Heaven’s Gate
Last July, Mepkin Abbey hosted our Monastic Institute program which allows lay persons to stay at the monastery for a month and to work and pray with the monks. A participant was enthused in helping clean the church and saw the door brass handles looking soiled. So he started to polish it until one was ‘golden’ shiny. One of the monks remarked that it needed no polishing. Cistercian tradition calls for simplicity – thus no ‘shiny’ adornments in the church; its ‘well-used worn out’ look renders it elegant as it is. Br. Kyle reflected on this and offered a poem entitled ‘Heaven’s Gate’ at the closing ceremony of the program as seen in the video clip below. Br. Kyle passed to the Lord on March 5 due to cancer, at the age of 33.
View the video clip of Br. Kyle reading his Heaven’s Gate poem here
