Gary Shank

On Monday, 30 December 1996, I drove 225 miles in thick fog from rural western West Virginia to the wooded knobs of south central Kentucky. When I arrived, at 11:30 AM EST, I turned the car over to my wife and younger teenage daughter, and checked into the retreat house at the Abbey of Gesthemani. For the next five days, I lived in near-silence and near-solitude. The results have been profound.

This particular odyssey began, I suspect, with the reading of Monica Furlong's biography of Thomas Merton. Merton, for those of you who are not familiar with his work, was a dashing young man in the London of the 30's who came to New York and Columbia in the late 30's, and turned away from a promising career as a novelist in 1941 at the age of 26 to enter the Abbey at Gesthemani as a Cistercian of the Strict Order or, as we more commonly know them, a trappist monk. He lived within the walls of the monastery until 1968, when he took first a trip to California and Oregon, and then the ill-fated trip to the Orient, where he was electrocuted by a faulty fan in Bangkok on December 10, 1968 (exactly 27 years to the day from his entrance into Gesthemani). In those 27 years, Merton wrote books, journals and poems, except for periods when the abbot, James Fox (beside whom, ironically, Merton is buried), explicitly forbade him to write or be alone or apart from the other monks. Merton had a strong solitary streak, which by the way is not a characteristic of the trappist life. While they do live in silence most of the time, they also live communally. Merton was eventually able to establish a hermitage of sorts, in a tiny shack in the middle of a hay field some 200 yards or so from the cloister walls.

I have long appreciated Merton's works and thought, but the Furlong biography piqued my interest in the actual living conditions and environment at Gesthemani. It is located some 60 miles or so south southwest of Louisville. Since I had already planned to go to see my mother for a few days over the Christmas break, I decided to call and see if there was a spot for me for a retreat on my way back to Illinois. The Retreat House offers two retreat schedules -- Monday morning through Friday morning, and Friday morning through Monday morning. So I signed up for a retreat spot from 30 December 1996 until Friday 3 January 1997.

The retreat structure at Gesthemani was very informal. Retreatants were asked to respect the atmosphere of silence except in certain designated areas, and were also asked to strip their beds by 8 am Friday. Also, promptness at meals were appreciated. Breakfast commenced at 7:15 am, dinner was at 12:30 pm and supper was at 6 pm. Attendance at an orientation meeting at 8 am Tuesday was expected. Otherwise, the retreatant was free to seek his or her own experiences. Retreatants were welcome to participate in the daily Mass and the Opus Dei, or the seven hours of daily prayer, but attendance to none of these was either mandated or expected. In fact, I came to learn that several of my co-retreatants were either non-Catholic or non-Christian. The guestmaster maintained a small but very nice library, including cassette tapes of Merton lectures, among others. The retreatmaster kept chaplain hours from 2:30 pm to 4:15 pm daily, as well as from 6:30 pm to 7:15 pm. We were also free to wander the non-cloistered grounds, which included rolling grassy knolls and several wooded paths.

I had decided to take this retreat for both personal and professional reasons. I will leave my personal reasons out of this account, but professionally, I wanted to see what an atmosphere like Gesthemani could teach me about my role as both a professor and a researcher. To that end, I had decided to take nothing to work on, and nothing to read. I was willing to allow Gesthemani to lead me to its own resources, and to use them as I found them. As it turned out, this was exactly the right decision.

Let me describe a typical day. I decide to participate in the daily offices, but not all of them. The first office is Vigils, which runs from 3:15 am to 4 am. While I imagine this is a holy and profound experience, I also knew that it would be hard for me to function during the day if I rose this early. Unlike seasoned monks, I cannot walk into a setting and be peacefully and fully asleep by 9 pm. So I decided to start my day with Lauds, at 5:45 am. My room consisted of a single bed, a nightstand with lamp and alarm clock, a desk and chair, and a sitting chair. A closet area and a small bathroom with shower were also part of the room. I set my alarm for 5:20 am. I rose, showered and dressed, and made my way to the church. Outside, it was still dark, and a crescent moon stood high in the sky opposite to the door of the church. The night sky was starting to fade, and only the brightest stars were still clear. A faint tinge of blue was beginning to take shape in the east. It was my good fortune to have excellent weather the entire week -- it was in the 60s and overcast, with the sky clearing in the morning each day.

