With less than a week to go, suddenly, the monastery's not such a bad place to be. The food seems to taste better, I goof around more with the novices, even prayer in church passes quickly. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's making all of the difference ( Read more... )

A likes to describe this stint with the Trappists as spiritual boot-camp. Before I got here, I’d been using phrases of my own like “summer camp for contemplatives,” “self-imposed purgatory,” and “unearned jail time,” but as week two draws to a close, I think I like her description best. Boot-camp captures the military-like ethic around here: ( Read more... )