Still Learning: Spiritual Sketches from a Professor's Life.

Still Learning: Spiritual Sketches from a Professor's Life
Robert Kiely
Medio Media, $14.95, 205 pp.

A distinguished professor of literature at Harvard, Robert Kiely is a long-time practitioner of daily meditation developed from his encounter with the teachings of the late John Main, a Benedictine monk. (Main's method of meditation bears a similarity to, but has some differences from, centering prayer as practiced and taught by Keating.) In his arresting spiritual memoir, Kiely describes his encounter with Main and what the practice of contemplative meditation means to him. Hardly an autobiography in any sense of the term, the subtitle word "sketches" is an apt description of this book. Included is a very moving account of the birth of his last daughter--a preemie who had to fight for life. When the ordeal is over with the happy result of a healthy child, Kiely makes a litany of persons who aided their baby adding, beautifully, that the Good Samaritans of this world do not make the heavenly company redundant.

Two chapters narrate Kiely's sabbatical year teaching in China where he must adjust to an entirely different culture, a university unlike Harvard (to put it mildly), and the demands of a population hungry for learning and discussion. Most poignant, in my estimation, were his treks to a Catholic church where he joined a Chinese community that worshiped in face of the official displeasure of local authorities. At Christmas, a vaguely familiar hymn, the Chinese version of the French Il est ne, le divin enfant, moved his Czech-born wife to tears as she remembered her exile in France. It was also a fitting tribute to the French missioners of the nineteenth century who had built the church--their presence came alive for Kiely and his wife not in the stones with which they built, but in a simple Christmas hymn.

Subsequent chapters chronicle his friendship with a young student through whom he developed a passion for cycling, his meditation practice, and his connection to a Montreal priory and the Sienese monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore that has deep roots in the meditation tradition taught by Main and by the English monk, Laurence Freeman. In the final chapter, Kiely tells us about his adventures as a master of one of Harvard's residential houses. It is a loving portrait of his work as a teacher-scholar at Harvard (along with a sly critique of the pomposities of the faculty), his dealing with student unrest, and a moving account of his care for the emerging presence of gay students. He ends with an imaginary fresco of All Saints in which he places the people at Harvard who have nurtured and edified him over the years. I hope that many students will be lucky enough to encounter a teacher who remembers his students and colleagues with such evident love.

Kiely's book was published by a rather out-of-the-way house (Medio Media in Catalina, Arizona) but it is worth tracking down if one wants to get into the heart and soul of a person whose humanity is nurtured by faith, prayer, and service to others. I very much enjoyed these sketches, and look for more in the future.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.