You are about to embark into a book that has taken four years in the making. Once Upon a Monk will hopefully support all readers in better understanding life woven into a fabric of monklore over the centuries. This living story of one monastic man, who continues an ongoing discovery of his real self, will help to turn the pages of your life if you so desire. In experiencing his personal process of Individuation, time never stops but takes him through many reincarnations. These pages tell his story of his twenty year monastic lifestyle that enriched his ongoing growth on the trellis. Much of this transformation is available to everyone. As John Henry Newman wrote over a century ago, "In a higher world it might be otherwise, but here below, to live is to change and to be perfect is to change often".
Once Upon A Monk
Memoir EssaysBy T. C. AbelAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 T. C. Abel, D.Min
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4567-2016-2 Contents
Editor's Preface............................................................ixAcknowledgements............................................................xiForeword....................................................................xiiiI: The Path.................................................................1II: The Gate and the Guesthouse.............................................5III: Growth Along the Trellis...............................................9IV: Miraculous Growth and a Twist in the Trellis............................17V: Growing Inwardly.........................................................27VI: The Monastery as a Subculture...........................................33VII: Musings on Selected Aspects of Monastic Life...........................37VIII: Transplanting the Trellis.............................................65IX: A Conclusion and Some Closure...........................................71Appendix I: TIN Men Have a Voice Also.......................................75Appendix II: A Sociological Study by Dr. George Hillery.....................89
Chapter One
The Path
The cool breeze that sometimes wafts over New Orleans, the city of my birth, carries the sounds of Jazz, the smells of fine Creole cooking and a deeply imbued spiritual presence. To say I was born in the house of God is literally true. Hotel Dieu (House of God) was one of the earliest and best run hospitals in the United States. Founded and staffed by the blue robed, white "sailboat" hatted Sisters of Charity, it was a landmark of Creole New Orleans until 1992 when it was sold and renamed University Hospital.
This seemingly small detail in some ways represents a theme running through both my life and this book. Gradually over the years, New Orleans has lost much of its spiritual aura and its Creole traditions just as today not a few former monasteries, particularly in Europe, have become seminar houses or even fancy hotels.
In many Caucasian New Orleans homes, there was an African American surrogate mother. In our family, it was our dear Clara, who left her own family every day to care for ours. Women like Clara were often not only selfless, but also deeply spiritual and full of courage. She even brought her grandson to play with me. We were only four years old.
Later in my life, I noticed that our monastery, as well as many other religious houses, was predominately white. This prompted me on an adventure of founding a new monastery in the hope of attracting more African American vocations. I think Clara's influence was far deeper than I realized.
Without a doubt, this early environment filled with the challenges and sacrifices of a family facing the Depression, the love and devotion of Clara, and the deeply spiritual flavor of New Orleans played a crucial role in my desire to be closer to God and to have a strong spiritual life.
New Orleans has, and to some extent still has, a dual school system. Public schools were funded with taxes payed by all families, and Catholic schools charged tuition. I spent my elementary years at St. Dominic's School on Harrison Avenue in the Lakeview neighborhood. My father struggled to stay employed in those depression years and my mother worked in a sewing shop downtown. I had two older siblings, my brother John 9 years my senior and sister Lollie 7 years older than me. When I was eight, my younger brother Ronnie was born.
I helped pay for my early education with a job as a paper boy and was paid also to be the sacristan in St. Dominic's Church. Each day I prepared the altar for mass, rang the bells and in general cared for the order and readiness of this other "House of God".
There is speculation today that our desire for God could be genetically hardwired (The God Gene, Dean Harner). I have no real opinion of this, but I see clearly how even the choice my parents made about where I would be born started a process that became an unbroken path leading me from one House of God to another. Next door to St Dominic's Church was the Priory where the friars lived. Over the centuries there have always been spiritual movements that corresponded to the zeitgeist.
The so called "mendicant" orders (mainly Dominicans and Franciscans) grew in the Middle Ages when commerce and the rise of the cities made traveling safer and easier. The male members of these orders roamed through Europe preaching and spreading the message of Christ. The female members supported the ministry of the males. My deepest dream was to be a monk. Monks were a much earlier evolution in the life of the church tracing their origins to the early Middle Ages sometimes called the Dark Ages. Monks typically stayed in one place (most still do today) and worked and prayed in the house (monastery) they entered as youths. My ideal in this regard was the Trappist lifestyle, especially as lived at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky where the famous journalist and convert Thomas Merton lived and wrote. There were no monk role models in my New Orleans, so even as a child I saw my path leading to the Dominicans. A high school diploma was required to join and I completed mine with The Sacred Heart Brothers, who are a group of men teachers founded in France. Even though the brothers were strict, my grades never reached the level needed for me to be accepted to study for the Dominican priesthood. So, at the advice of my spiritual director, I traveled north to a large Dominican Priory for my formation as a Dominican brother. The role of the brother those days was quite hidden and quiet. In the best sense, they were the enablers who made the more visible ministry of the Dominican priests possible. Brothers kept the house clean, cooked or worked in the office or library. In much the same way the Dominican sisters taught school or cooked and did the laundry for the male Dominicans.
In retrospect I believe I was unhappy about not being able to follow my original plan of becoming a monk. However, the excitement of moving away from home and being in new places with new experiences ended whatever depression I may have felt.
My time of formation took place in the northern United States where I got my first experience of real snow. It did snow once in New Orleans but it was all melted away before noon time. I learned to love the fierce snow filled winters. The Dominican Priory in River Forest, Illinois looks like the marriage of a monastery and a fortress architecturally and wears the white winters there beautifully.
After 18 months of formation, I was sent to work at the Provincial House in Chicago. I spent three years there as assistant to the Provincial. At St. Pius is the national shrine of St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless cases. Interesting as this may sound, I never considered myself as a hopeless case. I was then transferred to the priory of Most Blessed Sacrament in the college town of Madison, Wisconsin.
It was here that my desire to be a Trappist could no longer be contained. So soon after arriving, I requested permission to transfer to the Trappist Monastery located in Iowa. My request was granted through Canon Law (meaning I did not have to renounce my vows as a Dominican brother). My feelings were mixed as Fr. Cain, the Dominican Prior, drove me to my new home in the Iowa hills that seemed like mountains to me. I was happy with the Dominicans but also had a continued longing for the...
