(RNS) — Sister Mary Magdalene of the Immaculate Conception Prewitt, a 38-year-old nun in the Dominican order, is often asked how she got from her upbringing in Kansas to life in a monastery in New Jersey. In a new book, “Joy Within His House,” Prewitt explains, tracing her path from college in Pittsburg, Kansas, to an enclosed monastery in Summit, New Jersey, where she spends her time in a community of women ages 22 to 93, give or take the occasional visitor exploring their own possible vocation to contemplative life.
But the ambitious book about prayer, vocational discernment, and monastery life is much more than an autobiography. Instead, she offers a primer on what it means to lead a contemplative life in the Dominican order’s tradition, from the times of prayer to recreation to what it means spiritually to be cloistered. The volume includes evocative monastery snapshots from photographer Jeffrey Bruno.
She also cites not only a variety of Christian Scriptures, but Catholic teaching and a surprising number of novels. (Her top 10 list includes classics such as “Middlemarch,” “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Anna Karenina,” but also Sigrid Undset’s Nobel Prize-winning “Kristin Lavransdatter,” a historical trilogy about an unconventional young Norwegian woman set in the 1400s.)
Her hope in writing the book, she said, is to make the fundamentals of monastery life more accessible to laypeople. She writes about many familiar moments that the least religio …