On Monastic life

My time with Mir in Germany marked the end of my Scheduled Plan. I had gotten that far before I left, and afterward I kind of hadn't a clue what I was going to do. I had several ideas and several semi-plans working, but all of them ended up falling through for one reason or another. While I was still in Paris with mom I was talking to her about how frustrated I was about this last section of my trip, and how I said I just wanted a place where I could sit somewhere quiet and just feel at peace. And she said, "well then why don't you try to just find that?" And so I did. And I ended up at an Italian Monastery just north of Milan. It ended up being exactly the quiet, restful respite I needed. I woke up every day at 5:30 in time to watch the sun rise over the alps in the distance, and spent all day walking and reading and writing and working in the high production gardens and helping them make jam. I was the only non-Italian, though there were tons of other yound guests there while I was there. All in all it was pretty much amazing, and by far the coolest thing I've done in a long time.

It's pretty amazing what happens when you actually allow your mind the free range space to wander and skip and go wherever it wills, when you give your soul permission to take a big gulp of air and just stay there, at rest, for awhile. Things came to the surface that I hadn't even realised had ever submerged... my soul was healed in areas in which the bruises hadn't even been visable. Sufice to say, it was an incredibly lovely time.

Here are some pictures of the sleepy little town where I stayed.

And if this is not the most amazing road sign you've ever seen in your life, I don't know what would be.

And then there were the gardens. That word probably inspires images of a monk in a habit with a hoe, but these were high level, mass-production orchards and fields. It was really fun to get to harvest and work in them for a few days. Here are some fruits (literally! ha!) of my labor...

And in the afternoon I worked in the jam factory (and it seriously was) helping them label the new arrivals.

And then of course, through really broken Italian and lots of smiling, there were the crop of new friends. :)