The Cloister Walk

From the book by Kathleen Norris

The Difference (page 32)

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

But in a consumer culture, monastic people must be vigilant, remaining intentional about areas of life that most of us treat casually, with little awareness of what we're doing. One year at the American Benedictine Academy convention, an abbot, speaking on the subject of 'The Monastic Archetype', suddenly dropped all pretence of objectivity and said he was troubled by the growing number of cereals made available for breakfast in his community. 'How many kinds of cereal do we need', he asked, 'in order to meet genuine health needs without falling into thoughtless consumerism?'