Mr Loveday's Little Outing is a darkly comic short story by the author of Brideshead Revisited. A young woman visiting a relative in an insane asylum is constantly drawn to an inmate called Mr. Loveday, who ministers to the needs of the other patients willingly and attentively. Asking why so normal a man is permanently institutionalized, she is told that he murdered a girl decades before; he is probably quite normal now, but has no family who could arrange for his release. The young woman has political connections, and arranges for Mr. Loveday to leave the asylum. To everyone's surprise, he returns at the end of the day he is released, saying that he has had a splendid little outing and has done something he has wanted to do for a long time. Sure enough, the murdered body of a girl is found not very far from the asylum gates ....

Meditating is a little like being in that asylum, in an odd way. When we first meditate, it takes us to a place that is initially unrecognizable. Nothing seems to make sense there. It's a place that seems to challenge all our preconceptions about what is important, what is real. Living there, even for a few moments each day, we start to question everything we've taken for granted in the normal world. But after a while, it's as though life in the asylum begins to look real, and everything that's going on outside bizarre. We realize we don't do very well outside the asylum. Inside it, things may be strange, but at least we feel we're somewhere that's working for us.

Every day, though, we let ourselves back outside ... and sure enough, just like Mr. Loveday, we end up doing the same old things, and thinking (quite correctly) that we'd be much better off inside again ....