A Week at Mount Saviour

I just spent a week at a remote benedictine monastery in upstate New York. Mount Saviour, a 1,000 acre farm, is home to 100 sheep and 10 monks who pray seven times a day. This had been planned for a while; as planned as anything gets with me. I had applied, been accepted, and knew I was going. The rest was figured out a few days before leaving. It is an artist residency called Orein (pronounced Oh-Rain). The idea is to go to a place and work on your creative practice. There are often other artists there (painters, writers, sculptors, weavers) and you talk and share and learn from each other. I’ve gone to things like this in the past, I’ve enjoyed them, and found them to be a good use of time.

That there is little to no internet access and virtually no cell phone service was the part that attracted me to this one. I spent a month at a similar residency — Azule in North Carolina — in 2016. I liked it so much that I went back for another month in 2018 and I’ve returned for shorter stays on many occasions. As I got close, my cell service got spotty. Once I arrived, I put my phone on airplane mode just to be sure. It stayed in the glove compartment of my car for five full days.

Most of the social commentary regarding phones and social media makes me roll my eyes. Surface level metaphors point out a banal truth: we all look at our phones too much. It negatively impacts every corner of our lives. There is nothing deep and mysterious here. We don’t need an episode of Black Mirror, a graphic novel, or a slam poet to point it out. It’s not thought-provoking or “of the times”; it’s just annoying and unproductive.

Addiction in itself isn’t all that scary; it’s the powerlessness of the relationship that fuels dread. A challenge of changing our relationship with phones is that we are actually dependent on them. We need them for necessary things. Not having it on you, in a lot of cases, is irresponsible. In almost every other case, it’s impractical. I was glad to have a rare exception where putting it away could be justified.

I love everything I do, but I don’t always love doing them all at once. Everything feels so urgent. Someone always needs an answer. My mind is always racing. I rarely feel present. I’m always in a hurry for one thing to be over so that I can get to the next. There are plenty of things, of course, that don’t need my attention but get it anyway. Worst of all, anyone can reach me at any time and I feel responsible to respond immediately. That’s something I never signed up for or agreed to. It didn’t happen all at once, but it’s where things are. Where is the Black Mirror episode about that?

There is a rhythm to monastic life. There are six daily prayers (plus Mass) called “The Office.” I studied this in music history classes at least five times, but I still don’t totally understand it. There are daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly cycles of prayers, feasts, proverbs, and psalms. Saint Benedict wrote these rules 1,500 years ago and since then folks have gathered when the bells ring in an effort to live a life of singular focus. Their daily schedule is as follows:

• 4:45 am - Vigils

• 7:00 am - Lauds (followed by breakfast)

• 9:00 am - Mass

• Noon - Sext (followed by lunch)

• 3:00 pm - None

• 6:30 pm - Vespers (dinner happens a bit before)

• 8:15 pm - Compline

  
  

Compline ends with a processional into the crypt, where they sing a song around a 14th century sculpture of Mary. At the conclusion of this song they enter “The Great Silence” and do not speak until they enter the crypt the next morning for Vigils. Myself and my cohorts were welcomed to participate in this schedule, but there was no expectation. There were a handful that seemed to go nearly every service, there were some that avoided them almost entirely. I went to each of them at least a couple of times, but Vespers and Compline every day.

I settled into my own rhythm without much effort. I would get up at 4:15 which would have me awake for Vigils, though I didn't always go. Sometimes I would just read or sit and drink coffee and wait for the sun to come up. Around 6:00 I would go for a run. I would have a small breakfast in the main house (I had a private cabin a short walk from there), chat with whoever was around, then go back to my cabin to work. Sext would be at noon and lunch would follow. The monks eat in silence so we did too. One of them would read aloud from a book.

From 1:00 to 5:00 I had access to the interior of the monastery so that I could use the piano. I tried to make use of that every day. Work would continue until dinner at 5:30 (also in silence). After that was Vespers, our nightly resident meeting, Compline, and social time. I would try to turn in around 10:00 so that I would be ready for the next day. I would read until I fell asleep.

Brother Bruno was the monk we interacted with the most. While we were here, he celebrated his 65th anniversary at Mount Saviour. His life in his rhythm of prayer started in 1960. 23,725 times (give or take) he has started and ended his day praying in the crypt where his name will one day be written on the wall. I wondered how many times he had drug himself to prayer before sunrise, wishing he could have stayed in bed. How many times did he walk into None distracted by the hay harvest? Still, how many more times has he walked into that building with intention and single-minded focus? I would wager quite a few. Maybe it really is a numbers game.

As the days dwindled the pull to Vigils grew. It became a way of making my time here feel longer. Hemingway said something like, “Why do old men get up so early? Is it to have one more longer day?” I would sit in the crypt and try to understand and while my mind still wandered it didn’t race. I didn’t check my watch or flip through the book to see how many pages were left because I wasn’t in a hurry for it to be over and I didn’t need confirmation that time was passing; I knew it was.

Time keeps moving. Vigils turns to Compline. Monday turns to Sunday. 1965 turns to 2025. What we do with that time and how we spend it are starting to seem like two different things — what we get out of it might be a third thing altogether.