Ten days after graduation for the Class of 2006, I'm at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery about 50 miles southeast of Louisville, Kentucky. I come here every year at this time for three or four days, usually in the company of one or two of my colleagues at Rhodes College. The Abbey is a place of extraordinary serenity and beauty, both the buildings and, especially, the grounds. In secular terms, I'm here to decompress from the academic year and recharge my batteries for the summer. But I am a Christian as well as an academic, so I'm also here in hopes of stepping briefly outside linear time and into sacred time, where every day recapitulates the monks' centuries-old cycle of prayer, song, study, and work.This article is the second of a four-part series.