13 miles down an unmarked grime highway quietly sits the Monastery of Christ within the Desert, alongside the Chama River in Northern New Mexico. The monastery is house to fifteen monks, some livestock, and a guesthouse for individuals searching for a bit quiet on this turbulent world.
“The silence right here is deafening,” mentioned Brother John Chrysostom. “No sirens. There is not any electrical buzz or something. You don’t have any cellular phone connection right here. The silence permits you the chance to listen to that which you might be to listen to.”
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That’s, the sound of bells, and the sound of voices chanting seven instances a day.
“If you chant, that’s prayer,” Chrysostom mentioned. “And what any monk most likely aspires to do is that he does not wish to simply chant the Psalm, however at some point he desires to be the Psalm. He desires it to be part of who he’s as a human being.”
This a part of the world has all the time drawn individuals in search of. It drew artist Georgia O’Keeffe to settle simply down the highway, and in 1964 it drew Father Aelred Wall, a monk, to discovered a Benedictine monastery right here. Famed architect and furnituremaker George Nakashima designed its church.
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Once we visited, Chrysostom was our “guestmaster,” welcoming us amongst this order of Benedictine monks. “As guestmaster, I maintain this rule: mainly we have been to deal with company as if they’re Christ,” he mentioned.
The brother occurs to carry an undergraduate diploma from MIT, an MBA, three extra Grasp’s levels, and a Ph.D. in political science. He was a professor, and likewise: “I used to be an funding banker for some time,” he mentioned. “That is not a really peaceable existence even in the perfect of instances!”
But it surely was on a pilgrimage, the well-known Camino de Santiago, that Chrysostom heard a voice calling him right here. Anybody can go to, for a steered donation and a willingness to take part within the silence.
Right here the monks comply with the Rule of St. Benedict – Ora et Labora, Latin for prayer and, nicely, work, which in fact you will discover on YouTube, posted by Brother David. On-line, he calls himself The Desert Monk.
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And his work across the monastery isn’t accomplished. “The gist of the message is, in all the things that you just do, the work is for God,” he mentioned.
When Charles Osgood reported on the monastery within the Nineties, the monks had simply begun working with a brand new invention known as the Web – a union of “internal house with our on-line world.”
Watch the 1996 “Sunday Morning” report: A New Mexico monastery meets the internet (Video)
In the present day, company Mary and Joseph Roy, from Washington State, have discovered one thing right here a five-star lodge can’t provide. “Solar on the pink rocks and the River Chama flowing by,” Mary mentioned. “It is a great way to take heed to God, to take heed to nature.”
Requested what he takes away from his go to there, Joseph mentioned, “For me, being extra conscious, listening to that of God in every individual, as we discuss, as I expertise their story and their life.”
The monks ask company to assist with the working of the monastery, if they will, and Brother Chrysostom says their company’ presence is key to the monks’ calling: “We want the world as a lot because the world wants us,” he mentioned. “Do not assume we’re escaping or transferring away from the world as a result of we do not want the world. We want the world.”
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I requested, “Do you want the world as a result of it helps you are feeling such as you’re fulfilling what God desires you to do?”
“I suppose it hearkens again to the desert fathers, the early monks who lived within the Egyptian desert,” Chrysostom mentioned. “You had monks dwelling these holy lives praying, and lives of asceticism, and forgoing consuming. It was remarked as soon as like, ‘Okay, you are doing all this. However whose ft will you wash out right here within the desert?’ So, you are doing this stuff for somebody as nicely, and with somebody.”
However the monks ask no questions of those that want to grow to be their company. “No, you simply present up as you might be,” Chrysostom mentioned. “And you are not required to do something when you’re right here. You are simply required to be. You possibly can pray with us if you need, you may eat with us if you need. Or you may hike. We ask that perhaps, in case you’ve chosen to return right here, that you just spend a while with us attending to know the neighborhood and the place. However our schedule’s not your schedule!”
Perhaps the quiet of locations like Christ within the Dessert is not an finish in and of itself. However by making house for a bit silence, you hear your calling … a bit louder.
As Chrysostom identified, “One factor you will discover that we’re in a canyon. So, we’re at 6,600 ft above sea stage proper now. And so, these hills and the cliffs stretch one other 1,000 up and all the things. These are all false horizons. Mainly, if you rise up to the highest of those hills, or what you assume is the highest, you are simply starting to go up. It continues on. So, this can be a false horizon. This isn’t the highest; it is only the start of one thing which is even larger.”
Maybe a lesson for all of us on our personal non secular journeys.
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Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Chad Cardin.
