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I stayed at a Benedictine monastery for eight weeks during the summer of 2024. Tucked into the hills of rural Connecticut, the Abbey of Regina Laudis is a place where ancient monastic customs are lived. Nuns wear black habits that cover their heads and bodies, the women are in Benedictine contemplative enclosure, and eight times a day they sing liturgies in Latin Gregorian Chant. Layers and layers of beautiful spiritual wisdom and history dwell at this monastery of 40 women. I went to Regina Laudis to witness a kind of devotion and adoration to God that I wanted to see lived.

As a college student at Notre Dame, I see Catholics living out faith in varying levels of dedication. Notre Dame makes it easy to practice Catholicism publicly with all the priests, chapels and ministries. But privately, the college environment is a challenging place to live deliberately in prayer, for me. No matter how much God is at the center of life here, and of course He is, the obvious social dedication is to the rat-race — getting things in on time, building the resume with activities, keeping away from FOMO by packing in a wine night and going out into an already busy week. The real collective focus seems to me to be “work hard, play hard,” not God. If God were the central focus here at Notre Dame, then it wouldn’t be so hard to cultivate a contemplative disposition.

Life at the abbey was slowed way down. They live by the Rule of Saint Benedict, written in the 6th century and lived by monastics since. At Regina Laudis I witnessed certain ways of living that must be adopted into the college sphere for the sake of peace and regrounding in what is true. What I gleaned of Benedictine life was just a fraction, but it changed my life, and it changed how I approach college. Here are a few snippets of thoughts and ponderings about the Abbey of Regina Laudis and about life.

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Imagine for a moment that you had one place to be. Imagine that the only place you had to be was right where you are right now, and that the only person you needed to communicate with was right in front of you. Imagine not leaving a 400 acre area of fields and forest. Imagine eating the same meal for supper every day. Imagine wearing the same clothes every day and night. Imagine that the only people you encounter are the 40 people that live around you. Imagine doing nothing other than what is personally, spiritually, communally important.

As I was driven to the abbey for the first time, I looked out the car window and saw quaint New England country towns, gazebos and restaurants. It was an evening in early June. I thought about what it must be like for the nuns to never leave the abbey, not for live music, or to go to baseball games, or family birthday parties. At that moment, the thought of the enclosed life seemed limited and scary. Especially nowadays, with the ability to take trains, planes, and automobiles everywhere and anywhere, the monastic enclosure might appear to be a confinement — restricting and limiting. My experience of the abbey convinced me otherwise.

I was told by one special nun that the enclosure is like a womb. A sacred being is growing inside, and only things that are life-giving are let in. What it takes to maintain this quality of sacredness in the enclosure is great consideration of what is included, what is let in. One day I asked to meet with a particular nun so that I could hear her faith story, which she had started to tell me one day when she came to bless my meal. I was astounded when the answer was no — the community had decided that it was not the best thing for me to talk with that nun for the time being, that later in the summer would be better. I thought, “What is such a big deal about one conversation? I have conversations with people all the time, hundreds!” But I was reminded of the womb analogy. They must have decided that that one conversation — now — would not be the most life-giving thing.

After that instance, I came away with an unforeseen respect for what it means to be enclosed. Enclosure is much more about life and goodness than it is about restriction and badness. And what is good and holy, according to Benedict, requires much more radical action than what I might have previously imagined. I left wondering about things in my life that might not actually be life-giving, but that I let in because it is the popular thing to do. This proved to be one of the most influential instances for me at Regina Laudis. For the first time, I felt okay renouncing certain things that had once felt obligatory. I started to question things that might be way too woven into the fabric of my everyday life. I started to notice the ways that monastics allow into their lives only the things that will promote the fullness of life and relationship with God. I started to try to do the same. For days, I wouldn’t use my phone — I chose to paint, converse with other guests, or write instead. I went to more liturgies of the Divine Office. Every moment at the abbey started to feel very intentional. I felt like every moment of my time was being well-spent. There were days when I felt like everything I did was contributing to my relationship with God and with the land and with the people around me and with myself.

The founder of Regina Laudis, Lady Abbess Benedict (1910–2005), once said, “There is no life without enclosure.” Enclosure must exist everywhere for there to be life. It is in the enclosed particular that life exists, such as the womb. Analogy is an important part of Benedictine spirituality, and the analogy of the monastic enclosure has become more and more evidently important to find in other areas of my life. Is it too radical to say that for any life to exist, there must be boundaries, protection, consideration, and definition? Take any form of life — specific conditions are necessary for the nourishment and growth of any and all life forms. In order for something holy to take root and grow, enclosure is required.

I think of family life. In order to have the foundation of a family, protective parents might not allow their children to have cell phones. They may insist on family dinner and gather their children for nightly prayer. Protective parents practice a kind of enclosure— they sanctify things about their children’s lives and their own lives that they deem to be holy. Uninterrupted and consistent time together is important for the life of the family to flourish. There is a sanctity of time, space and relationships.

As I prepare to graduate in the spring, a piece of advice I have heard over and over is this: “Explore the world, do something that you want to do, before settling and committing to marriage, or career, or family, or a specific place.” In the privileged position to feasibly do this, I find myself fantasizing of what I could find and have that is not in front of me. What has God made for me to see, elsewhere? But then I start thinking, “Who said that I have the right to see the world and grab its beauty like a conquistadora of aesthetic and cultural capital?” Is galavanting around the world justified itself? Or is this advice a symptom of a social epidemic: unsettled, mobile and fragmented living?

At Regina Laudis, I saw women who had been at the abbey for years of their lives, some upwards of 40. And since the dawn of Regina Laudis, the nuns have been chanting the Psalms and singing God’s praises, welcoming guests, cultivating the land and building a sacred space. They live in rhythm, they live in peace. I saw some of the happiest women I had ever seen. They seemed to know about human flourishing. They seemed to live it. Benedict knew that spiritual stability is found in physical stability. These women have me convinced that infinitely more valuable than any cultural capital I could gain from making a temporary move to explore the world will be the decade-long dedication to a group of people and a place. One nun once told me that the narrower you go, the more truth of the world is revealed to you. This is what it means that God lies in the particular — the more deeply you penetrate into one thing, the more that universal truth can be revealed to you.

So, to focus on now instead of the near future when I will be somewhere else, I will ask the question: How can I practice enclosure on this college campus? Enclosure, as I have come to understand it, is deliberate consideration of what I can allow into my life. What things do I need to guard and sanctify? What am I focusing on? What thoughts do I allow to consume me? How am I spending my time?

It is easy to follow the “explore” advice to an extreme here in college. After almost a semester of thinking about the Benedictine way, I am more inclined to advise, find ways to enclose yourself such that you live deeper, less superficially and so that your life may be the most life-giving to you and others.