More on The Wrestler

Here is another take on the religious symbols in The Wrestler via The Revealer. Thanks to Bene for the suggestion.

The Wrestler is a movie all about redemptive suffering, as we see the central role that dramatized violence plays in the Ram's life. At a couple points this is made perhaps too clear, as in an early scene where Randy shows Cassidy the scars his career has left him with. She responds by quoting Isaiah 53:5 by way of The Passion of the Christ's opening epigraph: "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by His wounds we are healed." She makes the connection even more clear moments later, dubbing Randy "the sacrificial Ram," and later in the film we see a tattoo in the center of his back of Jesus crowned with thorns. Clearly, the film wants us to view wrestling as a spectacle of redemptive suffering.

Read the rest here.

Reading the Religious in The Wrestler

I just discovered this on-line journal Religion Dispatches and what I've read so far is neat. You have to love a journal with the by-line "exhilarating the breakfast table since 2008."

There is a fascinating review of the movie The Wrestler looking at the religious symbolism and the religious ideas published yesterday. Here is a little taste of it.

Cassidy and Randy each work double lives, between their bodies as commodities and their bodies that have to pay the rent and support their children. Somewhere in all the meat are identities, struggling for birth. Each carries multiple names: Cassidy is “Pam,” while Randy “The Ram” Robinson is actually “Robin Raminski”—his character’s complexity unveils at least three names, as The Ram, Randy, and Robin. Yet, as with religion itself, and multitudes of other social structures, the crux of the matter of identity is the human body in all its aged protuberances, its scarified flesh, its rotund, risqué, and otherwise resolute features.

Read the rest here.

Movie Meme

Movies are my passion so what fun to be tagged by Paul!

1. One movie that made you laugh
Keeping the Faith

2. One movie that made you cry
Billy Elliot

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Poseidon Adventure (1972)

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Paper Chase

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
I’m with Paul - never apologize for loving a movie

6. One movie you hated
The Heartbreak Kid

7. One movie that scared you
Night of the Living Dead (1968)

8. One movie that bored you
Lions for Lambs

9. One movie that made you happy
Amelie

10. One movie that made you miserable
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
Silence of the Lambs

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Rev. Scott from the Poseidon Adventure (1972)

13. The last movie you saw
Lars and the Real Girl

14. The next movie you hope to see
Ironman


Now I tag Kevin, Lindsey, Melinda, Tim, and Anie

crazy days

It has been a long week since I last posted - it has been incredibly busy.  Lay readers' preaching workshop last Saturday, AGM on Sunday, Lenten Bible Study Sunday, regular work stuff all week with a whole bunch of extra meetings thrown in and some pension/house/insurance details to look after.  There are times when I really wish I had a personal assistant who ran behind me taking care of the details of life.  But then I think maybe I just need to unclutter my life a little and find more time to pay attention to things.

One really enjoyable thing I did this week was to take a few hours break and go see The Great Debaters with a friend.  What an inspiring movie.  It is based on the true story of a black college in Texas in the '30s whose debate team was so good that they took on the national champions, Harvard University.  In some ways it is a formula film (underdog school rises over obstacles) but it is so well acted (Denzel Washington is amazing and so is Forest Whitaker) and it is gritty enough in its depiction of race and poverty that it doesn't seem like a formula.

I also finished Sarah Paretsky's Fire Sale and thought it was great.  Paretsky writes mysteries with a hard boiled woman detective named V.I. Warshawsky and I've always enjoyed them.  This one is about trouble in her old neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago.  She gets sucked into a mess while filling in for her old basketball coach.  It gives a glimpse into the problems of poverty and race still occurring today without the same assurance that in the end the underdog will prevail.  Good read.

Now today is my day off and I have a long long list of things to do so....

A New Look at an Old Movie

Patrick Deneen has a really interesting take on It's a Wonderful Life over at What I Saw in America. He argues that George Bailey really hated the town that ultimately saved him and that his actions of building a new suburb for low income families also worked to undermine the community that came to his rescue. It is a very interesting critique of one of my favourite Christmas movies and fits my views of the suburbs (sorry Jane!).

