The new Monastery in the Confederation of Democratic Sims (the  CDS) replaces an older building created in 2007 by Arria Perrault and her group. Inspired by the Abbey of St Mary on the island of Iona in Scotland, it reproduces many of the spaces of the real life original: the Chapel, the Cloisters, the Chapter House, the Scriptorium and the Refectory. It adds a Crypt which is not in the original.

But unlike the original ecumenical Christian abbey in Scotland, this building has a different purpose. The Monastery is dedicated to the remembrance of and a reverence for that quality of humanity which has been lost since earliest history, a memory of Sophia, the Divine Feminine, the balance between the halves of human-ness, the male and the female, the dark and the light, the night and the day, the containing and the driving forth. In earliest history, humankind revered the earth, from which all life sprang, and the respect for their connectedness to all of nature enabled thousands of years in which humans lived in harmony with their world. But the last three or four thousand years has seen the rise of culture and the breaking of those bonds to the flow of nature, culminating in the current day where, through our own broken-ness, the very existence of life on earth is threatened.

The ancient stories of the Grail, heard in many cultures, recalls that which was lost, and the seeking which many have embarked upon. It preserves the hope and longing that someday that which was lost may be found, and indeed return balance to the human race. The focal point of the Monastery is the Grail, the symbol of balance, male and female, light and dark, destroying and nurturing, building up and taking down. As this passage from Ecclesiastes of the Jewish Bible relates, in a text more connected to the ancient wisdoms than the male-dominated messages found in much else of it:

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.