With a Wonder and a Wild Desire

This Blog is Done (For the time Being)

2010-10-12T09:45:00.002-04:00

As many have no doubt taken notice of, I haven't been posting on this blog very much. The reasons are many.

I'm in class all day. I work all weekend. I use free time to write papers and hang out with friends. I just don't have enough time to update this blog as regularly as I would like or with the same quality of material as I would want. I haven't had too many earth-shattering insights anyways, as my College Life is coming to an end before it transitions into Grad School Life (hopefully). No doubt, once that happens, I'll have more to say and will perhaps begin this blog or one like it anew.

So that I don't leave anyone hanging, there is another blog: The Back Pew. It's authored by me and some some friends at Belmont Abbey. It isn't as "serious" as this one is, and with multiple contributors, It winds up being updated more often. I've got some things up there, and there will be more to come. I hope you all have enjoyed this blog for whatever it could give you. I will probably start removing content in a week or so. If you come back then and everything's gone, that's what happened!

Peace!

July 13th reflection on One Bread, One Cup: A remix of sorts.

2009-07-14T00:17:00.003-04:00

Fr. Anthony likes to keep my on my toes, so to make things interesting for my life, he had me deliver a reflection speech at tonight’s formal dinner with the St. Meinrad Office of Youth and Young Adult Formation staff and their spouses, as well as members of the monastic community who have served the interns as spiritual directors. I wasn’t sure what to talk about, but I heard that Fr. Anthony wanted me to share the same thing I had shared at Compline on June 26th. I felt that the reflection I gave then would suffice, but the interns had heard it twice already, and the monks we had invited are a different crowd than a room full of high school students.

I was working on a short few days notice and decided that the best course of action would be to rework the same basic idea that I had in the previous reflection, but at the same time, try to make it interesting and enjoyable to the new crowd. So, if you are familiar with the first version of this theme (posted an entry before this one), you will see the similarities in this version, because I like to recycle. It’s a little longer than the last, but I believe it was received well. Thank you again to Fr. Anthony for providing his fatherly guidance and support of my writing efforts this summer.

I had never been to Indiana before, a state I had only heard rumor of, and the existence of St. Meinrad was not a part of my life before the summer of 2008. A friend and One Bread, One Cup intern at my college had asked me if I was interested in taking the place of a last-minute drop-out. I didn’t think too much when I replied “sure,” saying yes to something that was little less than a mystery to me at the time.

Soon they came. A package of forms: an application, requests for medical records, media release contracts…endless lines to add my signature to. I knew then that something serious was going on in far away Indiana. I wasn’t sure what that was, but given all the paperwork, I figured that by the time I finished it, the position would be filled, though I was still trying to figure out what that position was.

“Well,” my friend had said, “we work with the youth. We work with monks. We teach. We learn.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it sounded like the best I would get out of her as I could see her struggling to explain what life at St. Meinrad was like. Now, during my second summer here, I can see that nothing she could have said would have been adequate.

A month or so after sending in my information and learning I had been accepted, I flew from North Carolina to Louisville and spent my first hour among a small group of interns as they discussed the previous summer. I heard rumors of monk versus intern baseball games, some place called Dairy Barn that everyone seemed to have some odd emotional attachment too, and I heard something about snow, mud, and a cathedral of trees that was hilarious to everyone for reasons I didn’t understand. These were clearly strange people, and St. Meinrad was sure to be a strange place.

Even stranger was the joy people in the van had as soon as we had visual contact with the Archabbey as we made our approach. It was all overwhelming to me. On top of this hill in the middle of nowhere was this huge building with sandstone walls that would eventually come to mesmerize me. Two tall spires reached for heaven whereupon clock faces seemed to be like eyes peering out over the sleepy town below, watching over everyone and everything.

I was hurried to my room in Bede hall, which looked like it should have been condemned decades ago, and the other interns seemed to love it in a way that only a mother could love a child. I then rushed with the new arrivals after unpacking as I heard the frantic calling of abbey bells signaling that Vespers was imminent. I found a seat in the Archabbey Church that evening and entered into a rhythm of life that would change me forever. I still ask myself from time to time, as I did that first summer, what kind of place is St. Meinrad?

