Off To Mepkin Abbey--Back to Blogging by November 10

I'm off to Mepkin Abbey. I'd like to say that I go there every year, but I don't. One year, Hurricane Wilma had closed the airport. Some years, I didn't make reservations early enough. But the years that I've gone, I've always been glad that I made the effort. It renews me in a way that few places do.



I meet some friends who live nearby, and we enter into the rhythms of the place: lots of walking, lots of silence, some catching up when we're not being silent, services at regular intervals, vegetarian food, and reading and writing at various intensity levels. It's always hard to return to the harshness of regular life, but alas, for many reasons (I'm married, I'm female, I'm Lutheran not Catholic, I have a mortgage), I am not free to join the monks permanently. Still, I'll take periodic renewal as a good substitute for the daily renewal I imagine that I'd experience if I lived there.

I'll be back to regular blogging by November 10.