First light.

"IN A REAL DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL," WROTE F. SCOTT Fitzgerald, "it is always 3 o'clock in the morning." Fitzgerald should have waited another hour. The dawn begins to break at 4.

That is the time when they pray vigils at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. And it was there, at 4 in the morning, that I saw the sun begin to rise, even though, outside, it remained pitch black.

I was in Conyers for a private retreat, three days at a Trappist monastery in a spare room with a bed, a desk, a chair, and a lamp. And books. I brought lots of books.

Settling in Friday evening, I leafed through the literature in my room, including a pamphlet with testimonials from others who had been there before me. I had planned to skip vigils and get up in time for lauds, at 7--much more reasonable, I thought. Wire needs to pray in the middle of the night?

Well, leafing through those testimonials, they made me feel like I did. Time and again, the former guests sang the praises of the night vigils. To miss that, they implied, would be like going to China and skipping the Great Wall. Reluctantly, I agreed to give this vigil stuff a shot. I set my alarm for 3:45, and clicked out the light.

A few moments later, I was shaken by a sound that burned my disbelieving ears: my alarm.

3:45? Already?

I could hear the thump-thump of footfalls tip and down the hall--other guests scurrying to church. I weighed skipping out, taking a pass. Wouldn't a couple more hours of slumber do me good? I waited for the answer. It didn't come. So I got up.

I threw on a T-shirt, staggered into the bathroom, splashed the sleep from my eyes, blinked blearily into the fluorescent light, and reeled dumbly downstairs into the church.

I slipped in through the side door. Other, hardier souls were already up and poised for prayer. Monks in their choir, guests in their pews. I padded to the rear of the church, sat on a squeaky bench, and gazed it a quiet world stirring awake.

"Unbelievable" is the one-word description Flannery O'Connor used to describe this very church, 40 years ago, when it was new. She was right. It defies mere belief.

This soaring abbey church is a prayer--a psalm in stone, grace in stained glass. Its arches bend above, like hands meeting in meditation, fingertips touching. There isn't a wasted line, an unneeded beam. It contains within it everything needed to attune the soul and focus the eye. It soothes and celebrates, all in one breath.

I barely had time to absorb this before the monks began their chant--a low murmur of praise and thanksgiving. Lights burned on the walls; candles glowed by the tabernacle, high behind the altar. Among the monks, there was bowing, shuffling, the flutter of pages being turned. For 20 minutes or so, they sang, prayed, whispered. And then it was done.

Silently, they slipped from the choir. One by one, the lights of the church dimmed. In an instant, the monks had vanished, becoming shadows, joining the darkening corners of the nave.

And there we sat, guests of the abbey, in our spindly wooden pews--and guests, also, at a mystery that was just beginning to unfold.

The eye couldn't help but be drawn to the tabernacle and the altar, where candles persisted to glow. It was the only light in the church.

It was late July, and the air was uncommonly cool. The doors of the church were opened to the Georgia fields, and a small breeze crept in and through and around the church. I could hear leaves moving, crickets singing--nature unfolding its own psalm book, fingering the ribbon and finding the page to begin another day.

The rest is silence. Exquisite silence.

In this prayer of a church, on this canticle of a morning, silence said all. And with nothing to hear but tile beating of my own heart and the gentle musings of the world outside, it was infinitely easier for me to find the words to talk to God.

And talk we did.

We spoke of thanksgiving and gratitude, of generosity and of greed. We talked of friends, family, work. We confided thoughts of love and loss; we examined worry and woe and unsettled grievances. And when thoughts of the world, and all its perils, overwhelmed my bewildered heart, God and I simply savored the silence, and agreed that sometimes there is nothing that needs to be said. He understood. That was all I needed to know.

And so it was that there in that church, seated on a plain wooden plank in the darkest hour of the morning, I saw the dawn begin to break. The world was still blackness and shadow and the twitching of candles.

But in my heart, it was sunrise.

I slipped out of my pew and back to my room--astonished and at peace and blissfully, cheerfully awake.

The early monastics, it seems, knew something about the importance of vigil prayer. Here, after the dark night of the soul, the day awaits. We begin again.

I finally understood what all the previous guests at the retreat house were talking about. I'd made it to China and had seen the Great Wall.

And it is, indeed, a wonder.

GREG KANDRA, writer and story producer for the CBS News program 60 Minutes H. He lives and works in New York City.