I’ve just returned from Bruges and my ten-day stay at the medieval beguinage, now a Benedictine monastery. I am still floating a bit from having inhabited this peaceful sanctuary of giant poplars, singing sisters, meals around a communal table, roses reaching up to my window… I went having no expectations besides getting some work done in a calm, beautiful setting, in one of my favourite European cities. I thought I was going to an all-female retreat house; as it turned this wasn’t the case. I was given a sunny room overlooking the sisters’ lovely inner garden (not the Popular lined green you’re familiar with if you’ve visited Bruges) in a guest-house, where in fact, anyone can stay. Yes, anyone I suppose, though the address remains confidential. I’ve discovered what to my mind is clearly, hands down, the most glorious place to stay in Bruges, yet I cannot recommend it unanimously, only to people who are sensitive to the spiritual hum. The Benedictines are a contemplative order; their days are structured by prayer, their monastery is kept quiet, their habits are long and immaculately clean even though they tend a vegetable plot, a chicken coop and some rough looking rabbits. The soothing effect of their quiet, prayerful life is palpable and when I finally relinquished to it – this took a day or two – something truly marvelous happened though I’m hard put to define it ; the best I can do is describe it as a “quieting” and a “deepening.” Time seemed to expand because I was no longer running against it and writing became not easier, but simply possible again. So I wrote, mostly in the mornings. Lunch, the biggest meal, was served at 12h30 and dinner at 6h30 leaving me quite a lot of time to get things done in between, including a delightful daily exploration of Bruges and a pilgrimage back to the Saint Ursula shrine. If like me you shop and cook daily for a family, you will immediately understand the luxury of leaving the writing table and going downstairs to the refectory for a delicious, home-cooked meal, prepared by the good sisters and for which you have not had to lift a finger. The Benedictines have earned my eternal gratitude. Incidentally, Jupiter beer accompanied all meals.
I struck up friendships among the other guests who came from Germany, Spain, France and Switzerland and genuinely enjoyed the few exchanges I had with the sisters who struck me as vivacious, warm-hearted, discreet and infinitely attuned to the life of the spirit in all of us. I left Catholic high school with a rather negative impression of the nuns, who seemed dour and cold. A few were excellent educators and to these I owe my gratitude, yet, with the exception of one, they did not exude the simple, open-hearted goodness I felt emanating from these Benedictines. We tend to forget in our treacherously fast-paced lives these anachronistic enclaves of people who perhaps hold the key to Eternity. I believe it was the philosopher Paul Ricoeur who spoke of eternity not as time without end but simply as the present opening up, expanding to its infinite fullness. How often do we allow this to happen in our busy lives?
Below some photos of the beguinage plus one outside the walls of a young girl who also, I’d say, understands eternity. Someone has knitted her three-quarter gloves.