VI. To Be a Monk

I would be a monk. That’s what I thought. I would live in a stone cell and sleep on a mattress of straw and make my prayers to the crackling sound of wood burning in my fireplace, a fire fueled by logs I split outside my cell door at the edge of snowy woods. In my sufferings, prayers, and solitary days, I would do the work that the world did not know it needed.

There are varied ways to be a priest in Catholicism. A monk is but one. I heard an older priest describe it in this way: In medicine we find general practitioners and specialists. The priesthood too has general practitioners and specialists. If you find Catholicism complicated, you’re in good company. I struggle now to map out the taxonomy of the clerical wing of Catholic Christianity. Using this medical analogy, “diocesan” priests are usually the generalists. They are your garden variety priests who work under the jurisdiction of a local bishop, a bishop who oversees a diocese, that is, a geographical area that roughly aligns, in the U.S., with the given county. Along the West coast, from south to north, we have the Diocese of San Diego, then Orange, then Los Angeles…and so forth. Most priests stationed in churches throughout these lands are diocesan priests. They often live in houses on, or close to, the church campus where they’re assigned to serve. They often own a car. I’ve known some to even own a motorcycle. They make a promise of “simplicity” on the day of their ordination, not “poverty”. So they have stuff: Skis, hiking boots, a closet with clothes in it, not unlike the given population they serve. Sometimes they’re called ‘secular’ priests, after the Latin noun seculum which roughly means world. They operate in the world whereas the next category of priests I’ll mention…also operate in the world. We all live in the world. But the word secular perhaps implies the idea that diocesan priests live a way of life that more closely reflects the population they serve. When formally attired, diocesan priests wear the familiar and iconic black suit with white square collar.

I knew a priest who had a chihuahua.

Then Catholicism has specialists. Small organizations characterized by a collective personality and way of life. These groups are often called “orders” and they consist of men ordained to the priesthood and other men who are called “brothers” and make similar vows but do not get ordained to the priesthood. They often live in community in a house, friary, or monastery. And often lay men and women will visit these groups and participate in their way of life. There are also orders of women who similarly live in communities and focus on certain ways of life. They’re called nuns, sisters, and sometimes mothers. These women are not ordained to the priesthood, nor can they be ordained to the priesthood. And this is controversial.

Often these orders will seek to take on the spirit or personality of a saint. For example the Franciscans follow the way of Saint Francis of Assissi (1181 or 82–1226). They often wear brown robes, or “habits”, take vows of poverty, and observe a certain care for the poor. Dominicans follow the way of Saint Dominic (1170–1221) and attend closely to academic pursuits and skilled preaching. Jesuits live out a vision set forth by Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). These specialists have the reputation of taking the most liberal and experimental stances within Catholicism. Many of them take posts in academia and college administration. Some write poetry or specialize in astrophysics.

There is a common anecdote among Catholics in describing religious orders: A man purchased a new BMW Beamer and wished to have it blessed. He first knocked on the door of the Franscican house. A priest in a brown habit answered the door.

“Father, I just got a new Beamer. Could you give it a blessing?”
With a look of confusion, the priest said, “What’s a Beamer?”
The man felt embarrassed. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s a silly request. I should get going.”

The man then knocked on the door of the Dominican house. A priest in a white habit answered the door. “Hi Father,” the man said, “would you be so kind as to give my new Beamer a blessing?”
But the Dominican said, “I’m sorry, what’s a Beamer?”
Embarrassed again, the man dismissed himself.

Finally he knocked on the door of the Jesuit house. A man in a flannel shirt answered the door.
“Are you a priest?”
“I am.”
“Great. I just got a new Beamer. Can you give it a blessing?”
“A Beamer! What model? Don’t tell me you got one of the 3 Series Sedans. Did you read the article about those in the last issue of Car and Driver? Wait…” the Jesuit paused, “…what’s a blessing?”

I’ve done my best above to provide a taxonomy of Catholic priesthood, and I’ve oversimplified. If you were to visit all these orders and meet the priests, you would gain a more true and complex picture. I knew little about the paths of priesthood when I first considered the vocation. I was enamored, however, by the image of the monk. A monk falls under the orders category. But there are many orders of monks. To find my place, I wasn’t sure where to start and where to look. But around this time I met a mentor…sort of.

