Laurence Freeman, OSB

A lot can happen in forty days and forty nights.

The forty days and nights of Lent are about simplification, purification, getting priorities reestablished and remembering that God, not my ego, is the center of reality.

The word discipline comes from the Latin discere, meaning “to learn.”

Solitude is truthful and often delightful, even when painful. Loneliness is a hell made up of the illusion of separateness.

In our noisy, cluttered world, we need silence. Silence heals, refreshes, energizes, inspires, sharpens, clarifies. It simplifies.

The experience of meditation is unlike any other. It is difficult to define because it is an entry into such radical simplicity that we lose even the words to describe it.