Imitatio Machina

The machine cannot be our mirror.

Illustration Credit: RETURN Magazine, adapted from the book ‘Wanting’

The essay below, Imitatio Machina, is being re-published with permission. It originally appeared at Return.Life.

I spent nearly five years seriously discerning a religious vocation, several of them in Italy. One year I went on a retreat at a monastery in Umbria, where I got to know the abbot during my five-day stay. One evening he noticed that I…