Silence and solitude

But as Anne Sexton wrote in the poem "With Mercy for the Greedy," in response to a friend who asks her "to call a priest" and "wear The Cross," "need is not quite belief."

So I'm here. Needing. Eyes open.

Day 1:

Saint Joseph's Abbey is a 2,000-acre time capsule 20 minutes west of Worcester. In 1950, these Roman Catholic monks, popularly known as Trappists, moved here from the Diocese of Providence. Their old abbey in Cumberland, R.I., had been destroyed by fire (so had their previous location in Nova Scotia). Once again, the monks began anew. They purchased a farm, woods, and fields in Spencer, and built a church, cloister, dormitories, and guest house of brick and stone, much of it fieldstone from this very land. The architectural style of the complex is rustic retro-medieval: solid, simple, and right out of the 14th century.

Driving the half-mile paved road that leads past cropped green fields and rows of trees to the hilltop abbey, my ride exclaims, "This place looks like France."

I'm dropped off in a downpour. I meet my first monk, the retreat master. Kind. I like the look of the retreat house: a squat, brick and green-slate roofed structure, with three corridors forming a triangle around a small planted courtyard. Austere. I park my bags in my room, stash my bike behind the retreat house, and say goodbye to my ride.

The evening prayer service, Vespers, begins promptly at 5:40 p.m. every day. The six other retreatants and I hurry into the church, with its turret-like bell tower, where the monks pray seven times a day. Here the quiet is absolute. One by one or in pairs, the monks trickle in, dressed in white robes with hoods and leather belts. Then come hymns, prayers, Bible readings, organ music. Immediately, I fall in love with the stained-glass windows pulsing with indigo-blue light, like the first lilac calling from the corner of a sleeping garden.