Often it is helpful to fix on some other object or look at something different. I started to watch “Into Great Silence”, a film about the Carthusian monks at their mother house La Grande Chartreuse. In the film there is virtually no dialogue and no background music apart from the plainchant of the Office. It is as if, instead of watching the movie, one prays with it.

What the film captures is the profound stillness of the Monastery. There are long shots of just a candle or the towel swinging in the air as the monks have dried their hands on it before going into the refectory, or the water moving in the bowl that they wash their hands in.

But what was strange was that after watching the film for an hour it was as if I was in the monastery. As is often the case when I stay in a real monastery, I went to sleep profoundly happy. They say they make saints, they don’t talk about them.