As Fr. Anthony pointed out at one time, St. Meinrad was built to last. The Archabbey isn’t going anywhere. It is a monument to stability, anchored to the Hill unmovable. It is as unshakeable as the faith of those who call this place their home. It radiates with the prayers of monks and pilgrims alike. It’s solid foundations and sturdy walls are a fortress of rock in which all who visit encounter the abiding presence of God. The peace of this place never leaves the memory of one who has been touched by it.

These outer walls haunt me when I am off the Hill. I have seen them take on the color of the setting sun, shine pale in the moonlight, and grow dark with the falling rain. I think of these things and wonder why…why does St. Meinrad choose to visit my thoughts so often. I find myself longing for something in those moments when I can not sense peace in my life, and my thoughts are drawn back inside the Archabbey Church; back to laughter in the halls, walks down the lane, the hasty calling of bells, and the glow of two big yellow eyes watching over sleeping monks and interns in the night.

It took me a while to realize that what I was longing for was not only St. Meinrad and all of the happy memories I had had here, but it was that presence of God so clearly apparent on the Hill. Whenever I thought back to scenes from the summer, I was being reminded of something more important than a few good laughs or impeccably chanted psalms. God. He’s always trying for our attention. He reaches us where we need him most and makes himself visible in his own way. He has shown himself to us through St. Meinrad. He has made St. Meinrad an example of himself: Immense. Immovable. Unbreakable. Permanent. Present.

I…we, have found his peace on this Hill. We have seen his compassion in our confessors. His presence in Fathers and Brothers. His sense of love and longing to share in our joy through new friendships. His constant security in the gaze of two clock-face eyes. His call to conversatio in the urgency of bells. His voice of consolation in the firm yet gentle chants of the evening. This place is permanence, a guarantee that God is with us and is not leaving. Memories of this place are whispers from God, a hand nudging us to remember that he was with us, is with us, and will be with us. No matter where we go, St. Meinrad still stands. No matter where we go, God is there.

As God gathers us inside himself and has taken on our very flesh, he leaves a piece of himself in each of us, drawing our hearts to his voice. He calls out to us on this Hill and from this Hill. Here, a place has been made for him for all who come here looking for him. This place is his place and it is our place to be with him in a world that rejects him. In those moments when we feel this place tugging at our hearts, we know that it is God himself knocking on the door of our hearts, calling out to us “What is this place, and will you have room in your heart for me?”

The internship program and One Bread, One Cup experience is a way in which we come to the Hill as interns to learn how to make a place for God in our lives. St. Meinrad really is a strange place, and the interns are very strange people, or so we have been taught to think by society. Only strange people would want to live in a building like Bede Hall, where the air is always warm and the showers give the user the decision between ice water or lava each morning. Only strange people could look forward to praying with even stranger monks several times a day in a world where all our joy is supposed to come from television or the internet. Only strange people would choose to spend a whole week – three times this summer – running off of 5 or 6 hours of sleep to teach high-schoolers (perhaps the strangest people on earth) how to live the liturgical life.

St. Meinrad teaches all of us that the strangeness of mystery ought to be a reality lived daily. Sometimes people talk about leaving the Hill and returning to the “real world.” What they don’t understand is that here, on this Hill and in our hearts, reality operates more profoundly than it ever could anywhere else. We have learned the reality of prayer, of life, of death, of our very souls here. Coming from a delusional society, we have been acquainted with the only reality that matters. Only a madman would consider it strange for the human soul to seek out and find comfort in the mystery of God for which the union of the two is meant to be natural.

St. Meinrad has taught us, through this internship, what it means to be real human beings: growing in knowledge of our God; Allowing our hearts to be set ablaze by the encompassing fire of his love; Learning to see the face of Christ in all those we meet here. We have been given a chance to recognize and meet the needs of those youth who have come to us to encounter Christ for themselves by our example. We have been taught how to learn, how to teach, how to love, and how to live. We have learned how to stand as tall and as solid as this Archabbey wherever we are, firm in the faith, our hearts made a place of peace to share with all we meet.