The Abbey church and the Retreat house were both new, but the church had been built to reflect the simple and austere spirituality of the Cistercian order. We sat in stacking chairs and pews to the rear of the church structure. On the other side of a short glass wall was the two rows of blonde oak choirs for the monks. Within the choirs to the right was a small pipe organ. At the head of the left choir was a large byzantine icon of the madonna and child. A narrow aisle separated the two choir rows, which faced each other. In fact, this part of the church was long and narrow. The walls were built of brick mortared together in the loose fashion of, say, barns or stalls, and were painted white. The floor consisted of a heavily pebbled concrete slab. For those of us in the stacked chairs, foam rubber kneeler pads were provided. At the peak of the tall ceiling, four rows of exposed brick red I-beam trusses could be seen. Past the choir rows, the church bowed out in a circle. Two sections of stacked chairs formed the back rows, and two sections of stacked chairs nearer to the open air altar were reserved for the monks. To the sides of the altar were sections where older or infirm monks could sit for mass. The circular area was supported by eight exposed gray I-beams that rose to a bracket structure at the height of the tall ceiling. Above the choirs and to the sides of the altar were a series of tall and narrow stained glass windows of muted blue and green abstract design. Along the walls below these windows were a series of wooden crosses to mark the stations. The only ornaments in the church to indicate the Christmas season was a large and simple wreath amidst the crosses to the left, and a large icon banner behind the altar. This banner depicted the birth of Christ, the shepherds in the field, and the approach of the wise men.

The only time we went into the church proper was for mass itself. Otherwise, we stayed behind the glass wall. Such was the case for Lauds. For 30 minutes, we sang psalms, praised God for the new day, and offered prayers. Then, at 6:15 am, we were led through the glass doors to take part in the daily mass. Mass was over by 7 am, so we made the short trek from the church to the dining room for breakfast. Breakfast consisted of orange juice, fresh hot oatmeal with raw brown sugar and raisins (add your own of both), a variety of home-baked breads, including a rich dark molasses and nut zucchini or carrot bread, or dry cereal. Coffee and tea were available just about any time you wanted them, as well, and fresh fruit was laid out in a bowl for snacking etc. Silence was kept in the dining hall, but soft music or taped lectures were often played over a sound system. The seats faced the courtyard. Eating in silence allowed me to slow down and concentrate on the flavors and textures of the food, and I must say that it was a long-lost pleasure. After breakfast, and all meals for that matter, we placed our silverware and dishes in trays and buckets and quietly left.

Terce was celebrated by the monks at 7:30 am, but I never was able to get done with breakfast in time to go. Instead, I would either go to the library for a book to read there or take to my room, or else I would go for a walk along the wooded paths. Not a day went by when I didn't spend at least two hours in the woods. I found a favorite spot on a bench on top of a mossy rock outcropping, which looked down on a creek and a field beyond the wooded fringe of the creek. I would sit there for over an hour at a time, just watching and observing the subtle rhythms and surprises of nature. One time, a blue heron landed in the creek, and I sat quietly as the heron crept intently up the creek, watching carefully for danger. I listened as the wind would rise, and come over the ridge to jostle the dead leaves clinging to a greenbrier bush, or jostle dead limbs cradled above the ground in a tangle of other limbs. Morning and afternoon I would go to the woods, and each time and each time of day yielded something different. I tell my students that the world of experience is extremely generous with its gifts for the patient and careful observer, and this was more than true along these wooded paths.

At 12:15 pm the monks would celebrate the brief office of Sext, which again consisted of singing psalms and offering short prayers, and then it was time for dinner. Dinner, at 12:30 pm, was the big meal of the day. It started with a vegetarian soup or stew. I was particularly fond of their split pea soup. Then there was a vegetable dish, let us say kernel corn with thin slices of zucchini or a thick parmesan rice casserole, and then the only meat entree of the day. Baked chicken, short ribs, and meat loaf were a few of these. All the dishes were liberally flavored with herbs and spices; not too much but enough to make the flavor and the texture work together in interesting ways. Dessert would consist of fruit and a slice of their world- famous Port Salut style trappist cheese, a dish of butterscotch or tapioca pudding, or a slice of their world-famous dark bourbon-laced fruitcake (you can order the cheese, the fruitcake, and their bourbon fudge from their web page at www.monks.org).

