We Cistercians are called not so much to an Order, as to a specific monastery. Just as a man is drawn to marry a particular woman, and no other, so too we "take to wife" a particular monastery, and no other.

But to expect a husband or monk to explain why they embraced for life this woman or that monastery, would be equivalent to ask for an explanation of "soul." You can't, simply because you can only experience soul. You can say that a person has soul or that a piece of music has soul... but that's about it.

In the end the most you can say is that "for me the monastery wears. I experience it as a good fit..." from far inside me, from a "land" whose "local vocabulary" knows nothing of words or images: the depths where, St Paul says, "the Spirit and I are one --- yet two.