Bells of the Hours speaks with authentic art out of a well-seasoned experience of the daily monastic life. It bears the authority of more than 50 years of practice, prayer, and reading from a disciplined and ascetic life in a Trappist monastery. Silence, listening, and reflection fill these words, which surprise and refresh the mind interested in ground-level views of a monastery and the distinctive round of work, song, and joy that takes place there.

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The bells say: business does not matter. Rest in God and rejoice, for this world bis only the figure and the promise of a world to come, and only those who are detached from transient things can possess the substance of an eternal promise.

Thoughts in Solitude

Thomas Merton

Chapter XVI