(C) 2009 Elizabeth Suaso

More Monastic Lessons

2009-04-30T20:42:00.001-04:00

When I came to Belmont Abbey College, I was immediately enamored with the place. I loved the way the breeze came in through the Quad right around 4:30 pm when the sun was circling the sky as I made my way to mass. I loved the shadows that were cast along Abbey Lane as I walked from Stowe to the Science building. I laughed when I walked by a trashcan and could hear a squirrel in there rummaging like crazy. I got this great feeling of mystery when I would catch just a bit of one of the monk’s as he turned a corner up ahead of me. Who were these people? Why did they become monks? They must be saints, I thought. Before I even moved onto campus, I had this picture in my head of all these monks sitting in their cells reading great books by Fathers and Doctors of the Church. I imagined that they probably were very soft spoken, if they spoke much at all, and that their speech would be as golden at St. Bernard’s at that.

After a few weeks, I had a little different view of the monks. They weren’t mysterious anymore, and they had lost my imagination completely. I had had time to see them at Lauds, at Mass, at Vespers, in the academic halls, walking around campus, and eating in the cafeteria. They were, for the most part, nice guys. They would say hello, they would wave a hand, though that hand might be holding a lit cigarette. Some of them would come to Mass right in the middle of the opening hymn. Some would trickle in during the penitential rite. Some would be missing altogether. Some who were there looked completely disinterested. Some looked downright agitated. Some couldn’t wait to get out of their habit and back into jeans. The honeymoon was over.

There were many cafeteria conversations my first year revolving around the idea of “Why in the world did so-and-so even become a monk?” Some of them seemed like they would much rather be elsewhere. Sometimes we, little experts that we were, would compare the text of the Rule of St. Benedict to the actual practices of the monastery. The didn’t seem, to us, to be adhering very well. You could see them, even in the middle of mass, leaning over to another and then chuckling about something. So we wrote them off. They were like the Island of Misfit Monks. They weren’t holy enough for my friends and I. We expected holy monks. We didn’t want human monks. So my freshman year came and went.

My reality check came at mass one day. Over the course of the new semester, I had been paying more careful attention to our monks, trying to see what made them tick. Why would some of them want to be monks if they didn’t even seem to like it? I paid a little more attention to what they were doing. Yes, the same ones who looked indifferent and bothered still looked that way during the readings. I was sure some of them were nodding off right in the middle of the homily, which itself was a brief 45 few minutes. Afterwards, a server, one of the college students, set up the altar for communion. And then it happened…during the consecration. Everyone kneeled, as usual, and the consecration began. I looked up to the choir to see the monks. Most of them, especially the ones I had assumed could not have cared less about anything, had their folded hands resting on the ledge in front of them, and there they bowed their heads upon their hands. Others were actually covering their faces with their hands. I then looked into the pews where my fellow students were. And there they were - there I was - just staring up at the altar as if it were a television program.

Reality. Some people feel so drawn towards God that the only logical thing to do is to seek him 24/7 in the monastery as a monk or nun. His presence is felt so deeply in their lives that they only thing they can possibly do is dedicate their every waking moment to his greater glory. Then there are the rest of us. Some of us know we aren’t half way near to anything remotely resembling holiness. Some of us think we are, but we certainly are not. Those of us with half a brain will recognize how much we need God, and we will try as best we can to seek him out wherever we are. Monks are no different. There may be a few holy monks, but what I discovered that day, is that there are mostly human monks. No, these at my college are not sporting halos. Neither am I. But, in a way, they are already better than me.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why seemingly unrefined men would seek out this lifestyle, especially considering how few of them seemed to do it well…according to my standards that is. By becoming monks, I believe they have done something I could not yet do: they were able to admit how much they actually needed God. They knew - they know - that they need God so strongly and so they have become monks for the good of their souls. They may not have wanted at first to be monks. They knew that hey needed to be monks. I was arrogant enough to assume I knew what holiness was, and that I knew more about these monks and how they should live than they did. We all need to do things that we don’t want to do, especially if it is for the betterment of our soul. These men have shown me what I lack: the discipline to recognize my needs from my wants and to pursue those needs until they become my wants. How many of us have the courage to do that? The monks at Belmont Abbey have far more courage and faith than I do. There is a lot of trust involved in the decision to become a monk, especially when one might think of a hundred other things that would be more fun to do with one’s life. But fun doesn’t get us into heaven. If I graduate from Belmont Abbey College with half the courage, half the faith, and half the trust that these monks have, I will be doing very well spiritually.

