When I met "the lady on the phone" Sarah yesterday while volunteering, she invited me to a metaphysics class that she attends. If I'm being honest, I didn't really know what that was, but knew it wasn't everyday I get an invite to one. I knew I would always wonder if I didn't go, so I said "yes". I then found out that the class was taught by a French monk at a monastery west of the city. That alone sounded like an unique adventure, so I gathered my notebook and pen and went.
The classroom was not very big, maybe twice the size of a elementary school room. In it squeezed maybe close to 30 adults, including several other monks. Sarah told me that this course is actually for the monks-in-training to learn metaphysics and they then opened it up to the locals as well.
I definitely can't say I understood all of it, both because of his heavy accent but also because it is apparently a 3 year course and I attended somewhere in the middle. I wrote down statements he made like "show me who you choose and I will show you who you are" and "if a community does not make room for an artist, it will not grow - it will get stuck". The content was thought provoking, perhaps the whole point of the course. These are the experiences that make us grow, not just because I learned some things, but the unknown has become known: I will not be signing up for a metaphysics class anytime soon. At least for today. Tomorrow will be different and I may answer something different then.
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