Refining Fire of Dailiness

"There is, of course, an anchorite lurking in each of us who wants to get away from it all, who finds the task of dailiness devastating, who looks for God in clouds and candlelight ... [Benedict] himself set out to live the spiritual life as a hermit and then discovered, apparently, that living life alone is nowhere near as searing of our souls as living it with others. It is one thing to plan my own day well with all its balance and its quiet and its contemplative exercises. It is entirely another rank of holiness to let my children and my superiors and my elderly parents and the needs of the poor do it for me."

Joan Chittister OSB, from The Monastic Way edited by: Hannah Ward & Jennifer Wild, p. 7