Fifty years ago when I was home from college on holiday break, my former psychiatrist invited me to go to one in our state for an unstructured weekend retreat, i.e. you’re on your own.
At the time I was reading G.I. Gurdjieff’s, “Meetings with Remarkable Men” and I took it along not knowing really what one does at a monastery. The book describes a monastery that Gurdjieff et al. supposedly visited and how faith and understanding are acquired. The acquisition is illustrated with a story about two elderly monks. Here I read from the book about these monks and the monastery where they lived.