The notebook · July 23, 2026

The Room That Isn’t Mine

Every summer, the same thing. I go away for a few days, and my morning prayer falls over. Not all at once, not in some grand renunciation: it fades. The first morning I tell myself I will do it later, the second that holidays are made for this, and by the third I am telling myself nothing at all. I come home with the vague sense of having left someone without news.

For a long time I put it down to lukewarmness. You go away, you slacken, faith follows suit — a line of reasoning with the advantage of making me feel neatly guilty while explaining nothing. This year I looked closer, and it was far more stupid than that. At home, I pray in the same armchair, at the same hour, with the kettle rumbling behind me. Elsewhere there is no armchair, no kettle, no hour that belongs to me. It is not faith that goes missing when you wake in a borrowed room. It is the setting that had been carrying everything else without my knowing it.

It humbled me a little, discovering that my inner life hung on a piece of furniture. Then it relieved me. Because an armchair can be replaced. On the third morning I sat on the edge of a bed that was not mine, in a room I had not chosen, and I prayed there, badly, for five minutes, listening to the others getting up next door. It was not beautiful. But it happened.

And I noticed something: in that room without landmarks, the prayer was barer. At home, part of my recollection comes from the staging — the light, the silence, the cup. There, all that was left was me and what I had to say, unwrapped. A little like Jacob, who had no chapel to hand on the night he slept outdoors with his head on a stone, and who woke saying he had not known God was in that place.

Maybe that is what I will try to bring back this time, more than photos: the idea that the place is not the condition. That my prayer can be moved house without being lost. And that five clumsy minutes on the edge of a bed are worth more than a fine habit that cannot bear to leave home.

In Manna, the same prayer waits for me, wherever I sleep tonight.