Great Movie

I just got home from seeing August Rush and it was wonderful. It is a fairy tale - you have to accept that or it will just seem schlocky. It is the fairy tale of a boy separated from his parents at birth who has a gift that will reunite them despite many obstacles. And the music is great.

Eternal Sunshine

I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again tonight with a bunch of friends some of whom had read Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory. It really is a fascinating film. This is the review I wrote sometime ago for the Sower, the diocese of Calgary newspaper:

Perhaps it is a sign that I’m getting older but I’m finding myself grow increasingly impatient with movies that don’t capture my imagination quickly. And I’m finding myself increasingly irritated by the number of recent movies that tell their stories out of order so that you have to work especially hard to figure out what the story line is.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of those films that starts near the end, moves to the middle, then to the beginning and then back to the end so that it takes a while before you can figure out what is going on. And I knew something of the story line before I watched it.

Yet despite this I enjoyed the movie and I was glad in the end that I had persisted through my initial frustration. For Eternal Sunshine says some interesting things about the nature of memory and relationships.

The title of the film is taken from Alexander Pope’s poem ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ but unlike these storied lovers the two main characters, Joel and Clementine, have a tumultuous relationship. Jim Carrey plays Joel, a restrained and rather colourless character who meets the very colourful and extravagant Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. For viewers who are used to seeing Carrey play the manic comedic role this role may be something of a surprise but Carrey has shown before in other films that he has a wide range.

Joel and Clementine have met, fallen in love, fought, grown nasty towards each other and separated. Then Joel discovers that Clementine has taken advantage of some new technology to erase all memory of him and their relationship. Lacuna Inc has developed the ability to map the brain and erase portions of memory while leaving the rest of the memory intact. Joel is so angry that she would reject him like this that he decides to undergo the procedure as well. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that getting revenge on someone who doesn’t remember you doesn’t make a lot of sense. While he is undergoing the procedure, however, he begins to realize that even though he has lost Clementine he doesn’t want to lose the memory of her and what she has meant to him.

It is at this point that the film began to engage me as we see Joel and Clementine desperately trying to hide her in some part of his memory so that he won’t lose her. Despite their efforts, however, the procedure is successful and he wakes up with no memory of her. Then it becomes clear that the meeting at the beginning of the film was not their first meeting but their second when some impulse draws them back to the place of their first meeting. And as in their first meeting, they fall for each other at their second. But I won’t say more about what happens with love the second time around.

What intrigued me was the question of whether or not I would want to erase certain memories if the technology was available. Joel is confronted with the realization that he will be losing good memories with the bad and he comes to see that despite the ache of losing her he values what they had together. So I began to wonder why he and Clementine couldn’t have just erased the bad memories of their relationship and left the good.

The film actually gives something of an answer to that question in another relationship between the doctor and his receptionist but I won’t even begin to try to unwrap the complicated plot twists involving the Lacuna staff. Suffice it to say that the film seems to suggest that even painful memories of the hurts we do to each other are part of the process by which we learn and grow into better people.

Is it impossible then to ever forget hurts inflicted and received? The theme of forgetfulness is a rich one in the book of Isaiah and what we read there is that God will forget the sins of His people and they will forget their shame. But this is a forgetfulness that follows the hard process of truth speaking, repentance and forgiveness.

Lacuna Inc offers what many of us would like, a painless, fast and easy means to forget pain. In the end, however, the film seems to suggest that Joel and Clementine will choose a more difficult but also more rewarding path towards forgiving and forgetting the hurts they have done each other.

Michael Clayton

If you watch Roseanne reruns you get to see George Clooney back in the days before he emerged as one of the best actors in the business. If you want to see him at the top of his form go see Michael Clayton. Clooney plays a lawyer whose main task is to clean up other people's messes - he says at one point he says he's a janitor, at another point he's a bagman. When another lawyer loses it in a deposition Clayton is sent in to clean up the mess. But things are not what they seem and Clayton gets drawn into trying to sort out what is really going on.

There are some really tense moments but this isn't a car chase kind of movie - instead the tension comes from the emotional turmoil of Clayton's character as he's torn between his own demons and claims of friendship with the other lawyer (who is wonderfully played by Tom Wilkinson). Great movie!

