The two bulls that we kept entailed the hardest part of my job in the cow barn. At least it was the most dangerous. Each was kept in his own 15 × 15 ft. pen adjoining the barn with a doorway into his stall for protection against the weather and where he could eat. The water in the pens was in a trough for the old bull and in a big washtub for the younger. This latter was a pure white son of the Carnation bull of fame and was around fifteen to eighteen months old when we were first introduced. The old bull was probably four or five years old, black and white, and big, mean, and cranky. Nobody messed with him!

Everybody messed with the white bull. That is, monks coming in singly from the fields would frequently stop by his pen and tease him until he was jumping around as though he were in a rodeo. This was considered a fault, and faults are frowned upon in the monastery, but monks, at times, exhibit very human qualities. Perhaps they were releasing a little pent-up steam and it was sort of exciting to watch the bull snort and slobber and butt the heavy posts of his pen.

It was hard on me, though, because Mr. Bull, now being far from tame, would try to have his revenge every time I had to enter the pen to clean it or change the water. The only way I could protect myself, which was hardly in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, was to carry a three foot length of one-inch water pipe and give him a gentle crack across the cranium every time he even looked cross-eyed at me, which was often. We had placed a piece of telephone post in the ground in the middle of his pen for practice butting and, once when he caught me in there without the pipe, he thought he had me good. He charged and I got behind the post which he kept butting and I kept circling until I found a chance to jump over the fence. My robe lent nothing to my agility, but I made it. The bull, though young, weighed every bit of a thousand pounds and his shoulder stood nearly as high as my neck. Another time, when I was in the pen holding his washtub with both hands and using it at the same time as a weapon to keep him away, Father Sub-Prior came to the fence and started telling me something in sign language. He didn’t realize that if I put the tub down it meant instant suicide, and there was no way that I could answer him with signs without letting go of the tub. I finally broke silence.

Later, when Brother Clarence, who was an Oklahoma farm boy, was put in charge of the cow barn, the bull found a victim. Br. Clarence had a much kinder heart than I and never used the piece of pipe. But, when you’re dealing with monsters, sometimes you have to do it on their own terms and in a language they can understand. Later, though, I had reason to regret my lack of gentleness.

The Master of Novices for the lay brethren was Father Felix. Under him was Br. Jude, who was Sub master. The choir novices had their own Master of Novices, Fr. Anselm, who also acted as confessor to the lay novices. Both Fathers Felix and Anselm had been in the monastery for seventeen or eighteen years by the time that I came along, and both men had things well under control—meaning that they were perfect examples for young novices to follow and were both experienced spiritual directors. But they were as different from each other as night and day. Fr. Felix was a man given over completely to contemplative prayer—a deep prayer much like that of Mary who sat at the feet of Jesus and just listened. Father Anselm was a Martha who was busy about many things and who was active reading, studying, teaching and tending the vegetable garden. As a beginning novice, this used to cause me problems, because Fr. Felix was my spiritual director by office, but when I would go to confession on Sunday afternoon to Fr. Anselm, he freely dispensed advice which seemed to me to be the exact opposite of the advice of Fr. Felix. I finally figured out that I couldn’t go in two directions at once, and so solved everything by ignoring Anselm and listening to Felix.

Br. Jude, as Sub master, didn’t delve into the personal problems of the novices, nor was he supposed to give spiritual advice. Nonetheless, he was also a perfect example for the younger lay brothers, and taught us as much by being a good role model as we learned from all the daily spiritual exhortations. He was a short, slight, red-goateed French Canadian about thirty-five years old who had been raised on a farm. This was evident from his knowledge of every aspect of farm life. Also, he was the assistant to Father President, who had charge of all farming operations and, it was apparent, knew a great deal less about farming than Brother Jude. Everything Brother Jude did and everything he said was with a smile and a bubbly enthusiasm that put all the lesser spirits to shame. He was the source, at least in that monastery, of the boiled oats theory. While the cows were being milked, it was necessary to feed them grain—partly to keep them quiet, but most of all, it was an opportunity to feed them vital minerals and vitamins. One day Br. Jude boiled some oats in a five-gallon container and fed them to the Holsteins during the afternoon operation of the dairy. The cows loved it. In fact, they loved it so much that pretty soon it became necessary to buy oats by the trailer load. Thereafter we would boil oats every morning on numerous wood stoves near the barn area, which filled that compound with its delicious aroma. Not only did the cows love it, but the pigs devoured it with delight. I’ll never forget Br. Jude’s pleasure as the monthly reports came back from Santa Fe showing that our milk had the highest content of butterfat and the lowest bacteria count in the whole state. Scientifically, we didn’t know if that was due to the boiled oats or not, but we thought it was. The theory worked so well that it is a wonder that Br. Benedict, the cook, didn’t start feeding boiled oats to the monks.