It is so easy to observe and criticize. No one will be holy because he has that glassy, dreamy, heaven-ward gaze in his eyes all during mass. No one will be holy because he can chant flawlessly. No one will be holy because he always wears his habit. Someone who, despite themselves, can put enough trust in God to say that maybe God knows what is best for him so much as to agree to live a lifestyle that might not be the most convenient or exciting…that one…that one is on the right track. That one has so far got more sense than I do with all my assumptions. My life is easy. My life is comfortable. God bless these Belmont monks. They are some of the wisest people I know.

Be still

2009-04-16T10:55:00.007-04:00

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.

Angels With Dirty Faces

2009-04-06T01:30:00.006-04:00

It is midnight and I am supposed to be typing my notes up so I can do some last-minute studying for the Abbot’s test tomorrow, but I have other things on my mind. Mainly a story. It’s a true story, and it is an account of an event that happened over Christmas break - December 19th if I recall correctly…so without further ado…

The day was to begin with a period of no-time. Really, when we are at St. Meinrad, our time is our own but it is never our own. We have very detailed schedules given to us to tell us where to be, when to be, and how to be from 7:00 am until midnight during the summer. Christmas break was to be of no exception. There was work to be done in preparation for the new summer and the new interns. We had just wrapped up 3 intense days of discernment where we interviewed a dozen candidates who wanted to become interns like us, and then after seeing them leave for their homes, we spent a whole day choosing the Class of 2009. Father Anthony always knew how far he could push us, challenging us to achieve no less than the best, but he also knew that on some day, we just had to sleep until noon. So, on the 19th, our schedule did not begin until noontime. There was, however, and opportunity to do what he called an “Optional service project.” If we so chose, we were to meet him in the Canyon - a driveway between Bede Hall and the south wall of Newman Hall - at 8:30 am dressed for manual labor

I rolled out of bed at 7:30 am, had my shower, and changed into my “bum” clothes: black cargo pants, an old t-shirt, and a Belmont Abbey College hoodie that had seen better days. I stocked one of my pockets with a granola bar and a bottle of Gatorade from the Bede kitchen and drowsily made my way from the 4th floor to the Canyon. Happily, there were about 5 other interns waiting on the red picnic table for the same purpose. “Where’s Papa A?” “He went to get the truck I think…” Right on time, Fr. Anthony lead an convoy through the Canyon, the giant black tuck in the lead, with 2 small compact cars being driven by students who had been recruited for the day from a high school in Kentucky where he was chaplain. We all chose vehicles and piled in. We drove to the bottom of the Hill - St. Meinrad is often just called “The Hill” as it does sit atop a very large, steep hill - where a lumber yard was. It was a project the monks did. Local farmers would clear off their land and dump massive tree trunks off at the yard. The monks would saw them into sizable chunks and then split the wood manually to be usable as firewood. They would then deliver the wood to the needy of the greater Southern Indiana region. Today, my fellow interns and I were to help this process.

Fr. Anthony gave us our orders for the morning, and I would spend it with a seminarian from Korea and one of the students from Kentucky. We piled an entire truckload of wood into the back of the giant black truck. If I had any notions of remaining somewhat clean, they were soon destroyed as I was covered in dirt and wood particles within seconds of beginning. As soon as it was loaded, the three of us hopped into the truck cab, with the seminarian at the wheel. With our faith in Mapquest and good intuition, we set off for our first delivery, headed down state road 62 to a place just outside of Dale, west of St. Meinrad. It took us a long time, but we got there. We were greeted by several medium sized dogs and one big dog, and the seminarian and the student were a bit wary of the feral looking animals. But I was not. I went right for them when we stopped, and was met with wagging tails and slobbery kisses. When the dogs seemed to be interested in jumping on everyone, I held them at bay while the boys lifted the truck bed and dumped the wood out. The residents thanked us, and we were off, smelling of mud, wood, diesel, sweat, and stinky dog.

We returned to The Hill for another load, piled it, delivered it, and stacked it, and returned to home base for another. This one would be our last, and it only took us as far as Ferdinand, just North of St. Meinrad. We were returning and had just crossed over interstate 64 when one of the high school kids got a call from his buddy. Fr. Anthony wanted the message to be relayed that Midday Prayer was in 20 minutes, so we were to park the truck out in front of health services. This was the closest parking area next to an entrance to the main academic hall that was connected to the church. We were told that if we wanted to go take a shower and get ready for lunch, we could. We were excused from Midday prayer, especially since we probably weren’t going to make it back in time.

