AS FAST AS CLICKING CAN HAPPEN.
“Catholic religious life has organized a circadian rhythm since medieval times that is still maintained today within monasteries of cloistered persons (referred to here as “monks”)…Five monks and five nuns following the split-sleep night schedule for 5 to 46 years without interruption and 10 controls underwent interviews, sleep scales, and physical examination and produced a week-long sleep diary and actigraphy, plus 48-h recordings of core body temperature. The circadian rhythm of temperature was described by partial Fourier time-series analysis (with 12- and 24-hour harmonics).”
YOU ALL HAVE TO READ THIS ENTIRE BRIEF. FIVE TO FORTY-SIX YEEEARS.
“A first bell rang a single beat at 23:45 h (for waking-up, getting dressed, and briefly praying in the cell), followed by a single beat at midnight (for coming to the church), and several beats at 00:15 h (the beginning of the Matins), with a monk designated to ring the bell by pulling on a long cord. The members came together in silence and joined the others in the dark. The monks prayed in silence for 3 min and then the Prior knocked on the wooden stall, which indicated the beginning of Matins.”
SOMEONE STOP ME FROM JOINING A MONASTERY IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES PLEASE?? or just let me??
“Appointments were set up via papers placed in the hatch or via the monk in charge of the link with the outside world.” SIGH OF HAPPINESS
LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT
I grew up just down the road from Gethsemani. I went through long phases as an annoying teen of trying to Live As If Cloistered (basically making myself wake up at weird hours, and refusing to talk to people, also refusing to explain to people why I was giving them the silent treatment).
That is the best dirtbag teen action, silent judging division, ever.
M@LL0RY
I WILL JOIN YOU IN THIS MONASTERY
The longer this jobhunt lasts, the more tempting being a nun looks.
I used to fantasize about joining a monastery/convent until I went on a couple of retreats at one. Everyone was very nice and it was peaceful and all, but I had a visceral realization by the second day of lining up in the refectory for meals – this whole thing is an INSTITUTION, like a school or a jail or a hospital. Not for me. I can’t push a meal tray down a buffet line every meal for the rest of time. Thank god we live in time where women have other options besides marriage or the convent.
(sorry, meant to reply to askelade!)
I really think that the concept of mendicant Friars (and nuns because feminism) should be brought back into social awareness.
I would totally totally dig being a nun if it entailed wandering the country in a sweet robe helping people out and musing on the wonders of the wilderness. More sociable than hermitage, less institutionalised (and frankly stifling) than cloistering, win win.
Like Peace Pilgrim! http://www.peacepilgrim.com/
Exactly like Peace Pilgrim! Maybe if I don’t find a full time job in the next few months I’ll just become her.
I could totally get down with a cloistered life, provided I was in the care of Brother Cadfael and instrumental in solving some mystery.
But you’ll either end up as a corpse or he’ll try to set you up with that nice young good-looking man/woman from the city…
I would be a nun right now for sure if I could have been completely sure it would have been card playing and licentious gossip like in Diderot and not earnest psychodrama so dull it barely deserves the name like in Rumer Godden
plus one time in a Paris supermarket I saw a nun all head to foot in gray-black nun-style garments, old-fashioned-looking to me but not costumey, with a shaved head visible under whatever she had on her head and dark blood-red lipstick on. classiest look I ever saw in my life. someone will ask how I know this was a factual nun and not like an Ann DeMeulemeester mannequin on a day out and the answer is I just knew. the odour of sanctity I guess.
Which Rumer Godden? Because In This House of Brede made being a nun sound very attractive, I thought, but Black Narcissus really did not.
(The books I have read by former nuns have made me definitely not want to do it.)
I think some of that might be *because* they’re by *former* nuns? Like, nunning most definitely isn’t for everybody, and I imagine the ones who love it and stay forever don’t publish books about it.
Except for, like, St Terese and suchlike.
I second the question, because this article made me think “oh no, poor me, the suffering, now I have to read In This House of Brede again, such woe very misery.”
I had a brief period where the idea of being a nun was quite appealing to me. I was still an atheist, so that would have been a bit of an impediment, but the concept outside of the religious requirements sounded nice.
Maybe if there were a secular convent…
I also wish for this!
My hope is that one day the rad applachian nuns who were featured on TAL will accept atheists.
As a pre-teen I very regularly declared that I would like to be in a convent except for the believing in god piece. But the knitting beautiful laces and selling them through a sliding slot window was very deeply appealing, as was the absence of men.
I think the same thing sometimes. A life of quiet contemplation away from the world sounds great as long as I don’t have to contemplate God or sin or things like that.
Any other Toasties see Into Great Silence? Documentary on a monastery in (I think) the Alps, where they talk like once a year.