Writing, procrastination, and movies

So I'm working away today on an article that has to be in absolutely, with no more extensions next Friday. But nothing has changed since I was an undergrad, I want to research forever and write in a night leaving me no time to edit.

I should have stayed home to write last night but instead, since it was the only evening this week when I didn't have a commitment I went to the movies with friends. We went and saw Elizabeth 2 and enjoyed it immensely. I guess it hasn't had very good reviews but I thought it was really well done. I've been a huge admirer of the first Queen Elizabeth since watching the mini series Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson as a kid. Everything I've ever read about her since has convinced me that she was a truly remarkable woman. And she was an Anglican!

My favourite part of the movie? when it becomes clear that God really does like the English Protestants best! (big grin here in case you want to take offense - and bear in mind that I consider myself a catholic, not a protestant).

Internet desert

I'm taking a few days holidays while renos are being done on my house and am having troubling getting internet access. So please forgive the silence.

I have had a chance to do some reading and movie watching. I reread Chaim Potok's The Book of Lights and the new Marcia Muller mystery. I'm now reading Donald Miller's Searching for God Know's What. I have also been rewatching season one of the West Wing for the first time in years. Last night I watched Reality Bites. I need to write about this but it will have to wait until I get back to a computer. My time on this one is about to end.

Summer movies

I'm in the middle of getting ready for renovations so I've got a demolition bin out front and I've been sorting through a lot of crap to find the one or two treasures before pitching the rest. Well, actually it is a complicated process of sorting out the garbage from the Sally Ann stuff from the recycling from the treasures. So while I sit and sort and shred and sort I watch movies.

Last night I watched Hot Fuzz. What a hoot! It is pretty gory in places so if you can't handle splurting blood you better not watch it. But it is a very funny spoof of bad buddy cop movies. The English do humour so well. Makes up for the cooking. I don't always like parodies but this one is really well done - and incidentally kind of a sweet movie about buddy cops.

The night before friends and I watched Breach (I took an evening off from sorting). It is the true story of the worst spy in American history. Really good movie - great acting and a tight story. There was lots of the spy intrigue stuff but also some really good inter-personal stuff between the spy and the young man assigned to shadow him.

Earlier in the week I watched To Kill a Mockingbird. I've never read it or seen it before and I liked it a lot. Gregory Peck has always been a favourite of mine and he is really good in it. I've always heard how brilliant the film is from Americans and I think it is something that you see when you've grown up in the States with that form of racism. I lived in the States for a year and found that the racism I witnessed there was similar to what I had witnessed here and yet different because of the different history. And we didn't experience the civil rights movement in the same way either. But when the preacher tells Scout to stand up because that's her daddy passing my throat closed. Powerful moment.

More Summer Fun

Had some fun the last two days. The kids and I went to see Evan Almighty and really enjoyed it. The critics have panned it but it is quite sweet. Okay, if you don't like sweet you probably won't like it but it is child friendly and has a nice gentle message. There are some really good things said about prayer and about caring for creation. I read through some of the reviews afterwards and a number of critics seem to be still angry at Mel Gibson's The Passion and the marketing of Hollywood to Christians. Why you'd want to take your anger out on this comedy is beyond me.

Ironically, Mark Joseph writes a piece for Fox News (read it here) arguing that it won't appeal to evangelical Christians because it is too 'green' and too critical of conservative (read Republican) politicians. So it is too Christian for some critics and not the right kind of Christian for others.

Today we went to the Lethbridge Buddhist Church for a tour. Rev. Izumi does some chaplaincy work with me at the university and is a delight. I enjoy his enthusiasm and his gentle spirit very much. It was interesting to hear his explanations of their space and their practice. We talked for some time too about the differences between practice here and in Japan. The Japanese theme continued this evening when the GD and I picked up a big order of sushi and other goodies and took them over to my best friend's house. After supper the GD spent two and a half hours putting together the BF's bbq and then we played a game of Nerts. We laughed so hard the tears poured down my cheeks. The only downside was that Robbie started to cough a lot again. He's been quiet for the last few hours but we'll try to see the vet tomorrow morning just in case.

It might seem like a corny line from Evan Almighty but there are times when grace is spending a hot summer evening drinking lemonade and playing cards with people you love and who love you.

