100% genuine gossip, sourced by Our Woman in Big Sur County. Information provided for entertainment purposes only, keep it to yourself. Previous installments can be found here, here, and here.
Which weekend retreatant helped herself to a full plate of green beans at Saturday lunch, took one bite, realized they were still crisp-fresh, then threw the rest off the side of the deck of the Hesychia hermitage out of embarrassment, even though the retreat kitchen has a perfectly good compost bin and John 6:12 (“And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost’”) enjoins us all to waste as little food as possible?
Which new brother who recently took simple vows is altogether too handsome to be singing the cantor part at Vespers? Someone that good-looking has no business thinking of eternity.
Which guest took more than one meal’s worth of the breakfast croissants they put out in the kitchen the night before so that some people who got to the kitchen late only got to have one croissant, instead of the two they had been thinking about having? My money’s on that guy who was always carrying a coffee cup.
Which Cottage 1-9 occupant spotted not one but five planets visible to the naked eye in a single evening this last weekend?
Which Cottage 1-9 occupant corrected the spelling of “visible” on the following night sky announcement? (Our Correspondent’s guess? The original poster!)
Which attendee initially misread the above announcement as “5 visible planes in AM sky” and later had a mild chuckle at her own expense, thus inadvertently breaching the Great Silence?
Which occasional visitor to the monastery feels enormously guilty for having even noticed the new brother’s looks, and wishes she hadn’t said anything, because she actually has a lot of respect for his vows, and honestly, how you look shouldn’t affect the choices you make in life?
Who left that tin of Swedish cookies in the communal kitchen for everyone to have some? They were really good.
Word has it the sunset was even nicer Sunday night. You should’ve been there.
Which brother who generally runs the bookstore on weekends comes off a little withholding to Your Correspondent? He’s really polite, and honestly just a little reserved, not at all unfriendly, but he doesn’t seem to approve of me in the over-the-top, showy way I really need everyone to be?
A certain collection of guesthouses now have electric fans provided in the closet for your convenience! Who thought they were too good to just ‘open a window’ like in the old days?
Which frequent visitor always smiles, but never waves, when passing other guests on the walk down the driveway?
Whose little bruschetta bread things were a real hit at lunch Friday? A big enough hit to see several guests sneaking in for seconds, which is generally frowned upon before 1:30pm.
Was it this guy?
I may be a mostly ex-Catholic, but damn do I love monks. And nuns. Basically anybody who isn’t actually in a position of power and spends most of their time chilling withJesus.
Yet they left “Adromeda.” A message?
My Mother swears up and down that the most handsome man she has EVER SEEN, was in the Vatican, who she glimpsed in the hallways on our way to the Sistine chapel, and thought “…wait, are they filming a movie here? Is that an actor dressed up as a priest?” before he was lost, & exists only in our family myth irreverently known as The Man Too Hot To Be A Priest.
also croissants figure into monastic life much more than I was expecting. *checks into retreats nearby*
Was it this gentleman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_G%C3%A4nswein
I assumed that’s EXACTLY who it was. Man is… unconscionably gorgeous.
My grandma grew up Catholic, and says that one Sunday her family welcomed a new priest, who was visiting, over to their home for dinner. To my grandma’s surprise, the visiting priest was young and very handsome. But dinner was polite and the priest prayed for them and their house before leaving.
And my grandma remembers that as the priest got in his car and drove away, her mother smiled and waved him off, then sighed and said, “What a waste.”
My family calls hot priests “Father Whatawaste”! Well, mostly just me, the heathen.
Ha! Likewise–grand Catholic tradition, I think. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Catholic/2000/11/…
When I was on the train from the airport into Rome last spring I ended up sat with not one but THREE young men who were all very attractive and all priests. I’d like not to say that people’s beauty is wasted on the priesthood, but boy was their beauty wasted on the priesthood
Oh, honies … no it wasn’t. My Roman archeologist acquaintance reports that the (mostly gay, some straight) nightclubs in Rome are heaving with known and/or poorly disguised Catholic clergy on Friday nights.
As a heretical catholic, I’m just asking – is this a thing people can do? Go hang with monks, silently so there’s no dogmatic arguments? Is there a waiting list because I would like to add my name.
Absolutely it is. Though the food isn’t always good. My local monastery tends very much to the not-very-good English school dinners sort of cooking,* but it’s still a great place to hang out. (Honorable exception to the bad food: the homemade bread and jam is spectacular).
