In June of 1985, a couple of weeks after my high school graduation, a friend dropped by my house with a cassette tape of the new R.E.M. album, “Fables of the Reconstruction.”  

It was a still, humid afternoon, much like the weather we’ve had recently, when the mugginess of any given day can erupt into a thunderstorm. It was the perfect Southern afternoon to listen to R.E.M.’s record, which brims with references to Southern folklore, religion and mythology. It’s one of the most mystical albums this very special Georgia band ever made. 

Much of the record’s allure owes to its sense of storytelling and character development. Many of the songs are about real people in and around Athens, Georgia, including characters such as Old Man Kensey and Wendell Gee. One of the most fascinating characters on Fables, as fans refer to the album, isn’t named, but the song about him is one of the band’s best. 

Brivs Mekis was an eccentric Athens man, rumored to be schizophrenic, who lived a solitary life on Meigs Street in a house that he divided completely in two. Each side was furnished differently, decorated differently, and arranged as though two different people lived on either side. Each side was rumored to have its own pets. Mekis lived in whatever side of the house that suited him at any given time. When he died, and his house was being emptied on both sides, cleaners found a trove of books Mekis had published through the vanity press. The title of the book was “Life: How to Live.”  In the song about Mekis, “Life and How to Live It,” R.E.M. doesn’t gape or poke fun. Instead, in that uniquely Southern way, the band seems to respect Mekis’ eccentricity. 

The core of The Rule 

When the Trappist Monks of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery first arrived in Georgia after leaving their mother house in Kentucky, many people did gape. Catholics in Georgia were a rarity, let alone monks. Though locals eventually welcomed the monks, and even assisted in building their beautiful church, there was an initial skepticism, even suspicion. 

Fittingly, the monks arrived in Georgia on March 21, 1944, St. Benedict’s Day. Benedict had also written a book about how life might be lived, though his text became a cornerstone of Western Monasticism and—one might argue—Western civilization. 

St. Benedict of Nursia’s Rule dates to the early sixth century, a time when the composition of similar guidebooks about living in community was common. Both St. Basil and St. Augustine had written Rules. Yet no guide for monastic life has endured quite like Benedict’s.  

At its core, the Rule is a key to living life in communion with God and with others while also nurturing a sense of personal vocation. The Rule depends upon some simple principles: live a life of peace, live a life with empathy and understanding for others, and live a life in which prayer and work—Ora et Labora—are constantly in union. 

A statue of St. Benedict is seen outside the Haverty Center at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. The saint’s Rule dates to the early sixth century, a time when the composition of similar guidebooks about living in community was common.

The Rule contains 73 short chapters, some only a paragraph or two, devoted to both practical matters and ideals. That the book is grounded in human reality is one reason that the Rule flourished in the Middle Ages. The Medieval mind was fascinated with the concept of community and social order, and it’s in the Middle Ages that we really begin to see the roots of human fellowship and relationships as we understand them today. The two great Western traditions of Medieval Europe—the University and the Monastery—are still thriving today. 

Like most human endeavors, however, Monasticism needed reform in the Middle Ages. While many different monastic communities use the Benedictine Rule as a guide, the founding of the Cistercian order in 1098 intended to return to a strict observance of the Rule. In doing so, the Cistercians also broadened the Rule’s valuation of silence, so that community life was balanced by a greater commitment to solitary life. This approach underscored the fundamental role God plays in the life of both the individual and the self among others. It encouraged a greater understanding of one’s most authentic self in communion with God, both in solitude and in action with the community. 

By 1664, the Cistercian Order itself was reformed at the Abbey of La Trappe in France. The monks began calling themselves “Trappists,” and by 1902 they adopted the formal name Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. The first American Trappist Monastery was founded in Kentucky in 1849. From this monastery came the monks who founded the monastery outside of Conyers, which remains a historical, cultural and religious treasure for the Archdiocese of Atlanta and all who come to visit. 

Hospitality and self-reliance are additional values Benedict affirms in the Rule. Monasteries support themselves through their work. Trappist monasteries all over the world bake bread, make cheese, craft fruitcakes and chocolate and brew beer—all with the dual aim of supporting their communities and nurturing others through simple yet special goods. Their emphasis upon quality and value remains unchanged. 

As a child in Atlanta in the 1970s, I will never forget the Monastery bread that was a staple at my grandparents’ house, as much a fixture of their kitchen as Coca-Cola, Stuckey’s Coconut Butter and cookies from the Nabisco plant where my grandfather worked. Though my grandparents were not Catholic, they loved to visit the Monastery on day trips, and on at least a few occasions they took me along. Neither they nor I could know how important the Monastery would one day become to me. 

As a graduate student at Georgia State University in 1990, I met my dear friend and mentor, the late professor Dr. Victor A. Kramer. Dr. Kramer was a specialist in Monasticism and the work of Thomas Merton, and he hired me as his graduate research assistant. I worked with Kramer on “The Merton Annual” and his oral histories of the monasteries in Kentucky and Conyers, and through this work I experienced a profound conversion experience that led me into the Catholic Church in 1992. He and his wife Dr. Dewey Weiss Kramer were great advocates for the Monastery, and Dewey’s book Open to the Spirit has grown through multiple editions as the essential history of the Monastery. 

I visited the Monastery many times during the early 90s as I was becoming Catholic, and it remains very special to me. Not long ago we celebrated Victor’s funeral Mass there and buried his ashes in the Honey Creek Woodlands natural cemetery that the monks maintain. For me it was a perfect circle illustrating how Benedict’s vision continues to impact life upon life through the fundamental value of Tradere—“handing one another along.” 

The Benedictine Rule encourages us to do just that, to let our lives be an instrument through which other lives are bettered. The Rule instructs us to “listen with the ear of our heart,” as God calls us to understand what others want and need. 

An understanding of Ora et Labora 

When I mention the Rule of St. Benedict to people in my OCIA class, they are often wary. How could a 1500-year-old text for monks have any relevance to their lives now? How could the ideal of Ora et Labora be applied to their own work?  

I will never forget an OCIA participant I once taught who worked as a project manager for a construction company that specialized in building hospitals and other medical facilities. He traveled a great deal for his job, and when we met on Sunday evenings, he was often headed for the airport right after class. He had an innate understanding of what the Benedictine Rule implies. Though he knew he was not a doctor, that he would never use the spaces he built to diagnose or operate, his work in building those spaces had a direct impact upon the patients who would one day experience profound transformation in them. They might be born in them; they might die. They might face mortality, or a miracle. One way or another, they would be changed. 

What a beautiful understanding that student had. He saw himself as not a bit different from those who built the great cathedrals who never saw their completion, or as a monk in Conyers in a barn monastery who could barely imagine what the place would become. 

The Rule of St. Benedict is a simple yet beautiful “vade mecum,” a companion that offers brilliant insights into life and how to live it. 

I often wonder if Michael Stipe has read Benedict’s Rule. Besides the song lyric that captures so well the essence of community—“Two doors, two names to call, your other and your own”—it’s interesting to remember that in 1985, during the Fables of the Reconstruction tour, Stipe shaved his head into a monk’s tonsure.