ahhh - the blessings of doing ones homework
Ben’s re-monastery is useful; I was moving towards neo monastery.
By all means let us mine the threads of Catholicism for all they are worth; in addition I’m going to take a peak at the pre-christian tradition. After all, if palaeolithic hermits have been camped out along the Gravina, we have a lot of digging to do.
I was interrogating a friend the other day: she regularily returned home to Vietnam and usually took a stint of a week or two in the buddhist monasteries that dot the country. In their tradition, the major administrative decision is to appoint the calmest, happiest monk to lead the kitchen work…