Insignificant everyday things can become small Objekten of mindfulness like this spiral coming from the monastery forge of the Benedictine Abbey Königsmünster, which takes up at the two magnets paper clips: the supplied in the form of a cross as well as all others.

According to an old Latin verse, the Cistercians preferred valleys, the Benedictines mountains, the Franciscans small towns, and the Jesuits large towns for their monasteries: “Bernhardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat, / oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes”. The Benedictines of the Königsmünster Abbey have certainly kept to this, for their monastery towers high above Meschede, town in the mountainous Sauerland region. From a bird’s eye view, you’ll easily spot that the monastery’s buildings build up a small town on their own: in the foreground the grammar school and some of the monastery buildings, flanked by the House of Silence and the “Oasis”, further back the workshops with a smithy and carpentry plus the agricultural buildings – all this embedded in a park-like garden.