Later at the monastery [more from my retreat journal]:

Life feels very good here. It reminds me a bit of being in college, where I had a little room with a desk - except then I had a room mate. A set schedule where the day was paced off by the rhythm of the classes, and work to do. Meaning for me at any rate plenty of time to do my own writing and reading and, at least in those days, drawing. Perhaps some day I should return to the drawing, but these days I just don’t have much desire for it.

Boop and Gonza - Brother Stephen’s cats

I saw both of them this morning when I came back from chapel. They were cuddled up together inside their little cat-house (has a different connotation than dog-house, doesn’t it?). It is their way of coping with the cold since they are banned from the guest houses. I saw a reminder on the wall of the foyere that kitty-cats like to exercise their claws, and Gonza has some big claws. He’s a a big yellow bruiser.

From my journal at the retreat:

I should appreciate what I have here on my first night at the monastery. It is quiet. Supper was almost surreal. Everyone stood behind their chair, saying nothing. Then brother Stephen came in, dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans, and slippers. He is elderly and had trouble: he couldn’t stop yawning and kept forgetting where he was in his little talk about how everything operates. We are to observe silence if we can, and we are to help clean up after lunch and dinner. Otherwise we are on our own. He might be a little dotty, but he has a real sweetness and a sense of humor. He also has two cats, which have now been banished to the outside. One is named Boop, for Betty Boop. The other is Gonza, short for Gonzaga, where brother Stephen went to school. I’ll look for them tomorrow.

The setting here is beautiful. We are on the western bank of the Shenndoah. Mostly all you can see are trees and fields until dark when you can see the lights from all the big resort style houses that have been built up the slope of the Blue Ridge. When we went out for Complines after dinner it was pitch dark and I kept walking off the road. Now I know why I was advised to bring a flashlight. I was walking with a young seminarian who has been here twice before. We did not speak much. Once we are outside, working in the kitchen, or want to use the conference room we can chatter a bit.

The big monastery is painted a light blue-grey. The core seems to be a massive square stone farm house built over two hundred years ago, matched by a newer building connected to the first by a long wing. This is the Chapel. Outside it is nondescript and inside is spare but beautiful. A large crucifix of Christ in Agony is suspended from the ceiling. Behind it on the wall is a sculpted image of Mary and infant. There is a lot of Marian iconography in the guest house too. The last thing the monks did at Complines was sing a hymn to the Virgin.

At the service there were only ten monks, and all but three were ancient. They all do a deep bow at the spots were other Catholics merely genuflect. The singing is moving even though it seems to depend on one brother with a good voice. Later I discovered that when that one monk was gone, the other brothers merely recite the service. They also do the recitations and the bibile lessons much more slowly than is usual in most churches. They are trained to do this, for both discipline and effect I think.

Blogger is doing something strange ...

... or perhaps it has just decided to bully its customers into switching to its "NEW BLOGGER" version. The last time I used it to post on this site it gave me the option of continuing to use the old version, but said that it would be the last time. And sure enough, this time for the post right before this one it refused to let me sign in EXCEPT with the new blogger, which requires that you get a Google Account. There actually was a button after I had gone through several screens of sign up material that said I should click on it to sign up on my old blogger account but when I did it simply took me right back to the page that made me sign up with Google - or not get into the blog.

So, as of now, we are with the NEW BLOGGER via my new Google Account. Not only do I resent being forced into this with no explanation or warning, to add insult to injury, I can find absolutely no way to send an actual message to Blogger to complain!

Windy Gap is a local winery ...

... and I just happened to polish off a bottle of its Tory Oak Red this evening and sat reading the label (a nice wine, by the way, but not worth the price). This is part of what the label said:

Perhaps the most historic tree in N. C. was the Tory Oak, which grew for three centuries in Wilkesboro, N. C. From this majestic black oak, Col. Ben Cleveland, a local militia leader and a hero of the pivotal Revolutionary Battle of Kings Mountain, hung at least five Tories in 1779.*

In 1992, the National Park Service designated the Tory Oak Site as a Certified Protected Site of the Overmountain Victory National Historical Trail. In homage to Wilkes County's contribution to American independence, a portion of the proceeds from each bottle of Tory Oak Red will be donated to the Wilkes Heritage Museum. These funds will help renovate and establish a museum at the Old Wilkes County Courthouse in Wilkesboro.

The winery goes on to describe itself as "the only bonded winery in Wilkes County, the former "Moonshine Capital of the World" - so I am not changing my blog's subtitle afterall!


