Quarantine. A User Manual

Bestselling author and monk, Anselm Gruen, shares experiences from life in the monastery, The Rule of Benedict, he says, offers several suggestions how to live together successfully in confined spaces. How to learn bearing one-self and others. He shares the wisdom his order of monks has gathered in more than 15 centuries. From the Foreword: Some may ask whether it was truly necessary to publish a book like this right now. I can understand such questions. Nevertheless, I deeply believe that we all need to stick together in a situation like the one we are in, show solidarity, support each other, and share with one another - and it is with this book that I want to impart the experience that we monks have gained over more than 1500 years and that today can be of truly concrete assistance. And with this book I also want to share the experiences that the people in Taiwan have had in this crisis. My Taiwanese publisher, Ms. Hsin-Ju Wu, has told me how the society as a whole wants to overcome the crisis together. They are acting according to the following principle: I am protecting myself in order to protect you. So a Christian idea is permeating an entire society that is only 6% Christian. The following two thoughts are important to me in this book: solidarity and dealing well with this situation that we are being forced to face and in which we are left with little room to escape.