Working in the cow barn, at that time, I had closer contact with Br. Jude than with any other brother and, since he was my Sub master, we were allowed to speak on subjects concerning work or the keeping of the Rule, but never about personal matters. He handed down to me the monastic tradition in the finest way and was a living example of the vow of poverty. Monks, of course, have nothing which they can call their own: only a small desk or box where they may keep a pencil and some paper and another box in the bathroom where they could keep a tooth brush or a razor (sometime later, when we were ordered to shave off our beards). A good monk doesn’t want anything but God and, particularly, he avoids becoming attached to any material or worldly object.

Br. Jude carried this a few steps farther, which is in essence the whole spirit of the vow of poverty. He wasn’t attached to his own will or to his own ideas. The nearest he came to spiritual counsel was to always advise me to "just take what comes, Brother, just take what comes."

Fr. President liked being the boss, apparently, and frequently ordered Br. Jude to commence this or that farming operation or to perform it in this or that manner and, quite frequently, had no more than a hazy idea at best about how a farm should be run. Jude never murmured or complained, but at the instant he received the order, would be off to carry it out to the best of his ability, and in the spirit of perfect obedience. If it were a terribly serious matter, he might point out the error to Fr. President, but in the end would obey whatever the president decided. This didn’t mean that Br. Jude had no will or judgment of his own—the very opposite was true—but it meant that he had a solemn vow to obey the abbot and other superiors "in all things good."

Nor do I believe that there was any ill-will on the part of Fr. President. He was the third ranking superior of the monastery and was heavily loaded with responsibility. Besides his duties as president, he was also in charge of the infirmary and was the cellarer or procurator. In that position, he had charge of most of the outside business of the place, such as purchasing, and by virtue of this was often absent or late for the Divine Office. Since a monastery is supposed to be self-supporting—the monks living by the labor of their hands—having charge of all this was a heavy burden which left the president a harried and overworked man. He was not supposed to speak to the novices, but rather to say what he had to say to their superiors, which was either the Master of Novices or the Sub master. Either he never learned that rule or had forgotten it, because at Repetition, Father Master often took it upon himself to make excuses for the president or in other ways to justify his irregularity. Father Master had a peculiar way of expressing himself, for example: "Brothers, remember our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and how He had to hob-nob around with the riff-raff! Or, St. Teresa says that if you don’t have somebody like that (a bad example to others) in the monastery, then you should go out and find somebody like that; because that person will sanctify everybody else!" Many years later, so I have been told, Fr. President left the monastery and went to the outside world where he became a suit salesman in a men’s clothing store. But, he did try his best to make the monastery a self-supporting institution while he was there, and that was no small matter.

"A monastery," says St. Benedict, "should be a school of the Lord's service," and the lessons taught therein were designed to lead a person to God. There were many lessons to be learned, and the greatest of all these is that first, last, and always, a person comes to God through obedience. That was the greatest of all the virtues: to do the will of another rather than your own. Obedience is the act of faith, hope, and love that joins man to God. Any act contrary to obedience (so we were taught), separates man from Him. It was through Adam's disobedience that man fell from God's favor, and it was through Jesus Christ's supreme act of obedience that man again found His grace. After that, it is up to the individual to unite himself to His will and, by doing so, to know Him and love Him and to be loved in return. We learned in the monastery that God, in His mercy, has provided for mankind, that this Divine Providence will take care of us totally in the same manner that He provides for the needs of the sparrows in the air and the lilies of the field. Man is busy and troubled about many things—to his detriment—but all that he must do in order to be swept along by this mysterious Providence is to be obedient to the Divine will. Very simple. But why is it that what is so easy for sparrows and lilies is so complicated and difficult for man?

