A Quiet Day

Today, as a household, we went for a quiet day to Worth Abbey. This is the place "made famous" by BBC2's show 'The Monastery' in 2005. I haven't seen any of that show myself but it was an interesting place to visit regardless. The picture shows a view of the Abbey from the Quiet Garden. And it is in a beautiful area of West Sussex among the trees and the hills whichwere striking if only for their not-Londonesque quality (I may have been in London for too long...)

The day started off with Father Stevens ( a former abbot of the place and resident since 1961) leading a Lectio Divina for our group and then we spent the rest of the day in quiet - absolutely divine! Life has been particularly full-on at the moment with very little space so I really appreciated today. And I think that's true for all three of us, and it was generally quite a fun thing to do as a household. The Quiet Gardens are particularly lovely and I had a gorgeous walk following the stream down through the forest in a glorious peace and did not see another human until I emerged again. My soul was too happy to care about all the mud I was walking through...

Not really knowing what to bring along to a monastery for a quiet day my bag was rather full but actually I found that what I really wanted was to walk around doing nothing else. Suddenly a week long silent retreat makes a lot more sense to me now as a concept as i could have easily carried on and only felt like I had started at the end of the day... Maybe next time? :)