On The Way Through The Love Of Our Neighbor

In the last week of June and the first week of July, I went back east to visit my family.  As a monk of the hermitage, I get to visit my family once a year.  However, due to the coronavirus, this visit was delayed.  I hadn't seen my parents in a couple years; it had been more than a couple years since I'd seen my sister, as well as my brother and sister-in-law with my niece and my nephew.  It was wonderful finally to see them again.  

The day I flew out of California, I met up with Karen and Maureen, former co-workers; we worked together when I was a attorney.  It was fun to catch up with them.  They both were raised Catholic, so they understand various aspects of life at the hermitage.  That day I took off from California, I also gladly got to see Susan and Aurora.  We lived together at the Catholic Worker House; they're still Catholic Workers.  

When I was planning the trip, it had seemed like a great idea to leave the hermitage early in the day so I could see friends I hadn't seen in years.  Finally when I was on the redeye flight from San Francisco to New York and was getting almost no sleep, I began to see the consequences of that itinerary.  Again on the subway from JFK to Penn Station, I kept nodding off, immediately waking up after a few seconds.  

Once I got into Penn Station, I happily got a cup of Blue Bottle Coffee.  I was also happy to pop into Magnolia Bakery and get a blueberry muffin.  With a little sustenance, I headed over to the Amtrak ticket counter.  I told the clerk I was booked on the 11:25 a.m. train to Albany.  He asked me where my ticket was.  I'm so used to showing up at an airport and entering my frequent flyer number that I told him I didn't have a ticket.  

He asked me if I had it on my phone.  I pulled out the flip phone I was borrowing from another monk.  He noted, "Well, you won't have it on there."  I admitted, "This isn't even my phone.  I'm borrowing this just so I'd have a phone on this trip."  He asked me, "How can you not have a phone?"  I explained, "I live in an area with no cell phone signal."  He asked, "Where's that?"  I told him, "Big Sur, on the California coast."  

He printed my ticket to Albany to see my brother and his family, and the ticket back to Manhattan.  As I struggled to arrange my coffee, muffin, train tickets, backpack and rolling luggage, he wondered aloud, "How will you manage all that?"  I was able to negotiate it all and navigate my way due to his merciful, kind, caring nature.  Before I walked off, I thanked him for being patient with me amidst my disorganization.  

Heaven Right Now

Over the last couple of days I traveled up to the Monterey area and the peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area with one of the monks from here for a couple of doctor's appointments.  We stayed overnight in the Bay Area.  I got to go back to Casa de Clara, that is, the San Jose Catholic Worker House, where I lived and worked in the latter half of last year.  I so enjoyed spending time with my friends, the Catholic Workers and the guests to whom they minister, there.  That night I visited, one of the women who used to live there as a guest, who since has moved out into her own place, was celebrating one year being clean from drugs and sober from alcohol.  In joyous commemoration of her recovery, we celebrated with a barbeque in the back yard.

Yesterday, on the way back to the hermitage, my traveling companion the monk and I stopped in Carmel for malted milkshakes.  As we sat on a bench outside enjoying our malts, some men we had never met were walking past us.  One of them greeted us.

"Hi, guys."

"Hello," I responded.

"Does it get any better than this?" he asked.

"No, it doesn't," I replied.

"You're right: it doesn't get better than this," he agreed.

"I like his attitude," I later shared with the monk sitting next to me.

"Me too."

We shape our experience.  Heaven can be right now if we want it to be.  

My Mom Visited!

My mom came to visit!  I was so glad to be able to share with her this monastic life here at the hermitage.

I was especially glad that she could experience life here at the hermitage given that, before she met my dad, she was a nun for three years.  She was a Discalced Carmelite, in the tradition of Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross and Saint Therese of Lisieux.  

Discalced Carmelite nuns are strictly cloistered: they are separated from the public.  Thus they remain inside the walls of the cloister, the boundary of the monastery, for more silence and solitude, to facilitate communion with God; they live a predominantly contemplative life.  They leave the monastery only for unavoidable necessities such as a doctor's appointment or a dentist's appointment.  Consequently, it has not been uncommon for Discalced Carmelite nuns to stay inside the cloister for years at a time.  

Simultaneously, adding to the spiritual rigor inherent in a life of being so separated from the world, often they also do not have contact with those who come to their monasteries.  Thus when guests come to such a monastery to pray in the chapel, the nuns are not speaking with them.  Often such a community will have an extern nun who regularly goes out to run errands, but such a person might be the only such person within such a strictly cloistered community.  

Some Discalced Carmelite communities have lessened the degree to which they are separated from the world.  Others remain strictly cloistered.  Each community lives out its faith depending on the spiritual life they feel called by God to lead.

So, my mom was coming here to the hermitage, viewing and assessing the life here, from her previous consecrated religious life as a strictly cloistered Discalced Carmelite.  In contrast, the life here at the hermitage is not as stringent.

It is true that the monks and I are generally here at the hermitage.  However, the monks and I leave the hermitage when we go on an outing of some sort as part of our monthly recreation day.  Any of us might leave now and then to get things done in town, that is, Carmel or Monterey or Salinas or elsewhere.  There is a particular monk here who, every week, drives to these towns and gets things done.  But any of us might go to town perhaps once a month to go to doctors' appointments, purchase things we need, or pick up or drop off an arriving or departing guest or traveling monk.  

Thus I drove to San Jose to pick up my mom when she landed in San Jose.  Since Casa de Clara, the Catholic Worker House where I lived and worked for a few months in the latter half of last year, is so close to the airport, I got to take her to Casa de Clara.  She met my friends who are the Catholic Workers there, as well as the women who, rather than being homeless, live there as they earn and save money in preparation to move out into their own apartments.  My mom was glad that she got to visit Casa de Clara, since she is familiar with the biography and writings of Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement.  I was happy that I was able to take my mom there after picking her up from the airport, a benefit of the particular approach to the contemplative life which we follow here at the hermitage.  

Just as life here at the hermitage does not entail staying here as much as my mom stayed in the monastery when she was a nun, so too the lifestyle of this hermitage involves more contact with visitors than she had as a Discalced Carmelite.  People come and stay here overnight.  They might ask us questions in the church or in the bookstore or in the retreat house, which is one place where they stay here.  Even longer than that, guests here sometimes receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, that is, Confession, from one of the monks who, of course, is also a priest.  A guest might also choose to receive spiritual direction from a monk when she or he is here.  Other guests spend even more time with the monks when such guests attend preached retreats here: over a weekend, such guests attend a series of a few seminars and/or workshops on various spiritual topics.  These preached retreats are given by monks and also by oblates, who are lay people belonging to the Camaldolese Congregation who have vowed to follow the spiritual practices of the Camaldolese.

Additionally, at the hermitage, employees not only work here, but many of them live here.  Consequently, we not only have daily contact with, but much more importantly, receive indispensable support from, friends and loved ones here who are not monks and who are not on the path to becoming monks.

With all this contact with those who are not monks, my mom found this lifestyle here to be feasible, in comparison with the lifestyle she led as a strictly cloistered Discalced Carmelite.  I cherished hearing her perceptions of life here.

I was also glad that she was able to come here on Mother's Day!  It was marvelous to have her here at all, and her visit became even more special given that she was able to be here on Mother's Day.  I am so blessed by God, including through my mother's visit here.  I am looking forward to my family and friends visiting again as I spend more time here.