This is the twenty-fifth in our series of emails called “How I Monk.” In this series, we will be highlighting + celebrating members of the Monk Manual community as they’ve meaningfully applied our tools and resources to find peaceful being and purposeful doing in their everyday lives. If you’d like to be featured in a future “How I Monk,” share your information with us here… #HowIMonk
Name: Tamara Hill Murphy
Occupation: Spiritual Director and Author
Website: https://tamarahillmurphy.substack.com/about
Location: Bridgeport, CT, USA
A bit about who you are and how you spend your days:
I am a spiritual director and author and have been helping people embrace Jesus’ rest in their everyday lives since 2006. In my book The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Way of Jesus in A Fragmented World, I explore the ancient Christian practice called the Rule of Life. As a ministry leader, author, mother, grandmother, and priest’s wife, I have needed help to joyfully and gently remain present to the various ministry tasks and relationships I encounter each day. A restful Rule of Life helps me prayerfully and lovingly orient my days and the Monk Manual aligns with the “unforced rhythms of grace” that Jesus invites us to live in Matthew 11:28-30.
What originally drew you to the Monk Manual?
In 2017, I joined a certificate program to become a spiritual director. One of the most challenging assignments was learning about the ancient spiritual practice of a Rule of Life. This experience became so formative that it led me to write The Spacious Path. Around the same time, I discovered the Monk Manual as the perfect resource for keeping a restful Rule of Life.
In the first few decades of my life, I lived in a vicious cycle of finding the proper productivity method to make my life work. As a student, then a parent, and in various jobs and other professional pursuits, I thought I needed the correct to-do list to guarantee outcomes and provide a sense of expertise and accomplishment. I applied the same method to every area of my life, including my relational and spiritual life. Because I’d lived outside of the invitation to work alongside Jesus, I’d burned myself out after every endeavor. My default posture was all or nothing. This led to avoiding anything that looked or felt like a to-do list for almost a decade.
With this as my frame of reference, a Rule of Life became another system I hoped would produce my desired outcomes. As I began to see Matthew 11:28–30 as a profound invitation from Jesus, I recognized that I wasn’t responsible for initiating my plans for spiritual growth. I was only responsible for coming to Jesus, who was already at work with purposes for my life, before I even began trying to master my goals and desires. The passage helped me reimagine my role as one who works alongside Jesus, watching and learning from him how to live as my truest self, the person God imagined from the beginning. The Monk Manual’s invitation to hold all our being and doing in one integrated and beautiful resource helped me overcome my aversion to planners and productivity tools.
When you were first getting started, what part of the Monk Manual did you struggle with most?
As a lifelong, overly idealistic goal-setter, I felt freaked out by the Habit Tracker at first. I fixated on those little check boxes at the top of the page. They felt a bit burdensome to me at times, but as I continued to learn and grow, I found that I could coexist with them peacefully even when I could not keep new habits the way I’d like. Now, I see the checkboxes as a way of noticing my days without judgment instead of a measure of success or significance.
Do you have a favorite prompt or section?
The Monk Manual's daily reflection prompts offer a perfect opportunity for regular healthy self-assessment of our schedules. We all shape our days around deeply ingrained habits and beliefs about who we are and who we aim to become; left unexamined, we quickly become exhausted by ill-fitting systems for our lives. The prayer practice known as the Daily Examen helps me examine my daily actions and habits with gentle curiosity instead of reflexive judgment. It is a fundamental part of a restful Rule of Life. Combining the Examen with a planner oriented toward this kind of noticing allows me to start each workday by prayerfully reflecting on moments of rest and unrest from the previous day.
Practical Monk Manual Tip:
I find that with a few minor edits, the Monk Manual becomes the perfect "living document" for my restful Rule of Life. For example, I customize the daily reflection prompts to align more closely with a prayer of Examen–changing the prompts “I was at my best when” and “One change I can make tomorrow” to “I was at rest when” and “One thing I need from Jesus tomorrow.” I also customize the monthly check-in categories to more closely match the seven categories of my restful Rule of Life: Pray, Be Loved, Love, Work, Make, and Rest.
How has your life changed since using the Monk Manual?
After caring for our four children for twenty-five years, I entered the "empty nest" phase in 2016. This coincided with my husband's new job across the country and our children leaving home simultaneously. It was a difficult period for me, almost as tough as the early years of motherhood. I found it difficult to find stability amidst so much change and loss. I noticed that I was falling back into old patterns and placing unrealistic expectations on myself to accomplish everything I always said I could do if I had time to myself instead of being divided among my children. Even with more time, I felt overwhelmed and distracted every day. I struggled to find a sense of meaningful accomplishment; I learned that my most significant obstacle to restful rhythms was me!
The Monk Manual helps me keep a restful Rule of Life, which has been foundational, especially during personal and societal disruptions. It has helped me remain present with Jesus, others, and myself despite financial strain, multiple moves, caring for sick family members, starting new jobs, and other challenges. In addition to my work as a spiritual director, retreat speaker, and writer in the past few months, I returned to seminary, am helping provide care for my parents as they live with my Mom’s Alzheimer’s disease, and am preparing to welcome a new granddaughter. The Monk Manual helps me orient my day and continue to find rest in Jesus's way.
What suggestions would you give to new Monk Manual users?
Begin with what feels most restful to you. As you continue using the planner, you’ll naturally use more pages and prompts and discover you need them differently in different seasons. In The Spacious Path,” I share a sixth-century prayer attributed to St. Benedict, “Always, we begin again.” This is the same spirit I hear in Jesus’s invitation to learn his unforced rhythms of grace.
Occasionally, I fall out of practice with the Monk Manual, and when I return, I'm constantly reminded how grateful I am that it exists! The planner has become essential for navigating life with freedom and lightness. To be human is to receive the grace to begin again. To be a Christian is to receive the grace to begin again in the company of Jesus. Always, we begin again!
If you’d like to be featured in a future “How I Monk,” share your information with us here.
