We never quite managed to raise enough alfalfa for all the cows, so every few months the monastery would purchase a semi-truck load. A big tractor would roll in beside the barn hauling a thirty-two foot trailer stacked five or six bales deep, and ten or twelve monks would be sent over to unload it into the hayloft. Naturally, this would invariably happen in the summer or the fall, when temperatures inside the loft must have exceeded one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Our blue denim work robes with the heavy wool scapular underneath—not to mention the underwear—made this sort of work one of the hardest physical penances we had to endure. There was no use complaining; in the first place, we couldn't talk, and in the second place, we were there as penitents and mentally welcomed the opportunity to unite our sufferings to those of the Crucified Savior and to work off a few of our sins. I didn't know about anybody else’s, but I sure had a mess of them to work off. I reckoned that I was the world’s champion in that regard.

Five or six of us would jump on top of the trailer and start pushing bales into the windows of the loft; another five or six inside would start pulling them through and stacking them. As the load on the truck diminished, the work became harder because the brothers had to push the bales higher, while the monks leaning out the windows had farther to pull them in. Toward the last, each bale seemed to increase in weight until you thought it weighed two hundred pounds. I noticed that even the strongest among us were all worn out. Brother Stephen and Brother Daniel—powerfully built men with arms like pile drivers—would collapse on the bales in the loft, dripping sweat and panting from fatigue. It was all we could do to summon enough strength to say Vespers and to go in and clean up for supper.

The shower stalls would all be full after a day like that, and even those brothers who usually scorned taking a shower as being unmortified would exit from the stalls all pink-cheeked and smelling almost as fresh as babies. Considering that, in those early days, we only received a change of work clothes and robes every six weeks (this was changed to every three weeks about 1951, when the regulations were changed and we were told to remove our beards), the bath didn't really help much, except as a moment’s respite from the heat.

Monks certainly loved cleanliness as much as anybody, and probably bathe almost as often. Some were influenced by the example no doubt set by Father Felix who hated soft living and thought that monks, as religious persons, should avoid all worldly conduct. The mortification of the flesh was as necessary for an ascetic—a man of prayer—as it was for Jesus, who fasted for forty days in the desert. If a man couldn't control a mere thing such as the desires of the body, then how could he hope to rise to control his imagination, spirit or mind? Anyone who was at all acquainted with Father Felix knew that he had everything under control. Every word that he uttered, practically, and all his actions gave testimony that he lived, breathed and thought God to the exclusion of almost everything else. At the same time, he was not a fanatic in any sense of the word. God dominated him, and he related all his actions back to God with a sublime reasonableness—a logical rationality—that seemed to approach that of Aristotle. His emotions never flared insofar as I could see, except to add a certain enthusiasm to his voice whenever he would take time to explain to us about the marvels of obedience or the wonders of God’s Providence.

There was no harder penance for me, in the monastery, than this business of obedience; it was positively humiliating. I would have been content to lie like a yogi on a bed of nails rather than to have had somebody constantly telling me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Anarchy seemed to be in my blood. I often thought of running away, or of telling them what they could do with the monastery and the monastic life. Just when I would be ready to throw in the towel, I’d turn around only to face Father Felix who, as though he could read my thoughts, would say, "It was through Adam’s disobedience that man fell from God’s favor, Brother, but it was through Jesus Christ’s supreme act of obedience—His immolation on the Cross—that we have again found His grace! After that, Brother, it is up to us as individuals to unite ourselves to God’s will, and He will take care of us!" The trouble was that I could never figure out just what was God’s will. It seemed easy for Felix (to whom, I presumed, God spoke man-to-man), but I sure had no direct pipeline to Heaven.

"Just follow the Rule, Brother, and do what you’re supposed to do."

"But Father Felix, how can I ever know what His will is?"

"Do good. Avoid evil. Be obedient, and His Providence will teach you."

Endless complications arose in my mind. Why didn't an angel appear with a golden tablet with God’s will inscribed on it? How was a mere mortal supposed to figure out such enigmatic things?

"Be patient, Brother. Be patient!"

It seemed to me, at the time, that not only had Brother Jude and Father Felix gone off the deep end on this question of obedience, but that holy St. Benedict himself overstated it. Even the Prologue began: "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 hast strayed by the sloth of disobedience."

But St. Benedict would not have a monk stop there. Not only should he obey the commands of the Abbot and of 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, seeing himself "of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot" because he knows himself and how little worthy 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.

The Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe had formerly been a dude ranch for the well-to-do. Set high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, one mile above the little town of Pecos, it overlooked a small valley with green pastures on the banks of the Pecos River. Actually, this was near the headwaters of that river. Where the monastery was situated, it was little more than a clear mountain creek which could easily be waded. Below the monastery, there was a grove of aspen surrounding the creek, and on three sides it was surrounded by mountains. These were clad with pine, scrub oak, juniper, and florae to provide the idyllic setting that seems almost to be a prerequisite for monasteries, at least, in the United States. The monastery proper was a large Spanish-style building which housed the church, dormitories, chapter room, kitchen, refectory, and novitiates, plus a large, enclosed patio or cloister. Outside was the barn, dairy house, an unused blacksmith shop and various wooden buildings probably used previously by the ranch hands for living quarters. Later, we added a large prefabricated log carpentry shop, with an adjoining laundry, a cinderblock cheese house, and another prefabricated log chicken house. Father Benedict presided over the bookbindery which was some distance away. There was a job for everybody and room for every talent and skill.

