On keeping a bench.

The desert ammas knew that bodies have a much longer memory than minds. They wrote often about the value of the cell — the small room where a monk would sit, week after week, year after year, mostly doing nothing in particular. The cell wasn't magic. It was that, over time, the body learned: when we sit here, we listen.

You do not need a monastery. A particular chair will do. A bench in the garden, a window seat, a corner of the porch in the early morning before the rest of the house wakes. The body, after a few weeks, begins to know: here we slow down. Here we listen.

I encourage every directee, in our first conversation, to think about where their listening place might be. Not where it should be. Where it is, already. There is almost always one — a place you instinctively drift to when you want to be a little more honest with God or with yourself. The work is to notice it, name it, and return to it on purpose.

When you can't find quiet anywhere else, the bench is waiting.