Off and on since 1455, the Convento dell’Annunciata has housed friars and welcomed visitors with an invitation to silence and stillness. It overlooks the Italian villages of Rovato and Coccaglio and its own thirteen acre vineyard, from which friars have made wine since before the monastery was built. Last year, the monastery took on a new identity as a boutique hotel with eleven rooms which until recently, housed the friars.
Francesca, the hotel manager, and her colleague Davide received me warmly, giving me a tour and encouraging me to spend time in its quiet spaces. Davide, who was born in Ravato and has a lifelong relationship with the friars, holds a wealth of information about the monastery and clearly loves it deeply. He shared with me that as the friars became fewer in number and older, they could no longer produce the wine, which was made from labor intensive methods.
In 1991, the monastic order leased the vineyard to the Moretti family, who already owned 500 acres throughout the nearby Francacorte wine-producing region. The family owns Bellavista winery and at the monastery, they continue the old tradition of pressing the ancient grapes, storing the wine in small oak casks in the monastery's basement. A few years back with only two monks remaining in the monastery, the operation became cost prohibitive and the family was offered to take over the monastery, tastefully converting the monastic rooms into places for contemplation and restoration. The church adjacent to the monastery remains open and holds service, and behind the altar hangs a painting by the 16th century Brescian master Romanino.
The monastery's library, the place of my morning meditation, has an energy of stillness that immediately quieted my mind. Later reflecting on my experience during meditation, I intuited that my mind had received the benefit of silence intentionally cultivated over hundreds of years by friars and visitors. Later in conversation with Davide, he shared that there was a long history of students from around Europe coming to the monastery and using its library for intensive study. Paying the friars a small amount for room and board, the library's stillness offered students a place for heightened concentration.
Cultivating inner stillness is an integral practice of every contemplative tradition and enables us to connect to ourselves and beyond, to that which connects us all. Without a practice of creating stillness, the mind is preoccupied with “shoulds”, lists, other peoples’ expectations, and these kinds of habits often lead to actions that are less impactful. In stillness, we can hear and come to trust our own voice and heart, and from this place, we can cultivate our gifts and become of greater service to the world.
The Convento dell'Annunciata and its 600-year-old mission of cultivating stillness is part of a worldwide tradition that has existed within different traditions across the world for millennia. Everyone, not just monastics, need access to these spaces to quiet the mind and be still. As noise pollution continues to rise, including in protected natural places, finding places of relative quiet that encourage stillness has become increasingly elusive and important.
During my stay at the monastery, I imagined a worldwide network like Hostel International, where people could sign up and spend time in a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue for a few hours or overnight. Those who sign up would commit to using the time as a mini retreat to cultivate stillness. Sojourners would pay a small fee which could help cover costs, as students did at the monastery when they were seeking an immersion into silence. People from different contemplative traditions could volunteer for shifts to accompany people on retreats, ensuring that guidelines are followed. They could also offer value-based, doctrine-free guidance in practices of quieting the mind.
Brooklyn, New York, is a borough of many underutilized, old, and majestic places of worship. I lived there for many years. Sometimes while walking, I'd quietly peek inside during a service so I could see the interior and noticed that there were often just a few people in attendance. Utilizing these spaces for short retreats of stillness would be similar to how they are often repurposed for meetings of other faith traditions, recovery programs, or shelter for houseless people. Unlike retreats where people travel to "get away" from their busy lives, places of stillness within the noisy cities and towns where we live help us practice closer to home.
Sharing spaces of stillness that had been occupied by practitioners from other traditions is a way of connecting with them. These places have in common the important function of being the container for the vulnerabilities, joys, pain, reflections, and private offerings of so many and, to me, are an important spiritual and emotional resource. This is especially true as increasingly more people find hierarchical faith traditions to be a poor fit for their spiritual evolution.
My first night sleeping in the monastery, the quiet was so profound that I imagined I was the only person in the entire place. Feeling a little silly, I told Francesca I had the sense of being alone in the monastery and asked her if that was true. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Before I left and locked the door, I peeked in your room to make sure you were back from dinner and alright.”