By Jeff Kenney Journal, Part IV:        -Sunday, 11:45 am: Just returned from None and the Mass. Wait, is it None that's at 10:20? Anyway -- beautiful again! I find I am most moved by the chanting when accompanied by organ -- it somehow seems to underscore the beauty and emotion; emotion isn't the right word, though. Just a depth, a moving, spiritual essence conveyed. Perhaps that's the shortcoming of the term "emotion" -- it seems to dwell in the mental faculties. Somehow, this feeling is akin to the movement of emotions, but dwells in, or wells up from, the soul instead of the mind.        The Mass was intimidating -- my first full Catholic Mass, but beautiful. As with first attending the chants, I think the beauty was obscured by my observations of the newness of it all, and especially by my nervousness. During the Homily, the priest referred to John Donne saying he (Donne) hadn't really grasped the full relevance of the word "Father" until he was visiting the Middle East. There, he saw a young boy separated from his father, and the boy was crying, "Abba! Abba!" Having children, I think, adds to the depth of that -- realizing we are all like that child, beneath layers of pride and stubbornness. It was a moving point.        I chose to abstain from communion. It's forbidden for me, technically, since I've not been confirmed in the church, though I could have taken it, and they wouldn't have known the difference. Hearing the homily on prayer, which alluded (though not directly) to contemplative prayer and meditation, I was moved to think about how wonderful it would be to go to church, every Sunday, in a church which believed that way, people for whom contemplation is not a new and foreign concept. The use of the word “peace” struck me, too, during the Mass, and the point in the Mass when the parishioners turn to one another, shake hands, and say, “peace be with you.” It’s amazing how many evangelical churches overlook Christ’s (and many other prophets and apostles) words about peace…amazing how war and violence can be not only condoned, but promoted and celebrated, along with other aspects of American popular culture’s outlook – amazing! But then, here I am “going to church” with a “congregation” which counted Thomas Merton amongst its ranks – that, too, is amazing…at least to me.        Here in the meditation room, some blue sky is finally showing through the clouds – a walk after lunch!        This morning, I volunteered to help with cleanup in the cafeteria. Talking with the woman who’s been overseeing the place all weekend, I asked if she worked here full-time. She said yes, that the monks have had to hire a staff, as their numbers are low now. I told her I’d heard 75, and she said 10 or 20 are in the infirmary – not ill, but infirm – aged. She said people just don’t seem to have the vocation any more. That bothered me a bit…she said they hadn’t had a new postulant in some time. Made me want to give it a go! If not for my present vocation (fatherhood) – maybe in 18 years! But what’s the future of Gethsemani, at this rate? Who will run it then, when most of the current monks will be infirm? On the other hand, I recall reading that, outside of the “Merton years,” Gethsemani’s numbers jumped the most following times of crisis: wars, economic crunches – especially wars. Tons of new monks (Merton among them) joined right after WW II, many being veterans. Times are easy now, I guess, in terms of war and poverty.        -Sunday, 12:30 pm: Sorry, Terce was at 10:20…Sext is 12:15. The organ was used again and I was on the balcony – just beautiful, again!        -Sunday, 2:45 pm: Just had a wonderful talk with a monk at the front desk – Brother Stephen, I thought he said. He was describing to a couple of women…protestant, I gather, the mural on the wall which depicts the whole history of Christian monasticism and then Trappist and Gethsemani – very useful! A slow, detailed, and thorough speaker, full of info and answering every question with even more info than requested. Very knowledgeable about monasticism!        There was a lot I wanted to ask him, but he and I got off on lots of personal rabbit trails. Turns out he’s from Indianapolis! A former librarian at IUPUI and a library science major! Also extreme leftist, to which I could relate. Wish I could have talked to him more. He was full of info about the changes here since Vatican II. Not complete silence anymore – now brothers can talk to each other when needed, but it’s kept to a minimum. Turns out bathing used to be by-permission only, about once a week. Monks wore the heavy wool robes year-round (summer included!); slept, worked (manual labor out in the fields), ate, prayed, in the same one for a week. He said that one could enter the church during Mass and the smell would be overpowering. The place once was filthy, too, dirt being akin to poverty, which is holy. Back then, they had the Chapter of Faults, too – yikes! I had seen pictures from the Chapter in Diane Aprile’s book (“Gethsemani: Place of Peace and Paradox”), a monk lying prostrate on the floor while the others walked past him to a meal, for some offence – perhaps talking without permission, or a fault he himself admitted to during the chapter, in which brothers were encouraged to confess violations of monastic rules themselves, or to report other brothers. The monk in the lobby told me that, if a monk broke a garden tool, for example, he could be made to kneel, holding each piece in a hand, throughout a meal!        