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I discover in lavender-scented Provence the reason the Church tries so hard to keep monastics away from s*x, and it’s not because s*x pollutes prayer and it’s not because s*x is the opposite of prayer either.
It’s because s*x and prayer fit each other so well that splitting them apart feels like the real sin. Like bread and wine, like gold and incense, they are made for one another, both liturgies of body and soul.
Every morning, I wake and dress and go to vigils. There I sing and chant my way into wakefulness. Sometimes Elijah is there, a couple mornings he isn’t, having stayed up the night before to write. And then I go back to my room and do lectio, savoring over Song of Songs and letting the words linger in my mind like wine. And then lauds, and then the lavender fields, whe
