Dance of a Fallen Monk

Book excerpt: A nationally syndicated columnist on religious issues delivers a penetrating and poignant account of how he learned to hear the music of life—and dance to its joyous beat. "In sharing his story, Fowler succeeds in touching us." —People After almost twenty years of strict celibacy and silence as a Trappist monk and priest, George Fowler decided reluctantly to leave the Catholic Church at the age of forty in search of a more meaningful spiritual life. In rejecting the strictures of monastery life, and the constraints imposed on him by the Catholic Church, Fowler came to realize that the inner serenity and spiritual peace he spent his life searching for could only be found "while uproariously ignoring the greater part of what the churches thump their Book about."