Journalist Judith Valente writes, “Letters are the remnants we leave to mark important episodes in our lives… We introduce ourselves, confide our hopes, confess our errors, offer our thanks, and say goodbye in letters.” This married woman and self-described over-achiever has been sharing correspondence with Brother Paul Quenon, a celibate and contemplative Trappist monk who resides at the Abbey of Gethsemani of Bardstown, Kentucky. She writes, “The results is a dialogue between people stuttering to articulate life’s universal questions from within highly diverse contexts and from very different perspectives. Brother Paul writes as a monk steeped in silence and the ancient prayer practices of monastic life. I write as a married professional woman striving to bring a sense of prayer and contemplation to my scattered secular life.” This conversation encompasses a wide range of what it means to be human in a post-modern era as Valente and Brother Paul bring forward life’s universal questions from very different perspectives. Judith responds to Brother Paul’s question, “Does this bring you closer to God?” saying “I think that’s the question we have to ask ourselves all the time in our work. Is this bringing me closer to the Divine Presence? Or, is this bringing me closer to the sacred in daily life, or the transcendent in daily life.”
