An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western Worlds Most Austere Monastic Order
by By Maguire, Nancy Klein
Category: Religion , Christian Rituals & Practice , General

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of   Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and   ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the   Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey   into a society virtually unchanged in its behavior and   lifestyle since its foundation in 1084.   An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait   of the customs and practices of a monastic order   almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of   the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s?the decade of   hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality?and enter an   entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own   making. After five years each must face a choice: to make   "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster; or to   turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude.   A remarkable investigative work, the book combines   first-hand testimony with unique source material to   describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter,   which recounts a reunion forty years after the events   described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire   reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and   which did not.