In October of 1952, Brother Paul arrived at the Carthusian foundation in Vermont and was met at the door by Brother Bede Sanders, an Englishman from the monastery of Miraflores in Spain. The eminent psychiatrist, Thomas Verner Moore, had late in life entered Miraflores, and had come to Vermont as one of the founders. Brother Bede became the chief spiritual adviser to Brother Paul for the next eight months. Like Brother Paul, Brother Bede had started out as a Trappist, transferred to the Benedictines, and later decided to enter the Carthusian order. He had been a choir monk for several years but decided that the life of a laybrother was better suited to him.

One story that Brother Paul related concerned the prior, Father Richard, a young intellectual priest from Parkminster Charterhouse in England. Now Father Richard, being a typical Englishman, wanted special treatment; he insisted upon having tea at the noon meal instead of the customary beer. "He doesn't want beer?" Brother Bede, the cook, exclaimed. "The custom of this house is to drink beer at noon, and he will get beer just like everybody else!" So Brother Paul delivered the beer to Father Richard’s room. (The monks at that time did not have regular Carthusian cells, but only rooms.) Unfortunately, this act did not endear the new postulant to the prior, as will be related later.

Brother Paul learned much from Brother Bede, who was a very spiritual man. Bede had studied philosophy and theology and knew Saint John’s Gospel by heart, but he had his own peculiarities. He was addicted to castor oil. Now this might have been a legitimate need on his part, yet he inflicted this penance upon the whole community. Every morning the monks could see oil floating atop the tea, but, as Brother Paul remarked, "It kept everyone regular!"

Life in Vermont was very difficult for Brother Paul. The brothers tried to earn a living by tapping the maple trees and boiling down the sap into syrup. But the snow, the bitter cold, and hard manual labor were not conducive to the postulant’s precarious health. Brother Bede had expounded to him the glories of the Miraflores Charterhouse in Burgos, and so, after eight or nine months in Vermont, Brother Paul decided to seek his vocation in Spain. This was about June of 1953, and he was twenty-five years old.

Arriving at Miraflores, he met the prior, Dom Augustín, a sweet old man who had been a bishop in China before retiring to the Spanish charterhouse. He had a real understanding of the search for solitude.

Let us pause briefly to explain a little of the Carthusian tradition. Carthusians do not have abbots; they have priors who are merely considered the first among equals, for they regard their superiors with just a touch of suspicion. At Miraflores there is a large painting of a Carthusian stepping on the mitre and crozier to show disdain of abbatial authority.

Stability is also looked upon differently from the way it is among Cistercians. Although the Carthusian remains permanently attached to the monastery in which he takes his vows, he is often sent to other monasteries for several years at a time. Neither is silence the same; there is no strict rule of silence among Carthusians, but neither is there useless chit-chat. They boast of never having been reformed because of never needing reform.

After about six months at Miraflores, Brother Paul had to decide whether he wanted to stay there or to go off and become a hermit. He chose the latter course, and Dom Augustín encouraged him in this pursuit. His mind was set upon a hermitage at the Carthusian charterhouse of Regina Coeli, but because of a letter that Father Richard of Vermont had written—remember the beer incident?—the prior would not receive him.

Dom Augustín, however, thought that Brother Paul had a vocation to become an anchorite, and another monk, Dom Pedro, of the distinguished Soto y Domecq family (makers of the finest Spanish sherry and cognac), spoke up and said, "One of my illustrious ancestors founded the Hermits of Córdova. Go there, and I will write them a letter to consider you."

The Hermits of Córdova were founded in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They lived on top of a mountain in southern Spain. A small village with whitewashed houses and red tile roofs lay just below. To get to the monastery one had to take a circuitous route through a forest of cork trees, the bark of which was stripped by the peasants. A number of caves served as shelters for some poor folk, and the monks fed and took care of these people. The monastery, which now no longer exists, reminded Brother Paul of a Mexican hacienda. Everything was painted white or a nice azulejo, and there was a lot of tile. Since there was no electricity, the hermits used oil lamps to light their cells. The skull of the founder lay in a glass case in the passageway leading to the chapel.

They were a strange and illiterate bunch, except for the Brother Superior and the secular chaplain, resembling the Penitentes of New Mexico in some ways. Each hermit had his own little cell in an olive grove separate from the main house. They were very poor, and their meals consisted mostly of gaspacho and half-cured olives. Gaspacho is just vinegar, oil, and water, with perhaps garlic, onions, and tomatoes thrown in, taken with bread. Nothing in Spain is complete without garlic! On Fridays they would file into the chapel, darken the windows, pull up their robes and use the "discipline" on their backs for about twenty minutes, unlike the Trappists who apply it to their shoulders for only the space of a Miserere (maybe two minutes).

After about a week in this place, the hermits decided that they would not receive him, for they feared he was going blind, and Brother Paul decided he had had enough. The blindness never materialized. At this point Brother Paul ended his long and earnest quest for the solitary life. Soon afterward, he met a lovely young Spanish lady whom he married in December, 1954.

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