Brother Nivard was the senior ranking brother, and like all the senior professed monks, had come from the Rhode Island priory of Our Lady of the Valley, which, in 1950, moved to Spencer, Massachusetts, after a disastrous fire. Because of the large influx of World War II veterans, monasteries began springing up all over the country, usually as small foundations of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, New Melleray, in Iowa, or of Our Lady of the Valley. Father Master told us that Nivard had entered as a teenager some twenty-five years before, planning to stay just long enough to learn how to be good. Now he was an example for all the young monks. Small and slight of build, with a large nose and a mighty beard hanging low on his chest, he was probably the most humble brother there. From his rank alone he could have expressed a desire for just about any job on the place, for he could do almost anything, and they would have honored his request. Instead, he was put in charge of the pigs. Strong as an ox, he did everything at a run, carrying a five-gallon bucket of boiled oats or kitchen slop in each hand, and keeping the sties clean enough for humans. Later, he was put in charge of the bakery and kept the brethren supplied with fine whole-wheat bread or delicious cornbread with raisins.

At first, Brother Louis was the baker. He was about the age of most of the young novices, but was solemnly professed, which meant that he had at least five and one-half years service as a religious, and had probably entered at sixteen or seventeen. Very pious and devout, he reminded one of the holy pictures one saw of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and it would not have surprised me if one day I should see him float off to Heaven on a cloud.

Brother Augustine, another of the long-bearded senior monks, had a knack for fixing anything electrical. It was common to see him on top of a telephone pole with climbing spurs attached to his work shoes and hanging by a safety belt while he repaired a broken cable. Or Brother Jude would lend a group of us novices to him and Brother Ambrose, who ran the dairy. He would pick us up in the quarter-ton weapons carrier and drive up through a dry creek bed till he found a rocky ridge. He and Ambrose would stuff their pockets full of dynamite and, clowning, pretending to smoke a stick of it as if it were a cigar, climb up the cliff and bury the stuff in holes they had dug. Then Brother Augustine would attach a long cable to the dynamite and the other end under the hood of the weapons carrier. He would make a sign for us to take cover, and while we climbed under the truck, he would start the motor. The ensuing explosion would rain rocks all over the place, which we would load into the truck and take back to the monastery. For me, that was always great fun. One day Augustine was with us no longer, and I suppose he had sought and received a dispensation from his vows. Brother Ambrose left, too, when the time came to make his solemn profession. We heard, later, that he had died from a tropical disease he had caught in the South Pacific during the war. It came as a surprise to me because he had always seemed so strong and healthy.

Another brother whom I greatly admired was the guest-master, Eugene Gartner, a frail but very humble brother, who had previously been a choir monk. Before taking his solemn vows, he left to join the Carthusians.

After ten or fifteen years in the monastery, when a monk has been fully trained in the ways of spiritual perfection, the Holy Rule makes provision for those who have felt the call to live a life of greater solitude. If the abbot gives his blessing, a brother may be allowed to take up residence in a hermitage, especially if he can perform some useful (preferably manual) work there. St. Benedict thought that community life was best for beginners because contact with others tended to smooth the rough spots on a person’s soul more quickly than if he went directly into the eremitical life. After all, Jesus said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength, and with thy whole mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." If a man can’t love his neighbor, whom he sees, it must be very difficult indeed to love God, whom He does not see. But, more on that later.

Father Maurice, who had been a Trappist for many years, and before that, had been a priest with the Fathers of the Holy Ghost, had a small hermitage adjoining the back door of the kitchen. He was old and a little infirm, but he still attended the Divine Office. A good calligrapher, he made all the signs for the monastery in fine script in the best monastic tradition. No doubt he could have carried this further in the great tradition had he been provided with a copy of the Book of Kells from which to gain inspiration, since he had the ability. But Trappists at that time tended to shun the exquisite and to prefer simple things. That is part of the detachment that a monk should have toward his work, and it precludes vanity about it.

Instead, Father Maurice seemed to find the exquisite in nature. Naturally bald, but with a ring of white hair around his head left as part of the monastic crown worn by professed monks, he was a kindly man, learned for a Trappist, who enjoyed walking through the woods with a pair of opera glasses given to him by the abbot. When he would find a bird, you could hear his bell-like laughter ringing through the forest as he watched it flit from branch to branch. There was a certain special quality to his voice that made his laughter infectious, and one could not help but feel a thrill of joy at the sight of this old man’s pleasure in the things of God. I hoped that when I was old, that I would possess the edifying decorum of Father Maurice.

One hot day I sweated as I swept out the center aisle of the cow barn. My glasses fell off and, at that moment, having forgotten to close the gate leading to the stalls, one of the cows escaped and came running toward me. Before I could stop her, she had set her mighty cloven hoof down on top of the fallen spectacles, and so I was left unable to read. That meant a trip to Santa Fe to get a new pair.

A trip outside the monastery was always a bore because it meant an interruption in routine—a break in the regularity which is so important to a monk. But, since it was the will of God, I went to the tailor shop and obtained the silly black cape and funny hat that was required to be worn by a monk who was on a journey.

Within the monastery, any sort of singularity affected by a monk is frowned upon as a serious fault, and a person can be publicly proclaimed for it at the weekly Chapter of Faults, which can be terribly humiliating. But we looked nothing if not singular when we went into town. Bearded, with shaven heads, during an era when practically nobody wore beards, with monastic robes and heavy work shoes, people would stop on the streets just to stare at us. That, too, was humiliating. They might just as well have painted us green. Humiliation, however, is supposed to be the lot of a monk. Not only does it build character, but it purifies the mind, helping a person to see himself as the ridiculous thing that he is: "Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save Me, save only Me?"

Arriving in Santa Fe at the medical center, I was fitted for new eyeglasses but as an added bonus the ophthalmologist told the abbot that he thought that I was going blind from keratoconus. I thought his diagnosis was a lot of baloney, but kept my opinion to myself. In any case, that fat cow sure had made a mess of my routine.

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