"Hearken, my son, to the precepts of the master and incline the ear of thy heart; freely accept and faithfully fulfill the instructions of a loving father, that by the labor of obedience thou mayest return to him from whom thou has strayed by the sloth of disobedience." So begins the prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict, but he would not have a monk stop there. Not only should he obey the commands of the abbot and of the superiors appointed by him—and whose orders should rank first—but he should obey the orders of all his seniors and, indeed, those of all his brother monks. That, of course, must be qualified: he obeys in all things good, regarding himself as the least of all men, because he knows himself and how undeserving of any of God's love he is, and because he knows that God’s will is more apt to be revealed to him through the will of another.

There is no part of himself that a man so jealously guards as his own will. There is no virtue that is so commonly regarded as a weakness and held in cynical contempt by the world as the vow of obedience. It is held to be for children and not for men. Yet there is no exercise that will strengthen a man's resolve more, nor heighten his intellectual awareness of "what is good," than the continual sacrifice of his own will for the sake of good. The awareness of what is good is, of course, the crux of the whole matter, for it is in this "school of the Lord’s service" that a monk is taught the difference between good and evil. It is one thing to be taught from books and sermons in the abstract, but quite another matter to be exercised daily in lessons. The monastery provided the perfect training ground, if a person could take it.

About this time, it was decided that the monastery should sell the white bull. For reasons unknown to a poor novice at my level, which was no level at all, it had been decided to sell all the Holsteins and to replace them with Angus cattle. Br. Jude said that their milk contained more butterfat, but he didn't much like the idea because, he said, "Angus cows are mean and hard to get along with." A wealthy dairyman up in Colorado bought the bull, and one day he and a helper came for him in a truck.

The loading dock was attached to the dairy, rather than the barn, so the bull had to travel quite a distance in the open in order to be loaded onto dock. Fr. President, of course, was in charge of the operation, which complicated everything. Br. Jude and I expected him to ask one of us to lead the bull with the pike, since he had a ring in his nose, but Fr. President had another plan. A bull pike is a short, heavy stick reinforced on the ends with iron, and on one end a clasping hook is attached, and right above it an iron spike about an inch-and-one-half long is welded. The hook is attached to the brass ring in the bull’s nose and, should he wish to argue, the pike is twisted up and around until the spike pricks the tender part of his nose, at which time the bull becomes submissive, at least in theory. I suppose that Fr. President, being a prudent man, didn’t want to test that theory and, instead, had another. I have always thought that by holding the bull by the pike in one hand, and with the iron pipe in the other, the bull might have been gently persuaded to follow me or Br. Jude to the loading chute, but my theory will forever remain in the realm of the hypothetical, since we deferred to Father President’s superior judgment.

Fr. President, who was an active person, put a lasso around the bull’s neck and attached a lasso around each leg, with a lay brother attached to each rope. They began leading the bull, who by this time was becoming a trifle nervous. Suddenly he charged, and monks began flying through the air like June bugs on the end of a thread. One monk had the presence of mind to loop his rope around a handy water spigot, which might have helped had the bull been a big dog, but he wasn't. The pipe burst and a fountain shot up ten feet in the air. Reinforcements were hastily summoned, and pretty soon there were about fifteen brothers hanging on to the various ropes and being thrown about, while under the fountain of water stood Fr. President shouting orders like a wet and angry traffic cop. Nobody had asked me to help, and not being able to stand the sight of such carnage, I returned to my job of sweeping out the barn. That was the last I saw of the white bull. But the next evening a notice was posted on the bulletin board stating that when the new owner had tried to unload the bull in Colorado, he had been smashed against a wall and killed. Everybody felt bad, but I think I felt worse because I had never tried to tame the bull with some gentleness and kindness.

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