When I was a Benedictine monk, we read The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Jean Leclercq’s masterwork on monastic culture and spirituality. The book is a defining text by a twentieth-century monk of Clervaux Abbey. Its central insight has stayed with me: reading is, at its best, a kind of devotion. We read to go beyond ourselves—not only to gather information, but to pursue spiritual perception. That’s why, in the monastery, we were trained to take a short passage—often from Scripture and internalize it, returning to the same lines until they began to live in us. This is the practice monks call lectio divina: slow-burn reading that forms the soul as much as the mind.
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| Take walk. Ponder a passage. |
Here's the universal truth. Learning isn’t just collecting facts. It’s a way of turning your attention outward: toward truth, beauty, justice, craft, community, and the mysteries you can’t solve in one sitting.
When you really love learning, you stop asking only: “Will this be on the test?” You start asking: “What kind of person does this help me become?” and “What does this let me see that I couldn’t see before?”
In older traditions of reading and study — especially the slow, careful reading practiced in monasteries—books weren’t treated like vending machines for information. They were treated like teachers: something you listen to, wrestle with, return to, and let reshape you. Leclercq describes that tradition in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, where study is meant to lead not just to knowledge, but to wisdom: a life ordered toward what matters most.
So here’s a better definition for our room:
Love of learning = the desire to join something larger than your own ego.
It’s curiosity with a backbone. It’s attention that refuses to be lazy. It’s the choice to be changed by what you read, what you hear, and what you discover.
A sentence to live by
If it makes me more awake, more honest, more capable of wonder, and more responsible to others—then it counts as real learning.
Three simple practices that build this mindset
The “Bigger-Than-Me” Question (daily, 2 minutes)
After any text, discussion, or video, write:
What’s the biggest question this raises — one that matters beyond my life?
Commonplace + Commentary (weekly)
Keep a page with:
1 powerful line (quote)
3 sentences of commentary: Why this matters. What it challenges. What it asks of me.
Slow Reading (Leclercq-style, 10–12 minutes)
Read a short passage twice.
Circle a phrase that “glows.”
Write: What might this be telling a human being how to live?
One 45-minute lesson:
“Desire for Something Bigger”
1) Hook (5 min):
On the board: “Learning is ______.” Students fill it in. Then add:
“Love of Learning = Desire for Something Bigger than Yourself.” Quick reactions.
2) Text encounter (10 min):
Give a rich paragraph (poem, aphorism, philosophical excerpt, or a key speech). Slow Reading routine.
3) Discussion (15 min):
Use these prompts:
What does this text ask you to value?
What would change if you took that seriously?
What’s the “bigger-than-me” concern here (truth, justice, beauty, freedom, belonging, etc.)?
4) Writing (12 min):
Students write a “Learning Vow” that begins:
This year, I want my learning to make me…
I will practice attention by…
The ‘bigger thing’ I want to serve is…
5) Close (3 min):
Pair-share one line from the vow. Collect for portfolios.
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