Monk's Cell

The call to contemplative Christianity is not an easy one. Those who answer it set themselves to the arduous task of self-reformation through rigorous study and practice learned through the teachings of monks and nuns and the writings of ancient Christian mystics often in isolation from family and friends. Those who are dedicated can spend hours every day in meditation prayer liturgy and study. Why do they come? Indeed how do they find their way to the door at all? <p/>Based on nearly four years of research among semi-cloistered Christian monastics and a dispersed network of non-monastic Christian contemplatives across the United States and around the globe <em>The Monk's Cell</em> shows how religious practitioners in both settings combined social action and intentional living with intellectual study and intensive contemplative practices in an effort to modify their ways of knowing sensing and experiencing the world. Organized by the metaphor of a seeker journeying towards the inner chambers of a monastic chapel <em>The Monk's Cell</em> uses innovative intersubjective fieldwork methods to study these opaque interiorized often silent communities in order to show how practices like solitude chant contemplation attention and a paradoxical capacity to combine ritual with intentional unknowing develop and hone a powerful sense of communion with the world.<br>