It was afternoon in summer, and my friend Max, one of the line cooks from the restaurant, called me and asked if I wanted to get lunch at an Italian place that had gotten good reviews. Max was a big guy from Tennessee who could stand calm and stoic in the face of managers yelling at him over an order gone wrong. It seemed people in our restaurant world wanted to go to other restaurants often to enjoy the peaceful side of the business, where one can be waited on. I told Max, sure, I’ll go with you.

I sat at our table working on a second basket of Italian bread. Italian bread in olive oil that had been dusted with salt and pepper might be the best thing in the world. Max started a conversation with the elderly people next to us. Back then I was painfully shy, too shy to go around chatting with people whom I did not know.

“What do you all do?” Max asked.
“We’re retired.”
Great question Max, I said to myself, can we go back to not talking to strangers?
“Jim here was a doctor,” a single old man who seemed to be the spokesperson of the table said, “and Jane raised money for charities. And I was a professor at Oxford, and before that I was a pilot in the Air Force. I flew bomber planes.”

I was suddenly interested.
“What did you teach at Oxford?” I asked
“Medieval Monasticism.”
“I’m a Catholic. I’m interested in monasticism.”
“I know many things. A cool guy like you, I’d be happy to tell you more.”
I thought, Now that I think of it, I am a pretty cool guy.

They started to stand. The old man who did the majority of the talking gave me a business card and said his name was Arthur LaClerc. Printed on the card was just his name, email, and phone. No profession or list of services.
“You can come to my home here in,” and he named one of the nearby affluent neighborhoods, “and we can talk. I’ll cook tikka masala. Have you had tikka masala?”
“No,” I said.

I could tell Max waited for an invitation and I could tell Arthur offered, only reluctantly, “And I suppose your friend can come too.”

They left, and I looked at the card. I understood the whole occasion to be a matter of divine ordinance. I needed a guide, and behold, a guide.

Meanwhile, for months I started to take up what I believed to be monastic practices. Several nights a week I slept on the floor. I mingled my breakfast shredded wheat with apple cider vinegar to ruin its taste. I took cold showers. I thought of Saint Paul who said, “I punish my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.” (1 Cor 9:27)

I thought of the first exercise spelled out by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a meditation on hell in which one imagines “the great fires, and the souls as in bodies of fire” and many other imaginings of hell that are meant to turn one’s heart radically away from sin. I thought I could make myself pure, and so escape hell, and with that, escape the prison house of the impure body. I thought I could unify my life to God through self destruction.

A week passed after meeting Arthur. Having taken the time to muster the courage, I dialed the number on the card. He picked up.
“Hi, is this Arthur LaClerc?”
“It is! Hello there. I’m glad you called.”
The way he said what he said left one feeling significant in the world.
“When are you coming over?” he asked.
I didn’t know when, or if such a thing was a normal thing.
He said, “Come over tomorrow. For lunch. I’ll make chutney. Here’s my address.”
I wrote it down along with the gate code.

The next day it rained and I drove to the front gate of the neighborhood and punched in the code. The houses were all white, and styled after Mediterranean villas. He answered the door and welcomed me in through the hall and living room were artifacts from seemingly around the world. He showed me the library, a sunlit room with high ceilings, books arranged neatly from floor to ceiling.
“Have you read all of these?” I asked.
“At one point or another,” he said. He changed the subject, “For lunch we’re having chutney.” He showed me to a table beside the kitchen. “Have you had chutney?”
I said, no.
He shook his head in disappointed disbelief. “I have so much to teach you.”

I wanted to know what he knew. I believed there must indeed be secret knowledge held and disseminated only by the rare sage. Had I met such a knower?

At lunch I don’t recall what we talked about. I just recall that talking seemed difficult. Back then, I was a shy conversationalist. Upon leaving a small town, where I felt that I belonged, for the far more vast world, my personality retreated into hidden places. I struggled then to coax my confidence and sense of humor back into the open. I didn’t know what to say to this person.

“This chutney is good,” I said. It was good. “Have you been to India?” I asked.
“I’ve been to India many times. I met Mother Teresa in Calcutta.”
“Amazing! What was that like?” I had been enamored by the writings of Mother Teresa. They transported me into a world where the soul could be free of worldly concern. And I thought, what an amazing thing here, someone who met her, who can give first hand insight!
Arthur just responded, “Like I said, I can teach you many things.” Then with what seemed like a forceful redirection, he said, “Eat!”

