[ .]

Somebody told me the other day that vocational desires that never come to fruition in our own lives might be a kind of echo of a pending vocation among our children or grandchildren. Well, this would explain my frustration with the Carthusians. I watched a 2 hour, 45 minute documentary the other day called Into Great Silence. A filmmaker entered a Carthusian Monastery located in the Swiss Alps within avalanche distance of Matterhorn. Aside from about 7 minutes of dialogue the entire film is wordless--no voiceover speaker, no theme music. Wordless, but not silent. The monk's days are filled with sound--the Angelus bells, the creaking wood of their old European buildings, the numbed patter of snow, scissors cutting into thick cloth, the chanting of the psalms, a clattering food cart, cats, the hiss of a stove, birds singing outside, a cough, a sigh. They eat alone in their room, except on Sundays. Every day at noon they kiss the ground after saying the Angelus. They eat dinner together once a week and are allowed an afternoon walk, where they partner with another monk and get their week's worth of talking in.

Is it strange that I want to be there? Is it crazy that a little sliver of me feels like my destiny is some kind of skinny old Trappist with deep eyes? That is very strange. Between Into Great Silence, stories of the CFRs, and the retreat at Gethsemane, I find I have a penchant for the monastic life. But not nuns--monks. The echoes are quiet--when a leaf scratches on the ground, when a sunbeam waxes golden in the afternoon, when I stop in a dorm chapel--but they're there. I think the movie is coming to the states. And when it does, you should see it.

"Lord, your love is ferocious" -Father of Therese of Lisieux upon her entrance at Carmel