There's nothing particularly monastic about monastic life these days, Gregory J. Millman pointed out in his iconoclastic essay, quoting Father Timothy Joyce of Glastonbury Abbey in Massachusetts: "Monastics have become workaholics, always rushing around.  I don't think our life is any different from anyone else's."

     What a dismal thought.  And how different from the gentle image evoked by Dakota's closing words: "Soon, the monks, too, will begin to sing, the gentle lullaby of vespers and compline, at one with the rhythm of evening, the failing light and the rise of the moon. Together, monks and coyotes will sing the world to sleep."

     In jarring contrast, Millman's article concluded with a discouraging remark by Father Terrence Kardong, a member of Kathleen Norriss own adoptive monastery, Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota: "You have an option of being shaped by culture or trying to follow your calling.  Our calling is not to be tossed around by the storms of culture.  We can decide our lifestyle. But how poor do you want to be?"

     Ah, there's the rub. How poor do you want to be?

     "As poor as it takes," I wish Father Kardong had added, but he didnt.  

     Someone, after all, has to keep the wolf from the door, even from monastery porticoes.  And if even monastics are overworked and harried, unable to keep themselves from being sucked into the money trap, what hope is there for the rest of us?

     After passing, then, through Bozeman and Billings, I plunged into the prairie vastness of Wyoming, and then the amber emptiness of South Dakota where it parallels Nebraska. "The sky is a dome of eggshell blue tapering to turquoise at its edges, the land an ocean of hills and hollows," I wrote in my journal on that glorious afternoon.

     The whole month of October turned out to be magical, each Indian Summer day as benign as the one before it. Driving through Minnesota's saffron fields stretching to the edges of the sky, I wondered if what Kathleen Norris might have told me would have been as worthwhile as the things I had found for myself.

     But I already knew the answer.

     Nearing Madison, Wisconsin, where my daughter was entering the final weary months of her doctoral pursuit, I paused to watch a cooling wind stroke a hillside trembling with the russet leaves of fall and learned the meaning of "quaking aspen."

     My final stop on my autumn travels with Buddy before wheeling westward toward Phoenix, Reno, San Francisco, Portland, then Southwest Washington and home, was a Jesuit retreat house on a tiny Wisconsin peninsula jutting into Lake Winnebago. Here, at a breathtaking place called Fahrnwold-once a millionaires mansion, then a school for handicapped children, then a novitiate, and now a sanctuary of silence-I met with Father Richard McCaslin and Sister Marie Schwan.

     At a picnic table wrapped by ancient oaks and an oyster-blue shoreline, I asked the two retreat directors, "Why do people come here? What are they seeking that they cant find elsewhere?" Neither answered for a few moments, then Father McCaslin spoke first.

     "More, he said. They're looking for more. They come in search of meaning, for purpose, to make contact with something else, something transcendent. They come to find peace, to find freedom, to satisfy a hunger deep inside them for more than what their daily lives have to offer. They come to fulfill the longings of their human heart. They come with the need to step inside themselves so they can step outside again in a more fulfilling way," the Jesuit priest added softly.

     "They come to be quiet, to validate what they already know, to trust the authenticity of their own being. They know how to pray but they need the assurance they still can."

     Father McCaslin lapsed into silence, and then Sister Marie spoke: "We help them track their own inner path, to follow Gods footprints which are already there."

     "We each have within ourselves what we need for our own journey. The answers arent out there, out in the world, but within us. And we will only hear those answers if we are quiet enough."

    "I see women on their journey, working so hard," Sister Marie said.  "I have an image of their souls, stretched so tight theyre pulling apart, strained taut, frayed at the edges. 'I invite you,' I tell them,'to let your soul rest. Drop down into your deepest self and just rest, like a child in the arms of a good mother. ' "

     I drove away from Fahrnwold with that vibrant thought.

     And another: We need to tell ourselves what we long to hear. For it will be truer than anything anyone else can tell us.

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Lionel Fisher is the author of Celebrating Time Alone: Stories of Splendid Solitude (Beyond Words Publishing, Spring 2001), which records the emotional and spiritual triumphs of men and women who have found amazing grace alone.  At a time when more of us than ever are living alone, an estimated 40 million Americans at the turn of the century, we continue to seek our happiness and fulfillment, our answers, our very identity in others, points out the author.

In the fall of 1996, he embarked on a cross-country journey in search of what he calls the new hermits: modern solitaires who have stretched their aloneness to Waldenesque proportions, achieving great emotional clarity in the process. He also spoke with their urban counterparts who, through necessity or choice, prefer to savor their individuality in smaller servings. In his book, Fisher interweaves their real-life stories with his own insights and experiences to offer counsel, inspiration and affirmation on living well alone. Celebrating Time Alone affirms that its all right to be alone, to want to be alone, even to be lonely at times because the rewards of solitude can make the deprivations so worthwhile. Fisher, who also writes a column on the art of being alone, invites you to share your thoughts and feelings on magnificent aloneness.  Reach him at beachauthor@hotmail.com.

© 2001 Lionel L. Fisher.  Reprinted with permission of author