Mr Cleo and I saw it in the local art theater – one of the previews was for some WWII drama – both of us kept waiting for explosions or SOMETHING to happen once the actual movie started. I had no idea how conditioned I am to expect *action* once the lights go down in the theater. It took me like 30 – 40 minutes to relax into the film and accept that it really was just going to be peaceful, silent monks being silent and peaceful. (Pretty similar to my internal experience on the couple silent retreats I’ve been on, except on retreat I keep creating my own internal emotional drama).
I did see that, having read a book on the Carthusians as well (An Infinity of Little Hours). As a former zen monk myself (where it is perfectly okay to be an atheist btw), I thought the film was way too fast moving! I wished they had kept scenes going for longer…
That made me laugh! (And Mr Cleo is also a former zen monk – his stories have pretty much disabused me of any romantic notions I had about monastic life).
Was at the Grand Chartruse for a week during their 900 yr anniversary, stayed at the Auberge of the Flowering Hearth, also an enchanting book.
I absolutely love the idea of first and second sleep, and had a short phase of doing it myself while I was on a more flexible grad school schedule. (At one time I successfully made a friend staying with me for a week wake up around 2 a.m. for us to chat for an hour or two.) It’s such a magic time, in between the two sleeps! In the Middle Ages they considered it the best time to procreate, as well…
So, I was actually a little disappointed to find out that the monks in this article on a segmented sleep schedule apparently have a relatively poor quality of rest. I really thought this was going to vindicate first and second sleep 🙁
Any other fans out there? Uninterrupted sleep is an unnatural creation of the industrial era!
Definitely a first-and-second sleeper. One of the most liberating things I’ve ever done was accept that that’s just how I sleep and not worry about it. Plus find a job where I could accommodate my “unnatural” circadian rhythms.
I live for second sleep.
In my workaday life I get up at 0400 and go to bed at 0800, but on days off? I hit the sack when the sun goes down and wake up at some point in the middle of the night. Mostly I don’t do anything during that time, save pee and make sure the critters are all okay, but it’s a wonderful break.
Me, awake in the middle of the night, when even Mongo the Guard Redonk is snoring at the end of the bed. I have the universe to contemplate and all the time in the world. Stress disappears.
And I still wake up just as the sun is rising.
You get up at 4am and go to bed at 8am? Or am I misreading you?
No, you’re not misreading; it’s a typo. I go to bed at 8 pm, not 8 am.
Though there are a lot of days I wish I could sleep 20 hours.
Is it still considered first and second sleep if you don’t wake up until 9 or 10am, read awhile, and then sleep again at 11 or noon? Because that is my Saturday jam.
That is my favorite too.
On a slightly related note, I just love it when scientists study monks of any flavor – like when they measure the brain activity of Buddhist monks.
My husband dreads my yearly reading of In This House of Brede. It just makes leaving it all to become cloistered sound so peaceful and fulfilling.
So what I’m hearing is we need to establish a secular Toast Monastery/resurrect the Beguines, y/y?
Only if we can bring Sister Mary Clarence and that novice who totally had a crush on her.
BEGIJNTJES 🙂 awww yes.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begijnen_en_begarde…
Apparently in Germany they ARE resurrecting the Beguines…
http://www.dachverband-der-beginen.de/
Apparently they’ve been here for years (that website is imprinted 2012!). That’s truly fascinating.
I’ve always wanted to be a medieval monk. Does that sound odd? In my Early Middle Ages class in college (I was an astrophysics major who liked to dabble in other disciplines) my professor became so concerned for my evident love of monks he said, with perplexed worry, “You know the point of this class isn’t to convert you to become a cloistered monk.” I just smiled. We both knew that is what the class was all about.
Perhaps it’s a desire for a stylish tonsure? They’re long overdue for a comeback.
Probably! It seemed like she knew everyone (at least tangentially) at the abbey.
Butbutbutbut… they get to sleep late after that, right?
Right?
Can we also have Stanley Tucci?
We'll have every single one of the girlfriends and boyfriends the Toast assigns to us. We'll never fight about them.
Has anyone else read Anathem? Because who wants to start a secular Math with me? We can live a cloistered life and spend all of our time on personal art or science projects and grow our own food and sing complex polyphonic equations at each other…
Aaaaah yes. That book took so long to actually get to the action, and I loved every minute. And then when it GOT to the action, it was so worth it!
Might I also recommend to you Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson? It has similar pacing and feel.
I would do this with you if we made a solemn vow to keep Neal Stephenson himself out. I love the guy, and I recently calculated that I’ve read 25,782 pages (20¼ War and Peaces!) of his work, but I hated his attitude and posturing so much in Anathem. All those sick burns against Structuralism! Très au courant, Neal, it’s not like Structuralism wasn’t succeeded by Post Fucking Structuralism your entire lifetime ago!
All that aside, yes, the Mathic system in general made me very happy.
Oh I completely agree. I ended up skipping those parts on subsequent re-reads. It doesn’t detract much from the story, surprisingly.
I guess I should add a disclaimer that no one is required to worship platonic ideals at this math either (unless they want to).
Crone Island FTW