Sitting on a bench in front of the Hendy Creek Market blanketed by a cinematic light rain in the rustic town of Elmira, NY, I looked up when I heard my name. Before me was Brother James: petite, bald, maybe about 75 and walking with a bit of a limp. Dressed in dark pants and shirt, he offered his outstretched palm and chortled slightly as we shook hands, as if we shared an unspoken joke or something. I laughed with him. It indeed genuinely amused me to be waiting for a lift from a Benedictine monk in the middle of, in my estimation anyway, absolutely nowhere, but what was it that HE found so amusing? Perhaps picking up a young, seemly woman at the market was just wacky enough to crack an old monk up. Brother James is the guest liaison for the Mt. Saviour Monastery and I had emailed with him a little in arranging my visit. Yep, even monks email.
It took him a good minute and a half fumbling around to hit the unlock button for me to open the passenger door. On the drive up to the monastery he asked me a little about myself and why I came to visit and in turn I asked him what makes a monk a monk. He gave me an abbreviated history of the monastic tradition as we drove along Monastery Road towards the chapel and barn. Does he hate answering questions about monks I wondered. I also wondered if he noticed that I was physically leaning toward him in order to hear him. He asked if I had been to a monastery before and upon hearing my answer he practically exclaimed, “First time at a monastery! Well, this will be a new experience!” I wasn’t sure if his enthusiasm was a good sign or an indication that I should jump out of the moving vehicle and sprint back to the bus station post-haste.
Upon passing a bloody Jesus on the cross statue I also worried that maybe this was going to be a little more than I’d bargained for--perhaps I’d been a little rash. The previous weeks had been too busy for me to do the research I had intended about what exactly goes on at a monastery, what monks do, what it's like to visit, etc. Little did I know then that the highlight of my stay would be 45 minutes of chanting with nine monks deep inside a crypt well before sunrise.
I had taken the 6 1/2 hour Greyhound in search of a brief respite from the overstimulation of the city and a meditative few days in a rustic, sparsely populated place. When I had stumbled upon Mt. Saviour online in my initial research, monks and sheep were not at all what I had originally envisioned for my trip, but that's often, I think, when you know you've found exactly what you're looking for--when it is, in fact, markedly unlike what you imagined you were looking for.
When he parked, I immediately hit the unlock button and he seemed positively ecstatic at my technical know-how. He was gentle and visibly peaceful, warm and remarkably fragile, and for all of those reasons I wanted to wrap him in an afghan and serve him tea.
I was put up in a tiny, religiously decorated room named after St. Theresa in a very quaint, impeccably clean house for female guests (St. Gertrude’s House). For my whole stay I was the only visitor in the 8-person, two-story guesthouse. Maureen, a British ex-banker, who lives on the first floor maintains the house and cooks for guests. Flush with flowering plants, the dining room’s three walls of windows open up to a meditative view of gently rolling farmland and the hazy hills of Pennsylvania pulsating in the distance.
The monks run a sheep farm from which the meat and wool provide income. One monk, Brother Pierre, even knits mittens which you can buy there. They also keep bees and sell honey and beeswax candles (actually you can buy all their stuff online too—these are 21st century monks!). Some of their sustenance comes from the guests who pay a $45 a day sliding donation for their room and meals but spend their time as they please. The seven traditional Benedictine religious services the monks observe each day are open to guests but they don't proselytize at all. Also people from the community come to many of the services. I figured I’d go to one or two just to see what they were like. I ended up going to ten.
I went to the 6:30 Vespers my first night. The chapel is octagonal and elegantly stark. A few minutes after the bell on top of the chapel is rung, all of the monks emerge from the crypt and the service begins. Vespers was mostly singing and ended after about 15 minutes. The five or ten non-monks sang along from hymnals which I found way too befuddling to follow. We sat on one half of the octagon and the monks sat together on the other side facing us. They wore long dark robes and often sat with their eyes closed in deep concentration. Even my buddy Brother James looked like stone over there. The singing had a beautiful and hypnotic lilt. Fresh flowers adorned the circular altar in the center of the chapel. Large, simple chandeliers of dark metal and white candles looked authentically handmade and, oddly, also like something that might show up in next season’s Pottery Barn catalogue.
The storybook grounds of the monastery are hilly and sprinkled with trees and flowers, statues, an orchard and vegetable garden, loads of sheep, a few donkeys, a couple of barns, a friendly black cat, a small cemetery, numerous wild deer and bunnies and a bazillion bees.
