Product Description

Desiring Life is the third book in Norvene Vest’s series on Benedictine spirituality for people living in the world today. The first, No Moment Too Small, explored silence, holy reading, and prayer; the second, Friend of the Soul, discussed the modern workplace in light of the Benedictine principles of vocation, stewardship, and obedience. Desiring Life addresses issues of relationship, particularly our relationship to the world (wisdom); to ourselves (virtue); and to each other (ethics). Vest translates insights from the Rule of St. Benedict and other early monastic writers into common language we share today.

Desiring Life asks questions of pressing concern today, such as: What is the “good life” we seek? How can we learn to live with integrity and compassion, despite the growing gap between public ethics and narrow self-interest? How can we live fully and well? What sort of people should we as Christians try to be? In sections on wisdom, virtue, and ethics Vest describes these contemporary questions and addresses them through passages from Benedict’s Rule. Through the recovery of insights from the past, Vest believes, we can draw closer to the heart of our desire for life in all its fullness — union with God.

Norvene Vest leads workshops and retreats on Benedictine spirituality throughout the United States and Britain. She is an oblate of a Benedictine abbey in Valyermo, California, and the author of Preferring Christ, No Moment Too Small and Friend of the Soul.