Pico Iyer's illustrious writing career has taken him around the world many times, but one of his favorite places appears to be a tiny monastery high above the Pacific Ocean. Aflame: Learning from Silence is a love letter to a place to which Iyer has returned over and over for more than 30 years, seeking solace and renewal in the consolations of solitude.
The location that has played such a central role in Iyer's spiritual and emotional life is the New Camaldoli Hermitage, established in 1958 in California's Big Sur. The monks who reside there are Benedictines whose congregation dates to Italy in 1012. In addition to operating a bookstore and supplementing their revenue with the sale of "(brandy-soaked) fruitcake," the monks open the property to visitors like Iyer.
Though he admits his "aversion to all crosses and hymnals," Iyer finds himself drawn to this place of "just silence and emptiness and light" and its "nine hundred acres of live oak, madrona, redwood and desert yucca, a quarter of a mile above the sea." As he experiences it, "The world isn't erased here; only returned to its proper proportions." In addition to his spiritual reflections, Iyer recounts some of his encounters with the Camaldolese monks.
Iyer weaves insights from thinkers like Meister Eckhart, Albert Camus, and Thomas Merton into his own reflections and evocative descriptions of the Hermitage's physical surroundings. As Sarah Anderson recognized in her book The Lost Art of Silence, a life of quietude may be anathema to some. For others, like Pico Iyer, it may just be the antidote that's required to survive in a cacophonous world. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer