Toward the end of 1951, having spent practically the whole year working in my little cabin workshop and a total of two-and-a-half years in the monastery, my novitiate was drawing to a close. It would soon be time for me to take my temporary vows. I eagerly looked forward to this, but one day I met Father Dismas coming from the main abbey, who signed to me to "please go see abbot." I went immediately to his office and knocked on the door. Invited to enter, I found Dom Columban stretched out upon his bed, suffering, I suppose, from his chronic stomach ulcer. I knelt down beside him and he did not waste time in coming to the point of the reason for my summons. The monastic council had met and voted upon my vocation, and the answer was no. He said that he was forced to send me away because of the glaucoma that had developed in my right eye following the cornea transplant, because the prognosis was the same as before, according to the doctor, who was convinced that I would go blind, and because the so-called adhesions that had developed in my right groin caused me some lameness. I confess that I broke down and wept because I had grown so attached to the Trappist lifestyle. He suggested that I go to the Benedictine Foundation of Mt. Savior monastery in Elmira, New York, which had just been started by Fathers Gregory Borgstedt, Damasus Winzen, and Placid Cormey a year or two previously, and where, supposedly, the life would be physically easier. He wanted me to write to them asking for admittance, and he would do the same. He also stated that he would accompany me on the plane as far as Buffalo, as he had some business to attend to there. The Benedictines, in their reply to my letter did not seem very overjoyed at my coming, but they did not refuse to receive me, thanks to the letter from Dom Columban, but warned me that Benedictine life was far different from that of the Trappists.

Dom Columban and I landed in Buffalo at night during a severe winter storm and immediately checked into the Sheraton Hotel. It would be several years before I saw him again, as he checked out the next morning without saying goodbye, which was typical of his detachment. I remember the date was January 1, 1952. At the station I was advised to take the train Phoebe Snow to Elmira. Arriving there, a taxi drove me to the foot of the hill of Mt. Savior Monastery. It was a miserable-looking place for someone coming from the Southwest. A gray, overcast sky, about a foot of snow on the ground, and a mile to walk uphill to the main house of the community. I trundled up and was met at the door by Brother Luke, the porter, who led me immediately to the cell of Father Gregory, the acting prior. It was the first of many visits that we would have together, and the patience and charity that he showed me was proof enough that he was a man of God. In my heart I was still reacting to the fact that I had been cast adrift by the Trappists, and relegated to this place where inwardly I felt no vocation. Also, having been sent here by Dom Columban, I considered it a matter of obedience to my abbot to remain at Mt. Savior forever, I supposed, or at least until I could get more light on the matter. After about a year, however, it became obvious both to me and to Father Gregory that I would progress more rapidly in my spiritual quest if I were in a purely contemplative order, which, in my opinion, the Benedictines were not. Strangely enough at that time, a guest told Father Gregory that he would be happy to give me a ride as far as Albany, which was on my way to Whitingham, Vermont, where the Carthusian monks had started a new foundation. [Brother Paul’s manuscript ends here: what follows is the continuing story as he related it to this writer.]

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