A Monk's Diary Archive

Walking under the trees near the chip barn, praying with a text from St. Bernard's sermons on the "Song of Songs", I hear footsteps behind me and turn to discover Brother Stanislaus sauntering along the gravel road behind me smiling. Every evening at this time, he goes jogging out along the road past the machine shop and toward the vast open fields behind the chip barn and then enjoys a leisurely walk back. We have both set out from the monastery toward the wide open fields in order to be alone at the end of the day. By chance we meet. I greet him and ask if the gnats annoy him.

God is expressive. Trappists have a reputation of being—well . . . not very expressive. We are the silent monks who live austerely, have only one outfit to wear, eat mostly bread, soup, and cheese, and live in spare rooms with almost no furniture. Well, that may be so, but we are made in the image of God, and, as God is expressive, so human beings are by our nature expressive. Monks are too, and it can be amusing to see how the instinct to express oneself finds its way out, sort of "seeps" through the cracks in the austere surface appearance of Trappist life.

O.k.—what am I looking at here. Brother Giles is crumpled up on the floor in front of the refrigerator on all fours with his cheek apparently pressed to the floor. He is eighty eight years old. An eighty-eight year old man doesn't do this. Giles does it every morning—I mean every single morning, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. I don't usually pay much attention to it, but this morning I find myself staring. There is no one else in the refectory, just Giles and I, so I indulge myself.