I think I’m due at the monastery again. How can I tell? I
get so overloaded with all the voices of the world vying for my attention that
I stop doing the important things that sustain life itself. A few days of
seclusion orders my priorities without my even having to think them through or
figure them out. No mental gymnastics required – au contraire. The less thinking, the better.
I found this place by hearing it mentioned by Catholic
friends who were already doing this very thing. I pressed for details. The Trappist Abbey in
First I went for one full day. Twenty bucks for a tiny room
with a little couch and a desk and a lamp. You could hole up there for the entire
day, or walk around the ample grounds, or sit in the library, or sit in the
chapel and listen to the monks chanting their hours.
The night before, I was so
excited to escape the world that I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t sleep -- so I
just got in my car and went. I arrived in time for their 6:30 chants – though the
monks had already been up since 3:30 or so. Instead of whizzing by at the speed
of pandemonium, that day stretched out like a cat in the sun. The slightest
happening, like a red dragon-fly landing on my bright orange shirt as I sat by
the pond, matched the importance of any front page story. For about ten
week-long minutes, I had a relationship with that dragonfly that surpassed
anything I’ve achieved with a lot of the humans in my life.
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