We finally pulled up about 17 minutes later. We could hear the bells calling the monks together. The three of us walked into the entrance, and the seminarian bolted up the steps to his dorm room for his shower. I really wanted a shower too. I looked at the high school kid who had come with us from Kentucky. “You going to Midday?” “I guess.” “You ever been to Midday?” “No.” “You know how to get to the church from here?” “I’ve never been to St. Meinrad before.” Ah. It took me a good week to figure out the layout of the Archabbey, and I knew whatever instructions I could give the guy would be about as useful as an iPod to a def person. And he looked so lost anyways. The bells were ringing fast, and I knew we had about a minute to get to the church before we would have to awkwardly creep into our seats in silence. “Follow me” I said. Down the hall, up 2 flights of stairs, left onto Anselm, and boom, at the end of the hall was the staircase leading down into the church and just behind the South Choir Stalls. We moved behind these and to the seats. I handed the kid a booklet, said “Just do what I do,” and found us the only two seats left.

I noticed the mass of people - mostly between the ages of 45 and 75 it seemed - who had come for an Advent retreat. They all had that dazed and confused look about them as they gawked at the two of us, and the other interns with their high school apprentices, in their pastel track jackets and odd Christmas sweaters. We, on the other hand, looked absolutely gross. My pants and shoes were covered in mud and dirt. I had dog hair all over me. I smelled of everything I had come in contact with, and sweat to top it off. The old folks weren’t sure what to think. This was a church, wasn’t it? We looked like woods-people. How…uncivilized of us! Then the monks were trickling in…rows upon rows of flannel work shirts and faded, dirty jeans. They, too, had been working. Working hard at whatever each of them was assigned to do that day. Young and old alike had their tasks. Then, as we stood up for the opening prayer, I felt the soreness in my muscles and bones. As we bowed for the doxology, my back hurt from the constant rhythm of the “pick this up, place it here, pick that up, place it there” loading and unloading of wood that morning.

Then I thought of something else. When people go on a retreat, it is to renew their spiritual lives; to connect to something. These people had come on a retreat at this monastery for a specific reason, and no doubt, many of them probably hoped to get some glimpse of monastic life. You could overhear them, sometimes, the retreat veterans, as they told tales to the newbies of their stays at this friary, or that convent, or that monastery…yes…they had seen it all. But…had they done it all? They had come far and wide to catch - for just a few days - a bit of what it is to be One Alone among this community of Benedictines. And I thought of what I had done that morning with my fellow interns, the high school students, and the seminarians. We too had come far and wide. We didn’t come specifically to live a Benedictine experience for a few days, we came instead to work.

Work. It is as much a part of Benedictine life as water is to a fish. The Benedictines value what they like to call ora et labora, that is, work and prayer. It is the core of their day. You wake up, pray, work, pray, work some more, pray some more, and so on until time for sleep. That is the primary reason for bells anyhow. In the old days, when monks or nuns didn’t have watches, they’d be out in the fields doing work, and when that bell went off, they knew they had so much time to tuck their scapular in their belt, hitch up that tunic, and run for the church! And there you have it: work and prayer. We had had our work all morning and now we were having our prayer. It was how our days always are on the Hill. Nothing different for us - though a little different for me as I realized what it all meant that morning. See, I actually really liked it. A lot. So much, I thought to myself, stinky and sweaty and looking like a ragamuffin, I thought “I could do this every day!”

After Midday, we - the interns, the students, and Father Anthony - paraded out of the church and to the Anselm dining hall for lunch. We were a terrible site, tracking mud all over the place and smelling like hell itself. No one else was in the cafeteria, so we pulled two long tables together and sat around it for our hearty meal of chicken and dumplings with bread rolls. Father Anthony sat in the middle and we all took our places like some kind of family. And we were. We stayed there for at least an hour. Stories. Jokes. Laughter. Outbursts. Dumplings. Dirty faces and dirty hands. Where there’s food, there’s stories, and Papa A initiated story time and was clearly in one of his more talkative moods. He always loves seeing people come together, and was probably especially happy to see us interns and these students bonding over our labor and prayer together. Over the summer, we interns sort of become like his kids, and he becomes like an actual father to us all. We all become a real family. I have real brothers and real sisters in those moments. I have a real home in those moments - though it isn’t in the place but in the people…it is in the Love. Love is my home.