* Mind you, given the age and background of most of the brothers, that’s probably what they like.
It is! My mother, a Catholic so lapsed she eventually became an Episcopalian, used to go spend a few days at a silent monastery on what seemed like quite short notice when life in our family got to be Too Much for her. She once introduced me to Madeleine L’Engle when we came to pick her up.
I am in awe at this moment. Madeline L’Engle. Wow.
Yes. Though they may want you to come to Matins at, like, 4 am, but I think most of them aren’t that strict about it.
At the abbey I occasionally visit, they pray Matins at 1:50 a.m. with a small handful of nuns and are delighted if a visitor asks permission to attend. But the nun who looks after you will refuse permission if she thinks you’ve been working too hard or need your sleep more, and they definitely don’t require it. They don’t even require attendance at daily Mass. It’s not silent, but there’s never any doctrinal arguing. The nuns have always been interested in my experience as a Quaker, and they’re very good at having interesting conversations with the visitors they get from all over the country.
If the monastery or abbey hosts retreats, you can go there on a program or on your own. They will have varying charges depending on where on the campus you want to stay and how much you want to eat. You may have to bring your own food for part of the time. One of these days, I am going to make my way down to the Abbey of the Genesee, the closest one to me and also pretty famous.
Yup!!! I just got back & it was the best. You don’t have to go to the services if you don’t want to, but it can also be nice to be in the presence of such devoutness even if you don’t share it. I was also the youngest person there, aside from the brothers, by a SOLID 40 years, so I think it’s a good thing to get a head start on in life. It’s great. everyone should do it.
Man, what is it about the food at these sort of monastic/retreat/spiritual/meditative places? I went to a yoga retreat once, like ten years ago, and don’t think I have ever eaten so well as I did during that one week. And it was all vegetarian and I’m a lifelong omnivore. It was just so good.
ETA: Not that it’s amazing for vegetarian meals to be good, because of course they are, but I was a teen and kind of didn’t expect to have a great time with it!
I’ve never been to anything like this, but I have a vegetarian cookbook from Tassajara Zen Center, and most everything I’ve made from it is delicious. My impression of the place is that people just go and hike about and then eat awesome vegetarian bagged lunches. It sounds like heaven.
it is very much like that, with the addition of awesome breakfasts, awesome dinners, and hot springs under the stars. My husband and I did a mindfulness retreat there a couple of years ago, and it was absolutely life-changing.
Here in Oregon we have Breitenbush, and I’ve always wanted to go and never had the chance.
Their bread book is the best.
I got this book from the library eleventy-one years ago and could not for the life of me remember what it was called when I became a vegetarian. Apparently “monk vegetarian cookbooks” was not specific enough of a Google search?? ANYWAYS long story long thank you for reuniting me with this book!
I legitimately forgot that Christian monks were a thing for a moment and was confused as to why you mentioned bible verses and vespers in a post about Buddhist monasteries.
I once spent a weekend at a rural abbey having a solo spiritual retreat during a difficult time, and Brother Christopher, the Franciscan monk who was on retreat there, was really nice to me AND hot. Sad sack mid-20s me felt God was mocking me. Early 30s me now sees the humor as well as the pathos and wishes Brother Christopher well, wherever he is.
Love everything about this. Can’t upvote enough.
I am obscurely pleased that the advertisement accompanying this article is for Healthy Choice “Simply” dinners.
I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville, where all the cool kids were discerning to become priests or nuns. (Or so it felt. 🙂 Which led to two prevalent sayings about our totally hot priests:
1) Dear Father What-a-Waste; and
2) Dear God: why do You take all the hot ones and leave the rest of us to scramble?
Jesus has good taste
Which new brother who recently took simple vows is altogether too handsome to be singing the cantor part at Vespers? Someone that good-looking has no business thinking of eternity.
I concur. He ought to be sleeping with all of the other men to attractive to remain awake.
Maybe he’s simply trying to save himself from swooning all over the place like those men in the art post the other day. Praying all the time is LITERALLY the only way he can remain conscious.
You know those priests are getting so much action.
Yes, my mom calls them that, too!
Wait, you said something?! Like, you said something here to us…or you said something to him?? MALLORY.
(PS, yup heard “Father Whatawaste” a lot in my family too.)