The monastery is not a place to "get away from it all." It is rather a place for getting out of the way. The monastic life is an environment wherein one faces the self and puts the self aside. In the monastic way the self is decentered. The monastic life entails the lifelong task of making room for the other: another, others, God. It is a space for welcoming the other, a center of hospitality. Hospitality is openness to the unknown, expending the self on the unfamiliar, the stranger, the exile. The monk is called to sustained hospitality to the guest and the stranger both within and outside the community. He does not live for himself but is toward and for the other, toward that which lies beyond himself and his own immediate concerns.
— Michael Downey, Trappist