Disconnect to Reconnect
I chose this month’s mantra, as a result of my need to disconnect from the routines of my life in order to connect to the quieter part of myself. Although I think about this idea of faith and what it means to be faithful a great deal, it’s not something I discuss publicly. A result of my lifelong quest for trying to understand my faith resulted in my discovery of Mt. Calvary Monastery over 20 years ago when I was living in LA.
The order of brothers at Mt. Calvary were Anglican Benedictines, a fact that surprises most people since they didn’t know Anglicans could be Benedictines and monks at that. The original Mt. Calvary monastery sat on top of a precipice way up in the hills of Santa Barbara. Once at Mt. Calvary, you did truly feel as if you had arrived somewhere very removed from life as you lived it. To say the property was magnificent is not doing it justice. Sadly the property was destroyed during the 2008 Tea Fires in Santa Barbara. After the fires, the brothers took over the convent next to the Mission as their new home and continued their work until just this past year when they sold that property and closed Mt. Calvary forever.
Going there and spending my days with the brothers always felt like a homecoming to me. My husband finds my attraction to the monastic life a little peculiar, but then I suppose this peculiarity only adds to the list of so many of my personal quirks. The Benedictine order is focused on prayer and work, so the rhythms of life revolves around services, meals, and time for work. For those who always ask, the monastery is not a silent one. Breakfast is eaten in silence, but talking is allowed the rest of the day, although there is no cell phone use allowed. During my many forays to Mt. Calvary, I got to know Brother Alan the best since I made it a point to spend my time with him during meals. His life, like all of the other brothers, was fascinating and awe inspiring for his complete devotion to living his life of faith and service. After his death, I found it hard to return to Mt. Calvary, so I gave up my frequent trips to this special place. And then not long after, we moved to NYC.
I had known about Holy Cross Monastery, which is the same order as Mt. Calvary even when I lived in LA. Like the magnificent location of Mt. Calvary, Holy Cross also sits on 23 acres of incredible property situated next to the Hudson River. Even though I had known about Holy Cross these past 15 years, I hadn’t felt the call to go…until now. I guess you could say I’ve had a crisis of faith these past few years and have felt unmoored from what it means to live with faith and more importantly to live a life of faith. Instinctively I knew going to Holy Cross would be the first step to reconnect to my ever evolving ideas around faith, something I need at this moment.
Once I stepped on to the property, the adjustment to the days of prayer, meals, and felt second nature and a returning to something. Although I have no green thumb and have been known to kill succulents, I volunteered to work in the gardens of the property with two of the brothers in charge of the gardens. Let me say after my two days of weeding and pruning, I have newfound respect for those who garden. As in the past, I got to talk to a number of the brothers, each of their stories as fascinating and inspiring as Brother Alan’s had been. One of the brothers is also a poet, who has had his work published. I even purchased a collection where he had two poems placed, which he signed for me. You can imagine how animated our discussions about language, writing, and reading became the more we got to know one another.
The three days not only forced me to disconnect, but it cracked the door to my ever quest to understanding my faith and what it means to live a life of faith. With the door opened just enough for me to see the possibility of again circling all of those endless questions, I feel less unmoored, less unsure, and for the first time in a long while, filled with the possibility of what this life can come to mean for whatever amount of time I have left here.