Ancient Wisdom, Living Fire: Lessons I Learned from the Fathers of the Church

John Michael Talbot is a prolific Catholic singer-songwriter, speaker, and bestselling author who founded an integrated monastic community, the Brothers and Sisters of Charity.

Talbot has recorded more than fifty albums and authored thirty books. He is recognized as one of Catholic music’s most popular artists and his work is widely loved by Christians of other denominations. Talbot’s compositions are published in hymnals throughout the world. He received a Dove Award for Worship Album of the Year for Light Eternal, with producer Phil Perkins, and is one of nine artists to receive the President’s Merit Award (a Grammy) from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1988 he was named the number one Christian artist by Billboard magazine.

Talbot began performing at age seventeen with his brother Terry in their country folk-rock band Mason Proffit. Born into a Methodist family, Talbot explored fundamentalism, Native American religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and the Jesus movement. That’s when he began using his musical talent to express his faith, eventually becoming a pioneer in the contemporary Christian music scene. He studied all Christian denominations, but found Catholicism spoke to his heart. He was inspired after reading about the life of St. Francis of Assisi and began studying patristics and monasticism at a Franciscan center in Indianapolis, Indiana. He entered the Catholic Church in 1978 and joined the secular Franciscan order. He started a house of prayer called The Little Portion, which he later moved to Arkansas. This developed into the Brothers and Sisters of Charity.

Talbot remains the spiritual father and minister general of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, which also includes the St. Clare Monastery in Texas and those who live outside the community. His humanitarian efforts have been recognized by the Mercy Corps with the Mother Teresa Award. He created and was host of All Things Are Possible with God on The Church Channel.

Talbot lives as a family monastic with his wife at The Little Portion Hermitage, which he founded as part of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity in Berryville, Arkansas.