Land of the Living Dead

Last night my GD and I watched the original 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead. It freaked me out but she just mocked it. It may be a classic but it only had two special effects guys! Well, it turns out I wouldn't do very well in a zombie crisis.

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Back Home

I spent my study leave in my favourite place in south Saskatchewan - a little piece of paradise. It was great to be able to read and think and write without easy access to my email and with my cell phone turned off. The local Co-Op brings in cilantro now and there is a really nice coffee place that makes a good latte so it is no hardship to be there. I rent a cottage from a super guy and we had some great conversations over some delicious meals. I've met some really interesting people through him too and had a chance to see some this trip. A friend of mine drove out for a couple of days and that was really great and of course I checked in with friends a bit via email and the aforementioned cell phone. Mostly though I feel quite cut off there - tv is limited and I didn't see a newspaper for two weeks.

Now I'm back to the reality of my van being in the shop again and an incredibly messy house - reality is crushing in again!

One thing I was really happy about though was being able to go to the movie rental place to pick up some more episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I'm hooked. I watched it in the '70s when it was fun but cheesy. Now it is really very dark with lots of sex and violence. Little kids watched it when I was a kid. Now it is hot enough that it set off the cottage's dvd player's parental controls.

It started out as essentially cowboys and indians in space. The bad guys were the cylons, robots invented by humans to do their grunt work. The cylons eventually rebelled and became the classic 20th century enemy - the faceless, emotionless horde that threatened to take over because when you killed one another just stepped forward to take its place. Maybe it was a metaphor for a time of war with an enemy that never seemed to give up and never seemed to diminish. Or maybe it was a way of talking about the dangers of the emerging technology - a kind of more popular (and much more enjoyable) version of 2001 a space odyssey.

In the new version the cylons have developed the ability to adopt human form so the war now is with the enemy within. They still fight cylons in space but the real threat is the cylons living next to them. A show about war has become a show about terrorism. Certainly this reflects the age we now live in.

Star Wars' Birthday

Just read an interesting post over at Episcopal Princess about tomorrow's 30th birthday of Star Wars. She may have been in diapers when it came out but I was 15 turning 16. My Auntie Ruth of blessed memory took me to see it while I was in Victoria that summer. I remember enjoying it immensely. It was a summer of the arts. My aunt was also stage manager of a production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and well and Living in Paris and took me to see it. I fell in love with the music. A few weeks ago I listened to all of it again for the first time in years and sang along with much of it.

The Movies go to School

In the past couple of weeks I've watched three movies about teachers. The first was History Boys, the film version of the play by Alan Bennett about a group of bright English male students studying for their O levels in Yorkshire. The second was Half Nelson, a film about a drug addicted history teacher in an inner city school. Finally I watched Freedom Writers, the true story of an idealistic young teacher who did amazing things with her class of mostly poor, gang involved, minority students.

I had first learned about History Boys while watching the Tonys last year and was looking forward to seeing the film which was made with the same cast. There has been some controversy about the homosexual sub-theme which sees a teacher molest his students. But the main focus of the film is education and the difference between seeing education as a formation of the mind (and perhaps character) and seeing it instrumentally as a means to an end. Richard Griffiths plays the 'General Studies' teacher who uses a number of unorthodox methods to engage the boys. The headmaster fears, however, that his methods will not be sufficient to earn the boys places in Oxford and Cambridge and so he engages another history teacher played by Stephen Campbell Moore. There is some marvelous dialogue and Griffiths' character valiantly defends a classical view of education but ultimately one can't help but grieve its loss in the face of an emerging view of education as a tool to get ahead.

Critics were almost unanimous in praising Half Nelson but I didn't like it much. It isn't that the film isn't well done. Ryan Gosling is very good as the drug addicted high school teacher and Shareeka Epps is powerful as the troubled student who becomes connected to him a kind of odd friendship after she finds him stoned in the locker room after a basketball game. The film has a gritty realistic feel to it but ultimately I thought it said nothing. And the more I thought about it the more annoyed I was. Gosling's character is supposed to be some inspirational teacher but you see no evidence of it. He spends most of his time in the classroom stoned or hungover. Occasionally he gets up and spouts some theories of history and scenes of his students reciting the history of the civil rights movement are cut into the movie. But big deal. The fact that these kids learn anything is more accidental than anything. I can't say I enjoy watching someone get stoned. The whole film felt more emotionally exploitive than anything else. There seem to be a lot of movies these days that appeal to emotion but that offer little in the way of ideas.

