Overdue Report on December Visit to Monastery

 Most of my visits/retreats begin on Sunday evening and end on the afternoon of Wednesday or Thursday. This time, however, I arrived on the afternoon of Friday, December 9, and stayed until the afternoon of Wednesday the 14th, For my spiritual reading I had brought The Genesee Diary, by Henri Nouwen. It consists of extracts from the diary he kept for the seven months he was living alongside the monks of Genesee Abbey in upstate New York. I had thought that it would be way to long to finish during my visit, but instead of pondering every line, I read it normally, stopping to note really striking thoughts. In that way, I finished it while I was there.

A couple of weeks into his time at Genesee, Nouwen asked the abbot, "How am I doing?" and he replied, "I guess okay. Nobody has mentioned you yet." More striking was Nouwen's insight that when you want people to be thinking about you, to be paying attention to you, "you haven't even begun to create a little space for God in your heart."

I also had Puritan's Diary, by Charles Coulombe, a history of America from the point of view of an integralist Catholic. He sees in the British colonization of North America and the subsequent history of the United States a tale of anti=Catholicism triumphant. He has a point, but his ideal of a Catholic establishment is hardly the necessary remedy.

The daily routine was similar to previous visits — prayers at 6:00 a.m., noonish, 5:30 & 7:30 p.m. (slightly different on Sunday), breakfast about 7:25, lunch after the noon prayers, dinner and recreation after the 5:30 service.

During recreation I spent more time than previously with the Prior, Fr. Augustine, who proved to be more genial than I had expected, and Bro. Andrew, a college student from a monastery in Alabama. Of course, there were other monks joining them for games and conversation.

At one point, Fr. Augustine mentioned that he had a video of the 1982 Midnight Mass at the Abbey. One of the networks would trans mit the Mass from a different location each year, and in '82 they chose St. Anselm. He dicided to play it for some of us on Tuesday evening after recreation and Compline. It was interesting to see the monks of the time. Most of them had been there in the late '60s (and most have died or left since then) while a few had entered in the intervening years.

One unusual event was meeting on Monday afternoon with an Assistant Vice President of the College and the Director of the Humanities Institute. I gave the money to create a scolarship for 18th Century Studies in memoery of my father. The awardee will work on a research project during his/her senior year, and present the results in a paper. Thei inspiration comes from my dad's frequent syaying that if he could live at any other time, he'd choose "the 18th Century, because there was a ferment of ideas." The money comes from an inheritance from my brother.

The Director of the Humanities Institute, Gary Bouchard, gave me a copy of a small book of poems he had written, What News, Horatio? He was inspired by some bizarre headlines in his local paper, and each poem has one of those headlines as its title, but then he lets his imagination run free. As the title of the book suggests, each poem also has quotes from or references to Hamlet. It's pretty amusing.

So in many ways this was similar to all my earlier visits, but there were also some unique aspects to it.

A Long-awaited Visit to the Monastery — Part 2

 On Sunday evening, as I had planned, I read the introduction to Rowan Williams' book and turned the The Assignment. I had tried to begin reading it several weeks earlier, but the first chapter introduced so many characters that I couldn't keep them straight, and I set it aside. Now, however, I read two chapters and felt less confused.

As I began the book, I thought that the teacher's reason for the assignment made sense: it is necessary to understand the mindset of racists and bigots if we want to be able to argue effectively against them. Genocide is an ongoing problem. The class was one for outstanding high school seniors, taught by a much admired teacher. The school had no Jewish students. The two who objected were long-time friends Logan, who lived with her father, a college math professor, and Cade, whose parents ran an inn beside the lake (Ontario). Others in the class included Mason, captain of the hockey team and son of the abusive coach and Logan's rival for valedictorian; his girl friend; two other members of the hockey team; and a gay boy named Daniel. When the assignment was given, one of the hockey players gave a Nazi salute and said, "Heil Hitler," to which the other said, "Sieg Heil." The teacher rebuked them.

At 9:30. with nothing else to do, I went to bed. Although I never go to bed before midnight at home, since I don't bring the internet with me to the monastery, there is nothing to stay awake for once I've done all the reading I want for the evening.

Monday, Sept. 6, was Labor Day. I got up late, at 5:25, but still managed to be in church well before the start of Vigils and Lauds, which runs from 6:00 to about 6:45. Since it was a holiday, the kitchen crew had the day off, and monks prepared all three meals. For breakfast, at 7:25 Bro. Celestine offered a normal variety (eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes), plus "overnight apple french toast," which was delicious. He said that it was customary in his family on Easter Sunday.

Later in the morning I previewed the readings for the following Sunday's Mass, caught up on the newspapers in the chapter room, read Chapter 1 about Benedict and chapters 3 & 4 of The Assignment, and visited the graves of the two monks who died in July.

Mornings generally followed a similar pattern: rising shortly after 5:00, church, breakfast, newspapers, books. As time went on I found myself reading increasing amounts of the novel, and I held to my plan of a chapter of Williams in the morning and another in the afternoon — trying to draw applications for myself.

