Distilling the essence of life made pure

I’M in St Mary’s Abbey, at Glencairn, near Lismore, Co Waterford, which is home to 36 monastic nuns.

Awaiting the arrival of Abbess Sr Mary Fahy in the kitchen, I’m lamenting the colour of the walls (flesh), and thinking how the human heart finds its home in some very peculiar places.

There are 1,800 Cistercian monastic nuns worldwide. “A strange rare breed,” is how Sr Lily, a farmer with a gift for epigram, puts it later.