Virgin Time #

Even as an adult removed from the dogma of her early Catholic upbringing, Patricia Hampl felt the pull of contemplative prayer. In her quest, she traveled to the "old world" of Catholicism, to the golden haze of St. Francis's Assisi and to the surging crowds of Lourdes. Inevitably, she found the "old world" right at home, in the very past she had tried to escape. What she was looking for confronted her, finally, at a monastery near the Lost Coast of Northern California in the still, virgin moments of silent prayer.