“In the poustinia time goes very quickly, and an hour is a lifetime and a lifetime is an hour.”

One way to think about our experience of time is as a measurement of how much change takes place – in our surroundings, in our thought. Slow things down, lock yourself in a room without access to your typical distractions, and see what it does to your experience of time. “An hour is a lifetime and a lifetime is an hour.”

The solitary Catholic retreat house I go to for individual retreats places a copy of Poustinia in every cabin. In Doherty’s words, it’s a place I go “to enter the great silence of God.”