Part of this conversation was brought about because an older man – a local, farmer type in maybe his 50’s – came in and asked what used to be in this area of the grounds, and didn’t thus-and-such used to be here, etc. He said he used to do deliveries, during the 50’s, for a machine parts company, and they would have to take parts to the monastery’s machine shop, which he reported was “state-of-the-art” by the standards of the day. Bro. Stephen told him about all the WW II vets becoming monks and noted that, during that time, Gethsemani had some highly skilled engineers, and utilized some state of the art machinery. The local man went on to laughingly tell stories about he and his co-workers trying to get the monks to talk. He said in those days they’d wear their cowls, or hoods, most of the time, and they’d tease, “Come on, can’t you say ANYTHING? We’re just trying to be friendly!” The monk would always put his palms together, bow his head quickly, and dart away!        Soon thereafter, a middle-aged woman and a child, perhaps about ten, came in and asked about Thomas Merton. “My grand-daughter here goes to Thomas Merton academy,” she said. “And we don’t know anything about him. We were in the area, so we decided to stop and check this place out. What can you tell us about him?” So this began a somewhat lengthy conversation, with Bro. Stephen doing a fine job of breaking down Merton’s life, conversion, joining the monastery, writing career, interest in Eastern philosophy, etc., before sending them outside to see Merton’s grave. All of this in the course of perhaps an hour! I wondered what sort of interesting people, questions, and stories came through that lobby in a given week! Or year! Reminded me of reading in Merton’s journals that every so often, some lunatic would go into Gethsemani looking for Merton; one was an angry bigot bent on attacking him for his pro civil rights stance. Another a woman he described as a “beatnik” who leaped on him and tried to force herself sexually on him!        Bro. Stephen and I talked a lot about the changes since Vatican II: the revision of monastic rules about silence, dress, the end of the Chapter of Faults, the change from liturgy and Mass being in Latin to English…just a general loosening of what had perhaps become unnecessary modes of mortification which doubtlessly served to widen the gap between monks and the lay people of the “world” whom they were trying to love and pray for.        He told me – and being a convert, I didn’t realize – that not only was the Mass entirely in Latin before Vatican II, but that the priest essentially turned his back and said Mass for himself, leaving the parishioners to sit and try to get some meaning out of it all. He asked if I’d noticed older Catholics just sitting during Mass, praying the Rosary, and that this was because in their day, there was little else to do! I told him I guessed I could understand better why some protestants, in those days, criticized the Mass.        At one point, he got into a history of the county in Kentucky where Gethsemani resides, said it was the only county in KY with any significant Catholic population, and one of the only ones that’s not dry! He laughingly asked if I’d noticed the local practice of taking an old bathtub, burying it halfway underground on its end, and using the top half to make a sort of grotto or shrine for a statue of Mary. “Our Lady of the bathtub!” he said with a laugh. “I call it Our Lady of the bathtub!” He’s right, too – after he said that, I noticed them everywhere!        Talking to him somehow brought a strange sense of the reality – heck, even the feasibility, of monastic life, home to me. Of course, I know in my logical mind that these monks are just ordinary people like myself, but it’s easy to let them become sort of cryptic symbols, people from another reality who we go and visit, who we observe from the outside. Here, though, was a man no more than ten years older than myself, from the same state (and a city not far away) as me, having attended school at the same place where a good friend of mine is currently in school. He was a library science major, as I was (I mean, I work in a public library!), was a leftist radical, as I was – we may have known some of the same people, as he only joined Gethsemani about 7 years ago, about the time I began to drift out of that scene. The genuine feasibility of a vocation there hit me – the place began to become real, tangible, and all the more beautiful to me, then.        Talking to him, I missed None at 2:15, which is too bad, probably the last office today that I’ll be here for. But I figured getting a chance to talk to him was more important. I’d love to dialog with that guy more – didn’t get to ask him all I wanted; about Fr. Kelty, about the degree to which Gethsemani is actually a “contemplative” order, comparisons of Eastern Orthodox prayer, approach, and ritual to Cistercian (or Roman Catholic in general), and so on.        -Sunday, 5:00 pm: Should be leaving very soon – I don’t think I can resist the urge to go to Vespers, though! Had a nice little walk that I just finished – very distracted in places, but holy and ending very beautifully. Ended by praying at Merton’s grave, praying his soul is flying free in the dark womb of God, and praying for him, since I wouldn’t be HERE, or be a Christian really, if not for him (of course, God would have used someone else, if not him, but….). Walked up to the top of St. Joseph’s hill and used the timer on my camera to take a picture of myself with the crucifix hill and then the Abbey as background – kind of egotistical, but I already have pics of most of what I want around here by itself! myself on top of St. Joseph's Hill        Then walked the trail to the statuary – stopped at the Rosary House to leave a note for S., went to the garden and then out in the field beneath the hill I like so well, with the oak tree on it. I could picture David there on that hill, watching sheep and singing Psalms! Read from Proverbs then, and prayed. Proverbs says, “the legs of a lame man are uneven; so it is a parable in the mouth of a fool.” So true! Well, must load up the car and prepare for Vespers. Good bye Gethsemani! back to start