*Local legend has it that Cleveland forced the wife of one of the Tories to watch. Until recently this would have been known as a war crime, but he was a hero of the Revolution and all. This may help explain why many Tories moved to Canada after the war.

My brother the Confederate Nut...

... is a character I have mentioned once or twice on Not Mayberry and elsewhere in Blogland. Just to prove he is real, click here, look at the ad for a new mouse pad and enlarge the picture. The Confederate Nut is standing there impersonating General Finegan Olustee, first officer on the right. He's the one with a white beard looking like .... "What?"

As you can see, there is absolutely NO resemblance to Oscar here.

My visit among the monks....

... now that I am back. I actually did not live the life of the monks, who are Trappists, or what are now called Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Thank God! That requires more fortitude than I could muster and the effort would turn my time there into a different kind of retreat.

Instead we stayed in a separate guest house about a quarter mile from the abbey itself. The retreat house in turn is a bit less than a quarter mile from the Shenandoah river. Right on the other side of the river rises the slope of the Blue Ridge Mountain. At night the stars shine like you can rarely see now. It was a lovely spot to spend four days.

If you click here you can see several pictures of the guest house. The top picture is the chapel. From the main foor where my room was you walk down to the end of the hall out onto a small balcony overlooking this chapel which is spare and simple, like the rest of the house. I imagine that it was cheap to build but still conveys eloquence and quiet. The next two pictures show the rooms: each is exactly alike. We were not given keys because we were not expected to lock our doors. That was the first thing I leaned when I signed in and it clearly marked out our space as being outside normal time and space.

I especially liked the little desk built into the wall under the crucifix and the lamp. Simple but functional. I think the Shakers would have understood the architecture and furnishings of this place if nothing else. The entrance hall to the room is slanted so that you can leave the door wide open, as some did, and still have privacy. I also had a out my windows of fields backed by the mountains.

The next picture is of the sun room right off the library which you can see in the following picture. It was a wonderful place to sit and read in the morning. We could spend as much time in the library as we wanted which was a real treat, of course. Not surprisingly it contained a lot of material on and by Thomas Merton, including a set of tapes of talks that Merton had done on various aspects of spirituality.

At the opposite end of the building right by the front entrance was a dining room that could seat 15 people, the limit the house could hold (although one room was always kept empty for the 'unknown traveler' who might show up at any moment, or for any traveler in need). Breakfast was self serve anytime between 7 and 9:30. To my relief there was always a pot of coffee available, but since it was always brewed by other guests who apparently never lived in Minnesota it was never strong enough.

Meals were the only things we had to do and the only thing we all did together, promptly at noon and 6:30. All meals were taken in silence, like the monks, and we all helped clean up as part of our 'sharing the monastic life.' Everyone of the monks has their work to do. Noontime dinner was the main meal and unlike the monks ours always included meat. Meals were fairly simple but good and with plenty of it. I never took desert, drank nothing but black coffee and water, and enjoyed it. Didn't even miss the things I had given up.

Blogging to you in the dark with battery power...

... Once we finished dinner at the Creamery with Mulan - she likes BBQ- we came back and watched a full DVD worth of "Avatar" episodes. I was really impressed with the series. The artwork to the animation is great. Then we started watching "The Secret Garden" - and if you haven't already seen it you should as soon as possible.

Then, right in the middle of the movie, I heard the loud POP of a transformer blowing out and all the lights, and TV, went out. We wandered around finding candles and flashlights and then decided it was late enough to just go on to bed. Mulan borrowed my little CD player and listened to book IV of Harry Potter, but I think she fell asleep after three minutes.

Let's hope they get the power on soon. The weather report is calling for snow turning to freezing rain tomorrow morning and that means every power crew in the state will be working on downed lines. In fact, we may have trouble getting Mulan home. She may have to stay another night.

Oh well.

Mulan (aka Arwen), the Bad Lummox, and the Chocolate Pony...

... Today Carmen and I rode up to Boone to pick up our 11 year old friend Mulan at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Then we came down the mountain where it is about 10 degrees warmer. It was a lovely day, bright and sunny. We decided to take one of the best walks in Wilkes - out along the Reddies river trail by the dam. Mulan loves dogs, so she loves the lummox, and she was hoping we would see Chocolate Pony who lives at the end of the trail (she loves horses even more than dogs)

Luckily Chocolate was there, as if he were waiting for us. He has gotten shaggy this winter and has what looks like a long beard - Mulan thought he looked like a bison. She fed him some carrots and then started feeding him anything green that she could find and Chocolate was enjoying every morsel.

