This new monastic Rule offers a spiritually challenging way of life which also shows great understanding of the pressures and demands of urban and tamily life today. But although A City Not Forsaken was written for a religious commLurityit also offers today's city-dweller the means of achieving a relationship with God which was formerly seen as the prerogative of the monk or nun.
The Fraternities of Jerusaiem were founded in Pans in the 1970s as two closely associated communities of monks and nuns. The roots of the community are in the desert tradition and the desert experience of the founder but the life is lived in the city and for the city. The pattern of worship of the communities, with the two periods of corporate prayer in the morning and the evening, is arranged for the needs of city-dwellers as much as for the convenience of the monastic community. Since their foundation, the Jerusalem Fraternities have broadened to include solitaries, tamily group members and lay fraternities; all are members of the same religious'family'and all live in the spirit of the same Rule of Life.