A Monk's Diary Archive

Walking to the carpenter shop this morning amidst record high temperatures, I savored the quiet and stillness and then, fifteen minutes after walking in the door, had four different conversations with workers about Christmas with their families. Actually, for a Trappist, since we don't work on Christmas day or the day afterward, and so don't have contact with the workers, we actually talk less during the Christmas holiday. The day of the Lord's birth is an especially quiet day for us.

Entering a dark basement corridor, on my way to the liturgy office, I see the door at the end of the corridor shut tight with light escaping beneath the door and with the light, there steals into the corridor a lovely and most unexpected sound – a rapid, finely executed arpeggio on a guitar. That's Bach. It's not a recording, (there is no DVD player in that room!) . . . what am I listening to?

Talking with our lay-worker Denny at the carpenter shop, I was reminded that the nations economy is limping toward Christmas – a sad spectacle. Millions will awake on Christmas morning fraught with worry about finances and their children's future. Amidst these challenges, faith bids us enter into the celebration of Advent with joyful expectation. I saw an odd thing today, an image that suggests to me, all this suffering might hasten Jesus' coming. The “Hog House”, a two story building behind the monastery, built sixty or seventy years ago, is about to fall over.

Fr. Daniel is 104 years old, uses a motorized wheelchair, and seems to like it well enough. Actually, at age 104, having persevered in the monastery more than 60 years, I think we should be carrying the man around on our shoulders. Yesterday, I heard a young monk share with me a fervent desire to do just that. And he was serious. Brother James and I were putting frames together for casket lids at the carpenter shop.