Lummox, however, was getting overly excited. Two yippy little terriers had gotten in his face a few minutes earlier (he was trying to be good) and now Chocolate's dog up on the hill was barking at him. Suddenly lummox decided that this was all Chocolate's fault and lunged towards him and bit him right on the nose. Chocolate jerked back, more from surprise than pain, and Carmen drug lummox off kicking and barking. What a bad dog. Even Mulan said he was very bad today, and Mulan loves lummox.

But Chocolate didn't seem to really care. Just as long as Mulan kept feeding him green stuff through the fence.

Here is a picture of the Holy Cross Abbey at Berryville, Virginia. You can't see the guest house I stayed in with the other 13 retreatants. It's off to the right of the picture.




You can see the original stone farm house on the right. It is the only part of the abbey that guests can go into. There are actually artifacts in the second floor from the Civil War battle of Cool Springs fought in the fields behind the abbey. One of the monks found them and became fascinated with the battle. He wrote a little book about it that you can buy at the gift shop. I found it a little disconcerting to find a
book about a battle in a monastic gift shop, but then, it is Virginia and it is right outside Winchester which must have the record for being captured, recaptured and fought over.

There are other pictures of the abbey and a brief description here. You can see a closer picture of the farmhouse that was built in 1784. The next picture down is looking down the road that leads up to the front of the farmhouse. I tried to walk out that road every day at least once. I took my binoculars and enjoyed watching the monks feeding and tending to the cattle out in the fields on either side of the road.

The guest house was about a quarter of a mile to the right of the picture above and the Shenandoah River was a bit less than another quarter of a mile beyond that. Right on the other side of the river the Blue Ridge Mountains reached up and on the other side of them - Loudoun County where I grew up. That was the main reason why I picked this particular monastery.

I am off to the monastery...

... tomorrow. It is Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. I should get there by dinner time. I'll stay until Friday morning. It will be totally unstructured. I see it as a chance to be almost totally alone, no phone (which will stay in the car), no computer, no blogs, nothing but one or two books, a journal, and some pens.

The vote is still being counted as to whether or not I get up for the 3:30 am Lauds service (actually someone demanded a recount).

So no more posts for another week. Have fun everybody.

Auntie Carmen took Maeréad to the movies....

... they went to see "Charlotte's Web" (no, it is not about the internet). Maeréad's mom is in Atlanta buying some historians for the department, so we decided to take her to the movies and let her dad watch "The Children of Men." Then Clovis wanted to go, and then Oscar decided that maybe the boys would see "The Children of Men" while the girls would go see "Charlotte's Web."

I was afraid that Maeréad might be upset that I wasn't going with her, but when I explained it was going to be only her and Carmen, she said "Okey!" with great enthusiasm. It was a splendid opportunity to learn some humility.

I warned her though, Auntie Carmen always cries when Charlotte dies. She said she'd watch out for that. Carmen later said that when they got in Maeréad assured her that it was alright and it would help if Carmen just said "I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry". Now Maeréad had already seen the movie once before so she helpfully kept up a sort of death watch on Charlotte for Carmen. "It's a long way from when she dies, so it's OK Aunt Carmen." And later, "It's coming up soon, Aunt Carmen. Be ready." Then Carmen could hear Maeréad muttering "I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry".

They both cried.

Happy New Years to Everybody!

Especially those smart enough to read Not Mayberry - Maire and family, Elliot (I think), Mr Sobrino, all the children and grandchildren of Helen and Marshal (you know who you are), Greek God, Veritatis Amatori, the Old Man, Ana the Spaniard from London, , and anyone else who reads without commenting.

Carmen and I got back to home in Wilkesboro. I am happy, Carmen a little less so. The little lummox is happy, the girls Ben and Mosby not happy at all to see him back. They are happy to see Oscar and Carmen back and have spent the day (and most of the night) celebrating by yelling at us. Constantly.

After a few hours of rest we drove up to Deep Gap to see our virtual family: Maeréad, Maire, Mairtín and Clovis. Nice dinner, nice wine, nice friends. Then down the mountain in a driving rain. It was good to collapse in my own bed, even if one two many cats occupied it.

Mulan turns twelve in the year of the fluorescent green pig!

Little Mulan has grown up to be a teenager, soon to be a young lady. I know because it is the return of her birth year, the year of the pig (I am an ox in China, a water buffalo in Viet Nam, and by the western zodiac, Taurus the bull). In honor of her natal year, I pass on this link from Maire about a new breed of Chinese pig that should strike the proper festive note for Mulan's year.