The monks’advice for staying focused

Jamie Kreiner, The Wandering Mind [La mente vagabonda], Il Saggiatore, 2024

Distraction: one of the major issues at the beginning of my monastic formation, which has lessened over the years but never completely disappeared. Over time, the problem of concentration has become a challenge. This book investigates the various strategies employed by my male “colleagues” in the Middle Ages. Any strategy to circumvent distraction requires other strategies to bypass additional distractions. When Cassian suggested one of his simplest techniques—repeating a psalm over and over to keep the mind in check—he already knew what the monks would ask him: “How can we stay focused on that verse?”

The “vigilance of attention” and “digital discernment” which involve learning to evaluate the information bombarding us on our screens, represent essential tactics that humans will need to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence. However, the vigilance of attention and discernment were identified as survival skills over fifteen hundred years ago by our monks and nuns, long before anyone worried about the allure of algorithms and robots on humanity.

Rosa Lupoli is a Capuchin nun from Naples, abbess of the Santa Maria in Gerusalemme monastery, known as the Monastery of the Thirty-Three, founded by Blessed Maria Lorenza Longo. 

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