To find out more about my experience, you can read my interview with The Sunday Times here, or my feature in The New York Times here, or my essay for Harvard University’s Divinity School here. I also talk about the experience in my first TEDx talk, and in my second and third books.
*Although we occasionally referred to the programme as ‘monk school’, this (obviously) is not the official terminology. Western monasticism has a long and interesting history, and our community was an experiment in ‘new monasticism’, influenced by St Benedict, St Francis and St Ignatius. You can read more about it here (for the community) and here (for the monastic history!).
**On a related note, yes - women can be monks: the word ‘monk’ (from a Greek root, meaning ‘solitary’) isn’t always restricted by gender, although interpretations vary depending on tradition.