The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune is an excellent book. If the Craft Brewery Pilgrimage were a college course, this would be required reading. It is well-written, informative, entertaining, opinionated, and a lot of fun. If you have questions about brewing, if you are intimidated by having so many craft brewing choices, if the idea that quality and flavors of beer are more important than the price and the quantity of beer, this book is a great place... Read more
Brew Like a Monk by Stan Hieronymus is a very valuable resource for anyone who is interested in monks, brewing beer, and the strong tradition of the Belgian monastic communities that produce some of the best beers in the world. Benedictine monastic communities live by the Rule of Benedict, which encourages them to contribute to their local communities. Monastic brewing is known to have existed as far back as the sixth century. Trappist communities, which belong to the Benedictine family,... Read more
You can find just about anything you want to know about beer and brewing in the Oxford Companion to Beer. It is a big book, over 900 pages. It is the kind of book for which the words “comprehensive” and “definitive reference” were created. It is a beer lover’s dream, the kind of book that makes you hope the weather will deteriorate and you will be required to remain indoors all day unexpectedly. I have spent hours reading this book, going... Read more
The story of my life is shaped by what I do each day. One thing that has shaped many of my days from an early age, is a desire to find, and give, the right answer. Getting the right answer kept me in school. Getting the right answer kept me at church. Getting the right answer shaped my work, my friendships, my hobbies. Getting the right answer became an essential part of who I saw myself to be. It was... Read more
Not Your Grandfather’s Lenten Devotion How could you not love a Lenten devotion that claims to begin on “Ash Thursday?” Lent Madness kicks off on February 23rd with 32 saints vying for the coveted Golden Halo. What?! Yes, it’s true. The third annual “saintly smackdown” places saints into a tournament-like single elimination bracket. I started Lent Madness on my blog as a fun, engaging way to teach people about the saints of the church. This year I’m partnering with... Read more
Paula Huston is a lay oblate of New Camaldoli Monastery and Hermitage in Big Sur, California, which is the monastery where I am also an oblate. I have met her once at New Camaldoli; of course, we did not talk to each other. We are, though, friends on Facebook. I was introduced to New Camaldoli through another of Paula’s books, The Holy Way. Simplifying the Soul is based in Lent, which she describes as “a lengthy annual version of my short... Read more
I go to monasteries to appreciate and absorb the lessons monks are learning. I recognize the priorities and practices they are developing in their lives each day, and I seek to incorporate some of the same values and actions into my days. I am a lay person who has committed myself to live by a rule. The rule helps me measure the ways in which I am growing, and the ways in which I hope to grow. Like the monks... Read more
We expect our leaders to be better than we are. We assume, deep inside ourselves, that a person who can lead an organization well can lead themselves well. We believe that the actions of leaders we see in the world demonstrate values like effectiveness, organization, and inspiration. We project that these actions reflect the inner lives of the people presenting them to us. In reality, people are not always what they seem. Leaders face pressures for which they are often... Read more
Each day, I get up and stand at the edge, looking out over the possibilities. Life is filled with possibilities, with opportunities.They are all around us. The challenge for us is to recognize them, to choose, and to take the steps we need to take to meet them. We slow ourselves down. We get in our own way. We live in the past, filled with regret or reliving past glories. We live in the future, filled with anxiety or distracted... Read more
I do not enjoy waiting. I enjoy it when things happen right away. I enjoy going fast. I was brought up to appreciate having the right answers. One aspect of “having the right answers” is that getting there does not take very long. It is all about having the answers, not about waiting to get there. It is all about knowing, not about learning. It is a challenge for me to find value in waiting. Waiting feeds my fears and... Read more
Strategic Monk
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In