Retreatant's Room at Mepkin Abbey
by Suzanne Zoole
(Painting, 2003, 15" x 22")
Episcopal Church of the Advent - Spartanburg, NC
soozle@charter.net
 

 
This place, this room pictured here, is one of the many quiet spots at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Moncks Corner, SC. This is the place I return to every January to be silent for a week and to grow. It is here in this plain room and in the low country setting of old oaks, Spanish moss and camellias, and in the Abbey Church that I spend my week -- getting my bearings, coming to terms with people and the world, finding my center, and returning to things eternal.
 
The bed (where reading contemplation and dreaming take place) and belongings are true to the room's contents. The design on the wall is added. It is a copy of a clay tile found in the ruins of a Cistercian Monastery in Wales. It was painted in exquisite solitude and silence.