and more, have our being

I spent the bulk of last week at Mepkin Abbey, in Monck's Corner, SC, just a half hour north of Charleston. I went to pray about my life, marriage, and vocation. I went also to rest, to write, to be alone long enough so that words can come to the wordless parts of me. I was surprised at how easily I slipped into the silence of the monastery, how right it felt to be alone and quiet for a few days. I walked away slow hours in the woods and gardens, spiraled through the labyrinth each morning, took at least two naps a day, read for a few hours in bed each night, and learned to listen for the bells calling us back to chapel for lauds, prime, terce. In many ways, it was more jarring to come back to the busyness of real life then to enter into the silence of the abbey.

"For I saw him and sought him; for now we are so blind and so unwise that we never seek God until out of his goodness he shows himself to us, and if he graciously lets us see something of himself, then we are moved by the same grace to seek with great longing to see him more fully; and thus I saw him and I sought him, I had him and I wanted him. And it seems to me that this is, or should be, our usual way of proceeding."

(Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love)