benedictus

"And in that moment a door was unhinged. I spoke, at last, about my own faith: confessing that the academic life had too often felt to me like the long Boston winter; that I felt such isolation; that I had kept God out of my writing, like a shameful secret. It was as though I was supposed to choose betweens my own depths, I told her, intellect and soul. But here the strong skeletal frame of the wheel was charted with mind and spirit, flesh and feeling - all equal, equivalent, necessary. Sitting with a medicine woman at a Benedictine monastery, I did not have to choose. I could round my back like a circle, stretching to embrace the line of spirit that had fallen away, but was not lost."

-Jennifer Carol Cook
an excerpt from her short story "Spirit Quest", which is the tenth chapter of the book "The Best Women's Travel Writing 2007: True Stories From Around the World."

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on a more musical note . . . i strongly urge you to purchase Hayley Westenra's rendition of "Benedictus" on iTunes. it's breathtaking.