Over the three days I was there I probably spent several hours total just staring at the sheep and listening with amusement at their communication which sounded like junior-high kids attempting to burp the alphabet. Fluffy little lambs scurried around adorably, making urgent “baaah” noises to which the older sheep usually responded by sluggishly maintaining their regularly scheduled munching-on-grass routine.
I also took walks for several hours each day and jogged some in the town and on the monastery grounds. One day I worked in the garden with Maureen, raking and trimming.
The median age of the monks is about 70. There are a couple younger guys. One of them, in his early 40s perhaps, stood out to me right away as having not only a different look but also an inexplicably different air about him than the others. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I later found out he’s the newest convert and entered the monastery six months ago when he left his job as a NYC firefighter. The rest of my time there I constructed a story for him in my head which became increasingly elaborate. I wanted to know how that frisson of radical change happened for him and in lieu of details, I invented them.
Because the only music I heard for those three days was the singing of the monks, their songs rang through my head and continued even after I got back to Brooklyn. At two of the services Brother James, quite smashing in his robe by the way, came over to me beforehand and tried to explain how to follow along in the books, there’s a different one for each service, and apparently some kind of complicated logarithmic calculation for the page numbers cuz I absolutely never figured it all out. But he would smile as he explained it to me and we’d sort of do our fake inside joke laughing routine and then he’d hobble back to the monks’ seating.
The mid-day ceremonies, Sext at noon and None at 3pm are interesting because the monks show up without their robes (and no they’re not naked underneath, you perv) wearing regular clothes, jeans and sneakers and such. The services are named after the Latin word for the hours of the day as they existed in the fifth century when St. Benedict lived.
The second day there I decided to drag my atheist-ass out of bed at 4am to see what the 4:45 Vigils were all about. St. Gertrude’s House is located a half a mile up a VERY steep hill from the chapel and I couldn’t find a flashlight anywhere—and folks, out in the country nighttime is actually pitch black which I was quickly reminded of—so I utilized my only illuminated resource: my cell phone. I stumbled down the hill with the faintest light possible letting me see precious few inches of road at a time. Imagine being blindfolded and hiking into the Grand Canyon. When I got in the chapel and no one was there I realized that the services seemed to be commencing in the crypt. After seriously having to buck up my courage to stroll down into that sacred subterranean territory I turned the corner and saw past the Mary statue down to a dark room where the monks were seated on benches against three walls. My mind said no but my legs just kept walking and in the tiny room underscored with a blood red carpet I took a seat on a little bench with books that said “Abbreviated book for guests.” I was at least relieved that guests were allowed but I was disconcerted that I was in fact the only guest present and thus the only woman and the only person not wearing a dark, flowing robe and the only person not dedicating my life to Christ and sheep herding. So I was, like, out of my element.
We opened our books and let the chanting begin. In between texts there were several-minute pauses, presumably for prayer and reflection, but in those silent minutes in that tiny, dark room with nine intensely intense men being really intense, the air was thick and viscous. I relished in it. How rare it is for people to just sit together in silence and yet how rich. The chanting was mostly done sitting down, but some standing and some standing and bowing at the waist. There were readings by individuals as well. One was by the former NYC fireman, and his Brooklyn accent, though delightful, was certainly un-monk-like.
A couple of times I suddenly realized the oddity I was in and I had to remind myself I wasn’t on a movie set or in a dream. I mean seriously, it sounds like such a dream plot right? So I’m in this crypt, and there are a bunch of monks chanting around me… It easily qualifies as the first or second most bizarre thing I’ve ever participated in (the other being the Shoshone sun dance).
In the chants the monks’ voices maintained a monotony and a steady, even rhythm. Chanting with them, speaking together, whatever the words, had a great effect. I felt a strong sense of distance in our togetherness. We sat close and spoke with concinnity, but each of us was deep inside our own heads, connecting with a god or a belief or a train of thought or an inner expanse of some kind. I felt a privilege too in being allowed entrée to this sacred tradition. Although at times I felt like a sore thumb, I also was moved by their hospitality and silent welcome, opening their doors daily to any sore thumb who wants to stroll in. After about forty minutes the monks stood up and filed out and I followed behind them by several paces. They gathered in front of the Mary statue and sang and prayed. This is how they begin each day.
When I got outside the birds were chirping and the black night was lifting to blue. With nowhere particular to be I sat on the steps of the chapel, with a still mind and dew on my ankles, staring into the violet sky.
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