After dinner was time for reading, or walking, or thinking, or napping. I did read two books while I was there. The first was by Father Jacob Raub, who was the guestmaster. Fr. Raub had come to the abbey from a job as principal of a catholic school in Youngstown, Ohio, and spent his first 17 years wrapping fruitcakes. During that time, he worked out the ideas for this book. It is called "Who told you that you were naked?" and it is about a radical re-interpretation of God's question to Adam in the Garden of Eden. The second book is one of the last works of Henri Nouwen, a priest and scholar who gave up his position at the Harvard Divinity School to become the chaplain for a care center for mentally handicapped adults in Toronto. His book was called "The return of the Prodigal Son," and it is an interpretive and exegetical tour de force on the Rembrandt painting of the same name.

Nones was from 2:15 pm to 2:30 pm, and was much like Sext. By the time that Vespers came around, at 5:30 pm, the church was dark again. Vespers again featured singing the psalms, and praying for peace. From Vespers, we went to supper at 6:00 pm. Supper was a lighter and vegetarian version of dinner. Instead of meat, we would have scrambled eggs thickly laced with California blend vegetables, or vegetarian stuffing, or parmesan rice.

The last office of the day was my favorite. Compline, or night prayer, was celebrated at 7:30 pm. The church and the choir area were dark; only our area was lit. Each night we sang Psalm 4 and Psalm 90. A prayer for rest and peace was offered, along with a renewal for the next day. At the end, the abbot would chant --

we ask the all-powerful God to grant us a restful sleep and a peaceful death, amen.

Then, our lights would go out, and the entire space would be dark except for a single candle that burned before the icon of the madonna and child. The monks would then sing the 'hail, holy queen' of St Bernard, the founder of the Cistercian order. This was an exquisitely sweet and tender sound, especially the last verse which was sung with great Gregorian flair -- O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. At that moment, I felt the same sense of the interpenetration of the sacred and the secular that I found in the woods on my peaceful perch. The lights came back up, and we were led past the abbot, who sprinkled all of us, monks and celebrants alike, with holy water.

After Compline, we retreatants convened in the Guest Chapel for twenty minutes of reflection from Fr. Matthew Kelty, the retreatmaster. Invariably, Fr. Matthew would read poetry to us. The first night, he started with Frost's 'Walking by the woods on a snowy evening.' I mentally rolled my eyes, wondering if this was to be another exercise in wading through familiar works and familiar ideas. But Fr. Matthew focused on Frost's lifelong struggle with depression, and wondered aloud if the snowy woods were not the great Dark from beyond the grave, and that Frost might have been longing to end it all but conceded instead that he had 'miles to go before he sleeps.' While I am not struggling with a substance abuse problem in my life, I know now that many of the retreatants at Gesthemani come there to get a grip on that particular demon.

Why was I there? Professionally, I was to learn the role of silence and contemplation for myself as a teacher and researcher. As a qualitative researcher, I see now that a large part of our vocation is to become, if you will, a secular contemplative. We are not just to record, to encode, to sort, and to list. We are called to interpret, to read into the depths of the world of experience. To do this, we need the skills of the contemplative, which can only be found in the profound heart of quiet and silence.

After the reflections, it was time to go back to the library, or walk the night grounds, or go back to your room for reading, or thought, or sleep. Let me conclude the day and this piece with one reflection, brought about in the quiet, with an open window bringing in the natural rhythms of the evening. What did I learn about teaching? That we are all sheep, but not in the bad sense, and that we are all shepherds. That teaching is the act of feeding our sheep. Sometimes, we feed them what is on the sheet of paper called the syllabus, and at other times we feed them what we have come to understand that they need, whether it is 'relevant' or not. And that when we feed our sheep, they become our shepherds as well, and that they feed us back. And so the teaching flow becomes a circle.....

And then it is morning, and time for Lauds.....