W. and I both had our monk years, which surprises everyone who knows us. It surprises us, too. How did we end up, in our different ways, with the monks?
It was poverty in my case, W. remembers. Sheer desperation. What could they do, seeing me snivelling and cold, but take me in?
With him, of course, W. says, it was genuine religious feeling. He took a vow of silence. He spent days in solitary prayer. Why didn't he stay there? Why couldn't he have spent a contemplative life with his brother monks?
It must have been my fault, W. surmises, although I didn't know him at that time. I must have already been sent out to find him. It was fate: someone, somewhere, had decided that his life should be ruined.
Lars Iyer's Blog 