Freedom Writers is based on a true story and in many ways it is an example of the formula movie about the teacher facing unbelievable odds who finds a way to reach the troubled students and transforms them. But Hillary Swank is great as Erin Gruwell and the movie is genuinely moving. I was struck by how she makes the connection with the kids by introducing them to the Holocaust. She gets them to read The Diary of Anne Frank and these kids make the connection between their own lives of violence and the experience of European Jews. A number of years ago a former student of mine who was working in a local high school with First Nations students asked me to come to speak to them about the Holocaust. He saw a connection too between their experience and the experience of the victims of anti-semitism.

There are many good 'teacher films' like Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds, and Stand and Deliver but my favourites are the original version of The Browning Version with Michael Redgrave and the 1973 classic The Paper Chase with Timothy Bottoms, John Houseman and Lindsay Wagner.

Here is a review I wrote one fall for The Sower of Paper Chase:

In 1973 a small film was a surprising hit. Released on DVD last year on its 30th anniversary, The Paper Chase remains a captivating movie.

The film opens on the first day of classes at Harvard Law School. The first scene establishes the central relationship between James Hart, played by Timothy Bottoms in one of his best roles, as a first year student and John Houseman as Professor Charles Kingsfield. Houseman won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his marvelous portrayal of the infamous and famous professor of Contracts.

As I write this classes have begun again on our college and university campuses and I just watched the movie again as I often do at the start of a new school year. When this movie came out 31 years ago I was too young to see it but it spawned a tv series and I watched the tv show religiously. When I was in university a friend and I would hold all night study sessions scheduling our break to coincide with the late night reruns of the show. It was only later that I saw the film which is grittier and darker than the tv version.

Watching Paper Chase again for perhaps the tenth time I was reminded again of why I like this film so much. In many ways for me it captures all that is good and that is corrupting of academic life. Hart is passionate about the law and in particular about understanding contracts. I share his inclination for late night studying and know the joy that comes with being in a little world no bigger than the illumination of a desk lamp over a text. There is such delight in struggling to understand something and then realizing that you finally get it.

This is also a film about committing yourself to the pursuit of excellence. In some ways it reminds me of another surprising hit, Chariots of Fire which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1981. Again there are inspiring scenes of the hard work and agony that goes into doing your best. Perhaps the success of both these films is an indication that audiences are drawn to that kind of commitment to doing your best.

But there is the shadow side as well in Paper Chase when characters obsess over grades, jobs and competition. We live in a culture where this is often considered the only justification for an education. There is a college that portrays liberal education degrees from traditional universities in their television ads as useless because they don’t produce the desired jobs. I have been known to yell at the tv when these ads come on. I relish a film that shows this attitude to be ugly and soul destroying.

For it is soul destroying. Obsession with world’s rewards lead the characters into behavior that is destructive of self and others. Hart’s relationship with Kingsfield’s daughter Susan provides the place where Hart is challenged to save himself from these perils. Susan, played by Lindsay Wagner, is in the process of divorcing a former law student who dropped out to backpack through Europe trying to find himself. She is not about to go through this same process with Hart.

But this time, as I watched the movie, I was struck but something else I hadn’t really thought about much before and that is what the film says about the role of teachers. For while the film has a romance it is not a typical Hollywood romance. And while Hart has a close friend to study with this isn’t a typical Hollywood buddy film. The indispensable relationship in the movie is the relationship between a student and his teacher.

Twenty years ago I went off to graduate school at Wilfrid Laurier University and met my teacher, Peter Erb. Peter was and is the antithesis of the cold, distant, demanding Kingsfield. Instead, he is a man of great humour, generosity and encouragement. But like Kingsfield he has a passion for his discipline and like Kingsfield he inspires his students to share that passion. There is a scene in the movie when Hart breaks into the library in the middle of the night to sneak a look at Kingsfield’s own notes when he was a student. Hart is aware that he is a part of a great chain of learning passed from teacher to student, from generation to generation.

