For some thirty years Eric Dean, as a layman, husband, parent, Presbyterian minister, Lafollette Professor of Humanities at Wabash College, and as an ecumenical oblate of a Benedictine abbey has reflected on and put into practice the Rule of St. Benedict. In Saint Benedict for the Laity he comments on how the Rule "has important things to say even to those of us who - because we are already committed to lives in the secular sphere - can never think of a monastic vocation. The rule can speak to us of values which, even apart from the daily structures of monastic life, are relevant to our own lives in 'the outside world.' "
