Lovers

You can usually tell when people are "in love."  They seems to want to be alone with one another, even in a place where there are other people.  As Madeleine Delbrel says, "When you are in love, it is tedious to have a lot of people around you.  You like to talk to each other without the irritating background of other people's voices."  This is why I go to a monastery each summer.  Though I don't always feel like a God-Lover, I know that I have a love for God that wants to be away from background noises, other voices and media sounds.  I drop my cell phone in a bag in my closet when I arrive at the monastery.  The quality of silence in a monastery is conducive to God-Lovers.  My words are few, but I listen better, and enjoy the sheer being with of God.  When I leave at the end of a summer, it is shocking to get back into the daily life outside the monastery.  It takes some getting used to.  It is definitely faster and noisier to me.  Even though there is talking in the monastery and in town and in social occasions, it is of a different feel when I have the monastery to go right back to.  I have respites from silence rather than silence being respites from busy activity.  Even the busyness of the monastery has a more tranquil taste to it.  I am blessed to have my monastery each summer.  Come visit.  Leave your cell phone in your bag.  There is no tower or signal anyway.