This is something of great value that is never captured in reports on universities. But for those students who have experienced it, it is life changing.

Shatner Roast

Forgot to say...we started to watch the Shatner roast and except for a couple of funny lines it was clear after ten minutes that it was mainly crude, hurtful, unfunny abuse. Turned it off and watched Dogma instead. It is crude and kind of dumb but a lot more fun.

Jane Fonda

I caught the last 15 mins of The Actor's Studio on Bravo this afternoon. It was an interview with Jane Fonda. Hard to get my head around the fact that she's almost 70. I also didn't know that she had become a Christian. Here is an interview with her about her conversion. We both love Anne Lamott.

Weekend Activities

Sunday evening always comes too fast although I'm enjoying having my first Sunday evening without a service in months. This was a really good weekend with a couple of movies, Over the Hedge (a delight) and Stranger than Fiction (really interesting and a great cast). I got a lot of work done for the chaplaincy, the parish and my class. And I got to got to the park with a bunch of friends yesterday. There were three adults and four kids and a couple more kids joined us for bocce. Our team picked up a five year old ringer who bowled better than the rest of us - mind you that wasn't difficult. I actually swung in a swing for the first time in years - I have photographic proof but discretion might be wise. I'd hate to have blackmail evidence out there on the net. It was a really fun afternoon.

Today we had a baptism out at Ascension. He was beautifully behaved, even when I poured water in his eyes. Having short arms is a disadvantage for a priest. It makes coordination of water and baby a bit more of a challenge. It also looks like we've raised enough money for a cow, a half dozen goats and half dozen pigs, a variety of mosquito nets and some literacy training this Lent. Gotta love it!

Choked Up and the Sound of Silence

Aaron's right - he's had a couple of posts about the hymn My Song is Love Unknown and how hard it is to get through it without choking up. I chose it for last night and then my colleague at Ascension chose it for this morning so I had a double dose of it. And choked both times. It is one of my favourite hymns and the last verse always gets to me. Like him I'm also having a hard time finding the energy or time for blogging lately. This week I was doing my regular chaplaincy stuff, teaching my course, guest lecturing in my friend Paul's class, and doing Holy Week prep for the parish. There hasn't been a lot of time to write (just ask my family).

I do want to write a little bit about the last couple of days though. This is my favourite season of the church year and last night's service was really lovely. We were only eleven and there is something very intimate about gathering with a group that size. I preach differently when we are such a small group. It isn't just that I am more informal, although I am that, but I feel comfortable sharing more from my heart. I know all the debates about using personal experience in sermons but I'm not really talking about that. I don't know that the ideas or basic content are different. But I think I take more risks with what I reveal of what is in my heart.

This morning's service was a real treat for me. Michael Ebsworth, the other priest in the parish, leads a small choir called Cave Cantemus. They are a wonderful accapella choir and they sang some beautiful pieces while taking us through a meditation on the seven last words from the cross. I got to sit in the pew and participate in the prayers and allow the music to carry me away. Afterwards I trained a new altar server who will assist me on Sunday.

This evening a friend and I watched the newly released Into Great Silence. It has been getting a lot of buzz and it was interesting. It is a documentary on a monastery considered the most austere in the world. There is no narration and almost no dialogue. Essentially it is two and a half hours of beautiful photography of the simplicity of life in the monastery. There are lots of shots of dust floating in sunbeams and drips of water. I must confess that I fell asleep for a bit in the middle but I still really liked it nonetheless. There is a delightful scene of the monks, who are allowed to go out and talk on Sundays, climbing up a mountain so that they can slide down in the snow. As beautiful as the setting is though it isn't immediately evident why someone would want to take on this solitary, silent life. And since there is no narration you have to figure it out through reflecting on the recurring texts inserted in the documentary. The film opens and ends with the passage from 1 Kings where Elijah hears the voice of God, not in the earthquake or the fire but in the still silence. There is a scene of two men being received as novices and from that and the recurring texts, 'unless a man gives away everything he can not be my disciple' and 'o Lord, you seduce me and I am seduced' one is given some insight into what draws men into such a severe life. I've spent some time in monasteries on retreat but I can't living there permanently. I can do silence for a few days but every day, no way!