A Time To Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh FermorMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
It was a fitting book to spend the dinner hour with. At under a hundred pages, it was short enough for one leisurely sitting, and did indeed relax this reader so much that if I start typing weird letters, it's because I have fallen asleepppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.
* slaps self awake *
The three star rating is due to the brevity, hehe. Something this nice ought to be longer! It's three essays written about three visits to monasteries, either living or dead (like in the case of Capadoccia).
Fermor belonged to a different time, but as a modern he knew of "the tremendous accumulation of tiredness, which must be the common property of all our contemporaries."
He found blessed peace in the monasteries he visited, where "no demands were made upon my nervous energy: there were not automatic drains, such as conversation at meals, small talk, or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison everyday life."
It makes this reader want to live, even briefly, amongst contemplatives "who reduce the moral overdraft of mankind," for, Fermor says, "they alone have as a body confronted the terrifying problem of eternity."
Reading this book before yet another working weekend was restful and restorative, and that is always a wonderful thing. My mind is peaceful. On to live, and fight, another day! But first, good nighttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.
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