Midday Prayer at noon was followed by lunch in the chapter room. I don't remember who prepared it. It was pretty basic sandwich makings, chips, etc. I sat at a table with Abbot Mark and Brothers Ignatius, Basil, Celestine (both of whom were going to resume seminary studies on Tuesday), and Thomas (the new novice).

In the afternoon, it was more reading, napping, haustus (snack) at 3:30. (The pattern for the next two days as well.)

Mass was at 5:15, followed by steak (IIRC) dinner in the cloister yard, followed by Vespers, followed by KP, followed by more reading before my bedtime.

By this point I had read three chapters of The Way of St. Benedict. In the first two Williams points out that stability is a central part of a monk's vows. The monk will be part of the same community for life, which means that, whatever you think of him, he's not going away. So you have to live with him. Williams draws from the Rule of St. Benedict three necessary qualities for a monk: he must be transparent, a peacemaker, and accountable. Papering over pproblems won't work. Williams suggests that these qualities are needed in the wider world as well. In the third chapter, Williams recalls Augustine of Canterbury and the monks who accompanied him to England from Rome shortly before 600. He suggests that they and subsequent generations of monks evangelized the English by being an example of living as Christians peacefully in community.

Tuesday, September 7. Things happened at the usual times. We were back to having meals in the refectory, with reading at lunch and dinner from the book Grant, by Ron Chernow. While I was there, we were hearing about the years just before the Civil War, when Grant was in St. Louis and impoverished.

In the morning I went to the bookstore, where I saw The Boethian Commentaries of Clarembald of Arras, translated and edited by David B. George and John R. Fortin, O.S.B. Since Fr. John had been a college student about to enter the monastery when I was there in the 60's, I "had" to buy it. I read the introductory material while I was there, and now it's in my pile of books to be read.

At recreation after dinner, I was introduced to UNO, by Fr. Augustine the new prior and novice master, Father Bede, and Brothers Ignatius, Andrew the college freshman from Alabama, and Thomas the novice. I watched a couple of games and then played a couple (and almost got the hang of it).

To be continued.

A Long-awaited Visit to the Monastery

  In December 2019, at the end of one of my customary semiannual retreat/visits to St. Anselm Abbey in New Hampshire, I said to Abbot Mark and Brother Ignatius, "See you next summer." Covid prevented that, as the monastery was not receiving guests. Usually I visit in July, to include the celebration of St. Benedict's day, July 11. But when I learned that they were again receiving guests and tried to schedule a visit to include St. Benedict's Day and Bro. Aloysius' final vows on July 10, they were already at capacity with other guests who were coming for Bro. Aloysius. So I ended up scheduling my visit for September 5-9.

When I finally was able to schedule a visit, Brother Ignatius had just been appointed Guest Master, and when I arrived in mid-afternoon on the 5th, I found that he had assigned me to the last room on the guest corridor. It's on a corner and is the only one with windows on two sides. As I was arriving and bringing things in from my car, I briefly encountered Bro. Ignatius and later Abbot Mark.

On Sundays there is a service of Vespers and Benediction at 5:30, followed by dinner prepared by one of the monks. (There are employees who are a kitchen crew who prepare most meals, but not for Sunday evenings and holidays.) That day Abbot Mark had prepared cheesesteak sandwiches and fruit salad. I sat at a table with Brother Andrew (who doesn't seem to like me), Fathers Iain and Benedict, and Brother Amadeus, whom I had never met before. He is applying to transfer to St. Anselm from Belmont Abbey in North Carolina and he arrived during the lockdown. He is teaching in the St. Anselm College required humanities program for freshmen and he seems pleasant enough.

After dinner on occasions when the monks have cooked, they also do the clean up. So dinner was followed by Compline, and after that we trooped into the kitchen. It's something other guests usually don't do, but I feel a connection with the monks going back to the 1960's when I was an applicant to join, so I njoy being part of the crew. I joined the group drying dishes, which is what I always do. One monk puts things in trays which get run through a big machine. After "we" dry them, others put them away. Meanwhile, the Abbot washes the big pots that won't go through the machine, and others dry them and put them away.

All of that was over by about 8:00, and it was time for Silence until after breakfast, and I went to my room. As usual, I had brought two books, one religious, and one "other." The first was The Way of St. Benedict by Rowan Williams, the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, which had been the "table reading" earlier this year during meals taken in silence in the refectory. It has seven chapters most of which try to suggest ways in which the Rule of St. Benedict can apply to the contemporary world outside monasteries. Each chapter is based on an article he had written some time ago. I figured I could read the Introduction on Sunday, two chapters a day Monday through Wednesday, and the final chapter on Thursday morning.

My other book was The Assignment by Liza Wiemer a novel based on an actual incident in which two students objected to an assignment in an advanced history class. Students were required to support one of two sides at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, where the question was whether to send Jews and others deemed undesirable to death camps or to sterilize them, confine them to ghettoes, and work them to death. The studebts in real life and in the book refused to take part and asked that the assignment be cancelled on the grounds that it's wqrong to require people to defend either alternative. My town's civil rights, anti-discrimination committee had decided to read it and discuss it at our meeting on September 20.

To be continued.