They too provide a desert for reflection. For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is definitely monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of power and social importance. And she feels it.
All monasteries have a bell.
He was adamant that they respond immediately, stating that if they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. For him, the monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your own agenda to God's agenda. Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. But there are different kinds of monasteries, different ways of putting ourselves into harmony with the mild, and different kinds of monastic bells.