Monday, December 3, 2012

(1) New Monk


Chapter 3.  New Monk

While the new monastery was being constructed, I spent a lot 
of time out at the San Ysidro property--talking to Brother Philip
and the other monks there.  Mainly I was interested in their
monastic vocation.  And the fact that I was interested actually
surprised me.  During my youth, as I said, I essentially "endured"
Religion.  Maybe other interests dominated during that period,
but I distinctly remembered that Religion seemed boring and
had little to do with my life or who I was at the time.

Of course, now, I know that my youthful feelings were probably
not uncommon.  Many of us culturally inherit our faith systems,
and we become members of a given "tribe"--like being a Christian
or more specifically an Episcopalian.  After I went to CalPoly and
later Taliesin West I had pretty much shook off the residue of
what I had considered to be superficial Religion.

Still, I wasn't an atheist or even a humanist.  I simply was too
busy to care much about religious or philosophical concepts
of Ultimate Reality or God.  But this I do remember, I *cared*
about our planet, about Mother Earth.  I remember, too, delving
a little into the spirituality of the American Indian when it came
to their attitudes toward Nature.  Of course the background for
this interest might have been the fact that since my birth the
focus in our society was about going "Green."

This Green Movement grew steadily over the decades of my
youth, and I have little doubt that was why I chose majors
that had to do with the Environment when it came to my
architectural training.  Our society had finally reached a 
level of understanding about the correlation between resources
and sustainability.  And in the early part of the Third Millennium
we had begun to realize that we had nearly ruined our planet
because of destruction and depletion.  Hence, with Humanity's
back-to-the-wall, there was a major turnaround when it came
to our thinking and effort towards helping restore and protect our
planet.

So I joined-up, so to speak.  But I hadn't yet viewed any of this
from a spiritual perspective--until I started talking with the monks.

Brother Philip mentioned that he admired my devotion to the
environment, when he learned about my architectural focus on
Environmental Design.  He mentioned that eco-theologians the
past few decades had been working into not only Natural and
Evolutionary Theology from a spiritual point-of-view, but also
Creation Theology.  Well--this was news to me!  I had never
heard of any of this that Philip was telling me.

Over time he talked about the Benedictine Tradition which the
Millennial monks followed, how it helped restore Civilization
after Europe fell into the Dark Ages following the fall of the
Roman Empire.  The monks back then re-taught the peasantry
the rudiments of agriculture as well as how to establish fisheries.
Small efforts maybe, but they went a long way.  Eventually the
monasteries started educating some of the people who had
fallen into the darkness of ignorance.  And in due course towns
were built around the monasteries.  Western Civilization grew
forth out of the monks' efforts.

I also was intrigued by the professionalism of the monks still
squatting at San Ysidro.  Most were into religious studies one
way or another, some teaching at our local universities or
community colleges.  But there was also an aerospace engineer
who commuted from San Ysidro over to the nearby city of
Chula Vista where he worked for a company that build aircraft
engines.

Anyway, over time, I felt more and more drawn to these new style
(or non-traditional) monks.  They adhered to a monastic vocation
when it came to their ceremonies and their spiritual development
as specified within the ancient Benedictine Tradition.  And yet
they managed a modern outlook and extended such in their 
lives, both at the monastery and in their work on the outside.
I was very much impressed how they *shared* their lives with
others, who very much gained from knowing them in one
capacity or another.

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