas tree

Psychologist, Roger Bretherton, offers advice for those who find it challenging to spend time with the family at Christmas.
Part 1 of Unwrapping God This Christmas.

Roger Bretherton

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

A light green pine tree stands amidst dark green forest and its black shadows

Evgeni Evgeniev on Unsplash.

The Ghost of Christmas cranberries past

I am haunted by a Christmas ghost. But mine isn’t Jacob Marley weighed down with chains. It’s Nigella Lawson, and she comes carrying cranberries. One merry Yuletide many moons ago, I made the mistake of cooking, thanks to Nigella, what my family largely agree to be the best cranberry sauce ever. It was easy. I just followed the recipe, and a delicious sauce was born. Unfortunately, I have never been able to repeat the feat. Every year I return to the same recipe, in the same kitchen, with staggeringly different results. Results which my family, who have always been a bit too kind for their own good, insist on eating out of some perverted sense of duty. Over the last half decade, we have basically invented a new Christmas tradition: pop the crackers, don the hats, supress the gag-reflex while consuming the annual plate of silage masquerading as cranberry sauce.

Christmas is a time for ghosts, and not just the cranberry flavoured ones. It might be the empty chair at the table. It may be the memory of happier times. It could be a year of losses and regrets. But there is a darkness to Christmas that the fairy lights and tinsel can’t quite conceal. There’s a shadow under the Christmas tree that we’d rather not acknowledge.

For some people the most difficult thing about Christmas is the requirement to spend time with family. It is one of the few times in the year we run the gauntlet of being thrown together for an extended period of time in a confined space with a bunch of people who may not be our first choice of company. We may have a common biology, or a common history, but we may not have much in common beyond that.

Most Christmases are not haunted by the spooky ghosts that send a shiver down our spine. They’re more often harried by the mundane phantoms of broken promises, unsaid words, and the seething resentments that lie dormant in any group of people with a shared past. Sometimes there is one person we don’t want to be left alone with: the critical mother, the lying ex, the uncle who thinks the governments of the world are a front for a secret cabal of paedophile lizards. Whether they scare us, infuriate us, or bore us- we’d rather steer clear. It’s no wonder that for some of us, Christmas with family is not an appealing prospect.

To hear some people talk in January, you’d think they’d gone to purgatory for Christmas. All the festive trappings leave them feeling, um… trapped.

Trapped by the Christmas trappings

To hear some people describe the suffocating sense of confinement they feel when forced to spend time with their family is to be treated to a picture-perfect case study of learned helplessness. This psychological concept became famous following a series of distressing lab studies carried out in the mid-1960s. The experiments involved placing lab dogs in a cage with a wire mesh floor that could deliver painful electric shocks through their feet. For one set of animals the lid of the cage was open – as soon as the voltage was turned on, they leapt over the walls of the cage away from the pain. Other dogs received the same excruciating electrocution treatment, but for them the lid of the cage was closed – no matter how much they tried there was no escape.

After this initial training, the dogs were then placed in the cage again, but this time the lid was open for all of them. The dogs who’d been trained in the open-lid cage, leaped out and away from the electric shock as they had done previously. But – and this is the really distressing bit – the dogs who had previously experienced the inescapable pain of the closed-lid cage, failed to move a muscle. Even when they could escape, they didn’t. Freedom from electric shocks was only a short leap away, and yet they lay down and took the pain as if they could do nothing about it. It was a brutal experiment. Even those who conducted it have written about it since with a palpable air of embarrassment. But it birthed the concept of learned helplessness, the idea that we can be conditioned to act as if we can do nothing to change painful situations – even when we can.

It probably seems a bit much to equate Christmas at home with being electrocuted like an imprisoned dog. But to hear some people talk in January, you’d think they’d gone to purgatory for Christmas. All the festive trappings leave them feeling, um… trapped.

Even the most dysfunctional families fail to keep it up and lapse into moments of hilarity, peace, or occasionally even love.

Three thoughts to turn a drama into a crisis

The difference with human beings though, is that unlike dogs, our helplessness is not just conditioned, it is learned and maintained by the way we interpret the world around us. We are not trapped just by what happened in the past, but by how we view the present. There is an unholy trinity of thoughts that are guaranteed to turn the usual family drama into a crisis.

First, take it personally. Instead of thinking your family (like most families) can be a bit weird and anyone would struggle to get on with them at times, convince yourself that their eccentricities say something really hideous about you. Spending time with these people makes you a worthless, useless, failure – or whatever other creative insights your inner critic has gift-wrapped for you this season.

Second, make sure you ignore anything good. The thing about being human is that we can’t do anything perfectly. We’re not even very good at being bad. Even the most dysfunctional families fail to keep it up and lapse into moments of hilarity, peace, or occasionally even love. We can be quite good at ignoring these bits though.

Third, imagine it’s going to last forever. It’s true all good things come to an end. But to be honest, all bad things come to an end too. Our least favourite Christmas gatherings may feel interminable, but they only get worse if we keep telling ourselves, we’re stuck in the land that time forgot.

These are the three patterns of thought that, more than anything, induce a sense of brain-fogging ineffectiveness at the thought of joining the family at Christmas. If we find ourselves wishing we were somewhere else, or wishing everyone else was somewhere else, we’ve probably succumbed to the three attributions that make up learned helplessness. In more technical language, we see the challenges that confront us as personal, global, and stable.

And speaking of stables… (yes, I really did just do that).

When God got a family

Most contemporary scholars now agree that Jesus wasn’t born in a stable, at least not in the way we think of stables. It’s more likely that he and his family were accommodated in a single storey dwelling where the humans slept on a raised section and the animals on the ground. Apparently, it wasn’t even that unusual for a manger to make do as an improvised crib- a bit like those baby carriers that double up as a car seat.

But putting aside the stables and the mangers for a moment, what we do celebrate at Christmas is the mysterious moment in history when God became human. Not the moment Jesus appeared as a human-being-in-general floating ethereally above the global population, but the moment God became a specific human being. Developmental psychologist Donald Winnicott once said: there is no such thing as baby. He meant that to be born is to be thrown into a context we did not choose for ourselves. We emerge into the world as the product of a complex biological and social network, in which we are embedded, and without which we would not survive. The family that is currently doing our head in, is the family without whom we would not have a head in the first place. So, when we sing sweet carols to the baby Jesus, we’re actually celebrating the moment God got a family.

Even more than that, to have any family is to have, specifically, your family. To be human is to be specified. You are this person, in this body, in this place, at this time, in this culture, in this family… this Christmas. There is no other You available other than this. When learned helplessness gets the better of us, we can succumb to the illusion that we would have been better if we’d emerged from some other family, any other family. We can be so lost in the dream of the family we don’t have that we fail to see the family we do. And in doing so, we deprive ourselves of the freedom and triumph that come when skilful adults respond to challenging situations.

So, this Christmas how about trying on a few new beliefs for size? You belong to your family, but they don’t define you. They may be your history, but they don’t have to be your destiny. Your time with them won’t last forever, but you may regret it if you don’t make the most of it while it lasts. They may be painful, but there are still moments of goodness to be found in their company.

In part two, we’ll think about just what those good things might be.