It was an odd response, but I went on eating. The thought occurred to me that I really didn’t know this guy, and I could soon enough ingest poison or worse. For what they were worth, I trusted my instincts, sort of. For having just shut down what would normally be an interesting conversation, Arthur seemed to be a good person. His dog, Darby, sat looking at us from the tile kitchen floor, like a mop, but one with seemingly a kind human soul. Maybe dogs reflect their masters in some way, I thought. I had no good reason for trusting this guy. I ate my chutney and thought of my next question.

He never taught me the mysteries of the universe during that lunch, or during the next one, or the one after that. Like in our conversation about Mother Teresa, he had a way of offering a fascinating piece of information about himself, and then closing the conversation when I asked about it further.

At times he could offer seemingly revelatory things about you. He would often say, “Somewhere along the way in your life, someone told you you weren’t good enough and you believed them.” It was as if he saw such things through prophetic vision. In my case he was right, but maybe he was right, because the statement remained general enough to function against any life.

He asked a lot about my finances — what sort of debt I had accrued, how I spent my money, what sort of income I earned. He would often say that he wanted to see that I found myself in the same situation financially as he himself enjoyed. I wasn’t thinking about finances. I wasn’t particularly interested in money at the time.

I wasn’t sure how he made his money. I’m still not sure.

He always seemed to offer a glimmer of the knowledge that I sought, but the full revelation would always have to happen sometime later.

In the meantime, we started to take day trips. I’d show up, he’d say we’re taking a trip. I’d ask, to where? He’d say, you’ll see! And I’d say okay, because I was a pushover. But the trips were interesting. We visited the Benedictine monastery built on a hill above Oceanside, the Self Realization Temple Gardens on the Encinitas bluffs, we caught an indie film in Kensington about the highly austere Carthusian monks of the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in France. After the film (I thought was captivating, even though it had almost no dialogue) he asked me, “Are you ready to go!?” I didn’t feel like I was ready. On one trip, we took the whole day, we left early in the morning and drove to the California high desert to a monastery called Saint Andrew’s Abbey where, on that day, the abbey hosted a festival, one full of art vendors and live musicians. Arthur introduced me to the Abbot himself. In a way I was learning a great deal about monasticism, not because of anything Arthur said in particular, but because of these trips.

Along these trips we often stopped at excellent restaurants. In a way I started to see the world, through food at least. We stopped at Michelin star Indian, Italian, and Chinese cuisine. And of course during these meals, Arthur offered but glimpses into his travels: Meeting the Dalai Lama in New York or Bertrand Russel at Oxford, eating world renound mole in Mexico city, and avoiding stepping in elephant shit in the jungles of Thailand. Sometimes he’d say that he’d pay for me to see India or Mexico City.

But I was baffled by the sort of advice and direction he gave. One moment he would offer a seemingly profound insight he envisioned from your past. “Someone told you that you were no good when you were young.” A few minutes later, as you’re struggling to parallel park, he’d say, “you’re dumber than a bucket of rocks.” And of course he’d say, “I can teach you so much.” And I’d say, “Like what?” And he’d say, “Eat!”

For a while I thought I was presented with a Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-Son situation (see the original Karate Kid. Note, I was born in the 80’s). Before I could learn martial arts, I needed to learn discipline through some seemingly unrelated task like waxing classic cars. But really, waxing classic cars correlated exactly to blocking punches. In my case, my version of waxing cars was putting up with the confusing and exhausting work of trying to talk to Arthur.

He did help me get out of debt. I owed money on a truck I’d purchased two years earlier, and I was beginning to collect school debt. I’d hoped he would just write me a check, but instead he let me work in his yard. I’d work my shifts at the restaurant, attend classes at the state university, and twice a week restore his landscaping. I’ll admit the work could be cathartic. These were prayerful times slaving from one job to the next. It was ora et labora. I soon paid off my truck and built savings.

I also, without telling Arthur, made a three day retreat to Saint Andrew’s Abbey to discern if my call might be there. Little known fact, monasteries make for great alternatives to hotels and hostels when traveling. Most Catholic monasteries have retreat housing that you book through the phone or internet. I’ve known friends who have traveled through Europe, Turkey, and Israel, staying entirely at monastic guest houses for the modest cost of suggested donations.

This is what I did, I booked a guest room. I also asked the receptionist while booking if I could meet with a monk while I was there, ideally one who could help me understand what my life might look like if I were to join. The receptionist said she’d connect me with a monk during my stay, likely the monk who oversees new candidates.

