Reflections of a ‘Monastic Guest.’
By Dustin A. Nash

The experience of a monastic guest at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery is challenging and ultimately rewarding, but each day spent here is most of all an opportunity to develop a personal relationship with God.  But as you shall see, this relationship is gained by hard, hard work.  

When I first arrived in Conyers I had just finished an arduous Greyhound bus journey all the way from Oregon .  Needless to say after nearly 70 continuous hours of bus travel I was ready to embrace just about anything, but as Father Luke, who has been in the monastery for 70 years says “out of the frying pan and into the fire!”

And so at 3:30 A.M. the next morning the digital alarm clock in my room awoke me and into the fire I went.  The day begins with 4 A.M. Vigils and the schedule does not let up until 8 P.M.   And for the first few days this is a novel and wonderful experience that engenders a close examination of both self and God.  Yet slowly but surely this rigid schedule turns on the monastic guest and becomes something to be feared, disliked, and if at all possible avoided.  Just to give one example: as I am writing this I am looking at my watch and I realize I have five minutes to get to the afternoon ‘little hours (the none prayers).'  Imagine, day after day, hour after hour, being pulled, pushed and prodded from one end of the monastery to the other.  Now while you consider that…I will go sing some Psalms.

Continued… The monastery is, if anything, consistent.  As such, the ‘little hour's' prayer I just got back from is a perfect microcosm of the usual activities here.   One of the new guests, like me, who has only been here a few days, was outside and said to me “There's no one in there!”  And I said, confidently since I have seen this many times in 3 months, “Oh, they have four minutes. They will be here.”  Sure enough with about 60 seconds to spare we started to hear the slow shuffle of elderly feet. At 37 I am the youngest man here and the infirmary is a very important part of this facility- these monks get old!  But I digress.  It is amazing how efficiently 45 elderly men can dispose themselves into a moderately sized room.  Yet at the exact second all was still, a knuckle tapped onto the wood benches and everyone sat up…

The second the prayers ended I walked fast over to the guest house, moved my clothes from the washer to the dryer, only to make it back here to the computer just as the second work period of the day began. Now the sharp reader might be asking “So Dustin was writing this during a work period?  Well yes.  And frankly this is what happens to a beginning monk.  Any work that is not sheer physical exertion is welcomed because, as I found out the hard way, there is plenty of physical work to do around here! In 3 months I have worked in the bakery, the Bonsai garden, the library, upstairs, downstairs, outside, inside and many other tasks and places that I am too tired to remember. 

Yet through all of this work you do end up with nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, and nothing to get in the way of, the direct experience of God.  Even just in three months I have had a taste of what it is like to dedicate every moment to God.  It is a tough road, a rewarding one, and an enlightening one and one that will forever remove any notion that monks just sit around reading and praying all day. 

I suspect that most of my readers will never get an opportunity to live in a Trappist monastery.  As a person who has been fortunate enough to do so I can assure you that these monks deserve our respect and our admiration.  What they do every day, the commitment they display, the good humor they emit, the pure love of God they strive toward and the sheer sacrifice they make daily is far beyond what the rest of us are willing to even consider.  The good news is that we can observe their total devotion to the spiritual life and bring that into our own daily lives.  That is what I intend to do and I sincerely hope that my reader will take a moment to thank God for family, friends, home, belongings and even the freedom to come and go when one pleases, because the monks give all that up, just to be closer to God.  Pray for them.  I will.

Thanks Brothers.

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If you wish to learn more about this program, please contact:
• Brother Eutropius, OCSO
• Brother Michael, OCSO
• You can call Br. Michael at 770-851-9673.
Please note that space is limited for this special program, and scheduling a guest’s residency will be subject to availability.