Being a student at Belmont Abbey College and an Intern at St. Meinrad School of Theology during the summer has led me to have some sort of daily interaction with monks for the majority of the past two years. I’ve spent more time with monks than my own family, and in a way, have adopted the monks in my life as my second family. I can’t help but think about how each of these monks have taught me something…how each congregation has given me a valuable treasure of some sort. I often talk more openly about my time in Indiana than anything else, but I think this is a fault of mine which betrays the essential role the Belmont monks have had in my life.
Belmont Abbey is the first place where I was introduced to monasticism. It is the first place where I learned about monks and St. Benedict‘s Holy Rule. It is the first place where I was exposed to the Divine Office. It is the first place where I ever heard Gregorian Chant - even though it was in English.- and Fr. Arthur was the first person to show me how to understand those funny little neumes and 4-lined staves of chant notation. It was these Belmont monks who first captured my imagination as I would catch glimpses of a robed figure turning some corner off in the distance. Who were these people? What do they do? Why do they do it? I wanted to know.
The campus of Belmont Abbey College is more or less divided by a body of water - well, if it rains enough - called Tex’s Creek. No one can give a straight answer as to why it is called this. Some joke that since it is little, they wanted to call it Texas Creek, shortening it to Tex’s. Others claim it is where one student named Tex stumbled in a drunken haze to puke his guts out. This is probably most probable given the nature of the communities on each side of the creek. Across the west bank of the creek, you have the monastery, the basilica, the theatre, the library, and the academic buildings. Across the east bank, there is the cafeteria, the dorms, and the gym. Scholarship and the quest for God are on one side, and the other side…is another world.
Across the east bank, there lives a community, if one could call it that, of students. Here, one can find graffiti informing the world of who is or is not most likely to perform sexual favors; hear the shouts of suitemates telling people across the hall what to do with themselves with four-letter verbs; here the smell of cheap beer and cigarettes and weed wafts through the breezeways; aluminum cans of various sodas and beers decorate the shrubbery and patches of grass; and here, if one is so fortunate, can be heard the sounds of fighting or sex coming from the adjacent room, if the music isn’t loud enough to drown these things out. It is another world and a creek it its border.
Across the west bank, the climate is vastly different. I can walk down a hallway and hear professors talking about everything from philosophy to theology to psychology to biology and to history. Students walk down Abbey lane discussing what they have so far learned that day while on their way to the library. In the library, another treasure, is held a vast sum of knowledge as only a Benedictine environment could provide. On this side of the creek we can enrich our minds in the classrooms and theatre, and our spirit in the basilica. Yes, the basilica and monastery are on this side, and here men live as breathing monuments of what it is to seek God in every aspect of daily life. They gather several times a day to pray in the basilica and offer mass, and we students are invited and welcomed to join them. I am happiest on this side of the creek. When I am in my room doing homework, often with my window open, I can hear the abbey bells ringing the hour, and on days I am most busy, they ring out to my room as the monks are called to prayer. The bells call out from the west bank to the east bank like a rope being tossed down by a man calling to one who has fallen in a deep well.
It is on this west side of the creek, in the basilica and with the monks, that I learned one of my most valuable lessons: silence. I’ve always been the quiet sort. I am the only child of my family and the first grandchild of my extended family. My parents and I always lived in the more country areas of York County, so it was a challenge to find people my own age to be around. I was always a little separated from my classmates at St. Anne’s Catholic School in Rock Hill because unlike most of the students there, my parents were not rich. I didn’t invite my friends over because when I went to their house, they had swimming pools, video games, a staircase, and…stuff. No one really wanted to come to our small home where my entertainment came from throwing rocks at the passing train or teasing cows. I got to learn early on how to be comfortable with myself, but silence had yet to be learned.
Here, at Belmont Abbey, with my imagination peaked by these strange men who wore more clothes than should be allowed in mid-August, and all black at that, I set off to do my research. In my mind, this was like the Discovery Channel, and I was Jane Goodall living amongst monks and not apes…and that made me grin on many occasions. I wanted to see what they did, and I knew the best way was to do it myself as best I could. So, with their help, I joined them at Mass, Vespers, and on a good day, Lauds. Despite how much I thought I knew about being alone, I had to learn about being silent. It is something necessary to know when one is the only non-monk sitting in a choir stall with monks across from a group of other monks in the dead quiet between chanted psalms. What do you do? Instincts warn not to stare at the other monks across the way. Such awkwardness! The body wants to move then. The eyes want to read ahead to see what the next psalm is. The hands want to fidget. The feet want to shuffle.
Oh no…am I breathing too loud? Self consciousness sneaks in. I bet they’re all looking at me…I bet they think I’m weird. I have to lower my voice to chant with all these men so I don’t draw attention to myself…or…should I? For all the quiet in the sanctuary, for all the stillness in the stalls, the mind wants to create for itself a cacophony of distractions.
Silence. I had to learn it. Silence is more than being quiet, it is more than being still. I had to learn it because I was not comfortable with it as I had thought I was. I was more comfortable with solitude of a simple sort, of being able to occupy myself without the help of others, but I was not at all comfortable with allowing myself to be unoccupied, still, and internally and externally silent. I still have a long way to go, but these Belmont monks have brought me far along in this goal. During the spaces between psalms, I can now sit still. I don’t have to move my hands, move my feet, or read anything in the psalter. I don’t have to think about anything needless, or try to worry over how I am in relation to others. I can sit and be comfortable and content, even when there are 20 men and one or two students around me doing the same. Best of all, because of the silence - real, true silence - I am now ready to learn how to listen. Like silence, actually listening will involve much more than my ears, but that is another thought for another time.
Somehow, I manage to remain in this new silence for much of my day, and this new thing that I am learning of silence I try to take with me across the creek. Somehow, the silence which these monks have begun to teach me helps to deal with the bombardment of the senses that I experience on the students' side of the creek. Without it, I can scarcely imagine how well I would even be doing, academically or spiritually. These Belmont Abbey monks have given me a great gift, and I love them for it.