When I arrived, no monk was available, so I took walks through the desert abbey grounds. You might imagine scenes of old European monasteries — stone gothic arches and courtyards. This abbey looked as if it were built on a tighter budget, and with a more practical architectural vision. Not much stone to speak of. The simple one story buildings blened in with the khaki soil and dry desert shrubbery. Here I did not feel solitude but loneliness. In between walks I attended the monks’ prayer services called the Liturgy of the Hours, mostly a chanting of the psalms punctuated by readings from scripture and writings of the saints. From my place near the back of the church, I observed the dozen or so, mostly elderly, monks at their seats, all in black habits, gathered around the altar. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be one of them. It felt as if I would be throwing my life off a cliff, and God might not be there to catch me.

I attended the meals for guests on retreat where I sat the long dining hall table where guests chatted about holy books read and holy places visited, and I ate my oatmeal in silence, trying to be especially hardcore about my visit. I did meet an older man who wore glasses and an argyle sweater vest, who struck up conversation with me, despite my attempts to appear solemn and serious. He said his name was Pat. Near the end of that first breakfast, I told him that I was on retreat discerning a call to the priesthood and maybe even monastic priesthood, and he nodded as if he already knew so much. And we would chat at meals and even on walks after meals. He shared that he was a diocesan priest in New York. He even said that he served on a council of top clerics to decide how their diocese would handle the unearthed cases of priests who sexually abused minors. He said that he was a dissenter on the council when he advocated for transparency. I knew this was a problem in the church, it all just seemed so far away and unreal at the time.

He also said that he had helped a lot of people discern their calling. He said he was a spiritual director, a counselor of sorts. On the second evening of my stay, after dinner, I talked with him in the retreat lobby across from the dining hall. He raised questions to help me think about what sort of priest I wanted to be, if a priest at all. One question stood out, he asked, “Do you picture yourself the father of a small family, or a big family?” I thought about that small group of elderly monks gathered each day in the abbey chapel, and I said, “A big family.” At least a bigger one than I had just observed. He said, “In that case, if it’s a priest you want to be, the diocesan priesthood might be a better fit. You’ll be interacting with a lot more people.”

The next morning, after breakfast in the dining hall, Pat gave me his card and he left to catch a flight out of Los Angeles. I spent the rest of the day taking long walks through a lonely sort of solitude. That night after dinner, I walked back to my room wishing I were chatting with friends in the kitchen of a house party. Each time I had checked in with the receptionists about meeting a monk to talk with, she said that she hadn’t been able to find anyone who was free. While I walked, I passed an open door where three younger looking monks washed dishes. I thought, holy shit, just like Brother Lawrence! I knocked on the doorframe, said hi, I’m on retreat here. Can I help you with the dishes?

They looked at me and then each other like, I don’t see why not. And one monk said, sure. I rolled up my sleeves and took a spot drying. While we worked, I brought up that I was discerning my vocation and hoping to chat with the vocation director at the monastery.

They looked at each other again, “I think he’s on vacation,” said the guy rinsing dishes beside me.

A silence passed. Then I asked that same monk working beside me — he was a very thin guy, with small dark features and dark hair — “How did you find yourself deciding to enter the monastery here?” He let out a sigh and a laugh. The other two guys also chuckled.

“That’s a long story,” he said. Then he went on to say that he had been an animator for Disney, and unfulfilled with his life and work, and so he entered Saint John’s Seminary in North Los Angeles to train for the diocesan priesthood. But he said it was a very busy and active life at the seminary, and he wanted something slower and more contemplative. He then pointed at the other guys and said he met both of them at Saint John’s as well.

I directed the next question to all of them: With all the types of orders, how did you settle with one? One of the young monks, he had a buzzed head and looked like he could’ve been a firefighter or soldier once before, said the diocesan seminary allowed him to meet a lot of people and explore many places within Catholicism, and even the world, he added. From there he said he was able to find a life that fit for him.

I would leave the Abbey the next morning. The whole experience made me no longer look to the Carthusian Monks in France, or the Benedictines in the desert, but to the sort of priesthood that I had often thought to be rather boring and pedestrian, the diocesan sort. What once looked so ordinary was beginning to look all the more extraordinary.

I stopped by Arthur’s house less and less, and pretty soon, not at all.