monastery

My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowdAs herds of bellowing buses drive byLove's anguish tightens your throatAs if you were never to be loved againIf you lived in the old days you would enter a monasteryYou are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayerYou make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter cracklesThe sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your lifeIt's a painting hanging in a dark museumAnd sometimes you go and look at it close up

He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands,

Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it.

The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness.

Creation is always an act of affirmation, a lust for life or activity, a restlessness accompanied by art. That art is what pleases and invigorates and mystifies me.

Freedom of will is our birthright.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

You have two things of value: your monastery and your people. Translate the book for me, and I'll let you keep one. Which will it be?

Monastery you can't retire it's forever, there isn't music, films, parties and other crazy stuff. It's about spiritual life... It becomes harder and harder!