I have just returned from the Hermitage of the Holy Cross Monastery in West Virginia. The blogging below comes from my first visit ten years ago. Dean heads to the monastery
I decided I would celebrate the Christmas season the really old-fashioned way this year by praying it in several times a day at a monastery.
I had one other agenda item: deciding whether or not to ask Dottie to marry me. This would be a week of reflection and decision.
I pulled into the dark driveway that belongs to some redneck in the West Virginia boonies. It was 8 p.m., very dark, I was lost, my map was on my computer which was running out of power, and my gas was low with no gas stations within several miles. Google Maps had seriously screwed this one up, and forget about cell phone coverage.
The lights on this guy's truck were on, so I figured he was in it or outside, so I wouldn't have to knock on a door and freak somebody out.
He appeared from the porch.
"I'm lost," I said.
He walked down toward me. A big fella.
"Believe it or not, I'm looking for an Orthodox monastery. There can't be too many around here."
"Hmmm." He was shaking his head. "What town?" he asked, with a very thick Appalachian dialect.
"Left Mill Fork."
"Hmmm ... " He kept shaking his head.
"The Hermitage of the Holy Cross."
"Oh, Holy Cross!" he said, beaming. "I know right where it's at."
Great news. My logistical situation was getting critical.
"Go down a mile—you know what I mean?—and take a left."
"Go another mile and hang a left at the fork—you know what I mean?"
I hoped I knew what he meant. I wished he had given street names as well, but I'm not sure they even have them.
"Then a couple three miles on the right you'll seen signs for Holy Cross—know what I mean?"
I thanked him.
"Know how I know where it's at?" he asked. I waited.
"I laid the cement floor for their building up there. That's my livin."
Sounded good to me.
Aerial view of Hermitage of the Holy Cross
During my drive in the backwoods of Appalachia, I saw lit crosses everywhere, several little town churches, and other evidences of a Bible Belt culture. I saw the sign for Holy Cross and drove up the monastery's long gravel driveway. Several small buildings hovered above the left side of the roadway with the right side dropping swiftly, forming a bowl in the middle of the forest. I didn't see anyone anywhere. I'd had two short phone conversations with Father Sergius, but had no details on where to go, who to talk to, where I would sleep.
I parked, got out, looked around. No sounds, no activity, no inside lights on anywhere. A light snow. I walked past the small church building and cautiously opened the door to the dining area/kitchen. No one around.
I walked in the other direction. I saw some people way down in the holler walking with flashlights. In the other direction, I saw a black robed man walking toward me. I headed his way and greeted him. Father Andrew kindly returned my greeting and steered me into a small building where I met Father Sergius.
Fr. Sergius enjoyed my story of getting lost and finding a local who steered me in the right direction.
"It's happened before several times," he noted.
Then I noted how the monastery was right in the middle of a thick Bible Belt community and wondered what they thought of this strange group with black robes and cassocks, long beards, funny hats, icons, domes and slanted crosses.
"The UPS driver was really concerned about us," said Fr. Sergius. "A leader in his church."
According to Sergius, the UPS man walked up to them one day and asked, "Are you Christians?"
Their superior answered simply "Yes. We are."
After a pause and a few glares, he asked his second question.
"What version of the Bible do you use?"
Orthodox groups use a number of different translations. But for a variety of reasons theological and practical, most Orthodox churches in America use the King James Bible.
"We use the King James translation," the superior answered.
The UPS man grinned widely, held out his hand, and said, "Welcome to West Virginia!"
Father Sergius
Father Andrew had escorted me into the side office off of the gift shop where Father Segius sits at his computer.
He swiveled his chair around, stood up, and greeted me with the standard kiss on the right cheek, then left, then right again.
I could almost be his father. Sergius looks to be in his late twenties, six feet tall, slender, with a long beard but more scraggly than full.
He is a gentle soul. I spoke of a car accident on the way up and he crossed himself and looked heavenward. He said we weren't supposed to be talking right now because silent mode kicks in at 9 pm, but he waived it off as irrelevant if a guest has just arrived and needs orientation.
Fr. Sergius in foreground
There is certainly a peace about the guy and something soothing about being in his presence. But he also exudes an intelligent, quick wit, and has that twinkle in his eye that makes you feel like you're on the same page. He's real.
He gave me a quick tour of the chapel and then the dining hall/kitchen and introduced me to Stuart, sort of a newbie there. I asked Stuart where he was from and he mentioned upstate New York and said a few other things. Then he came up and whispered in my ear, not so softly, "Hey, this is silent time. You're not supposed to be talking. Nothing personal."
Father Sergius got a kick out of it, kind of laughed and rolled his eyes, but did not correct Stuart. I guess you don't want to tamper with the zeal of youth.
Sergius became a monk at age 23 and has been at the monastery seven years. I asked him if it was hard to leave his family. He said monks entrust their families to Christ. "There was the story of the monk who begged permission to go check on his family to see if they were okay. He was granted permission. On the way, someone coming from the other direction walked past him and the monk greeted him and asked him who he was.
"I am the angel that was dispatched to guard your family when you chose to become a monk. But since you're coming this week, I don't need to be here."
Fr. Sergius (left) in a liturgical setting.
The next morning Sergius was chipping ice off the steps for the guest house I use. A monk walked by us but said nothing. "He won't talk with you even if you try," said Sergius. "He is a good monk."
I found out later that Sergius played football in high school. That didn't jibe with my stereotypes, but then nothing up here makes a ton of sense. He then made a comment about being at the monastery the rest of his life. "Perhaps, one day I will learn obedience," he said.
Wow. Where does that put me in the race?
Home Sweet Cell
The bell rang at 4:50 am.
They ring it once every 30 seconds until 5 am when morning prayers begin in the chapel. I quickly dressed and headed out the door.
Fr. Sergius had directed me to my room (cell) the night before. It is about the size of a large walk-in closet, except the roof slants down, so you can only stand on one side of the room.
Monastic austerity.
In the high corner is a prayer corner with icons and a stand with prayer books and a lamp and a little incense burner. There is one small box spring and mattress--no frame--and one soft arm chair by the single light bulb by the door.
It sounds sparse, but by golly it is all I need. It's all I've ever needed, really. Never been a good housekeeper. Never wanted much stuff. I like to pray, and read and think and dream and scheme and create. Well, the pray stuff doesn't happen as much as it used to, but all the other stuff is pretty much what I do. And I don't need more than a little room to do it.
Of course, these days I do need a laptop and wireless to live my happy life in a closet. Well, waddya know? The monks have wireless.
A couple other things make my cell hum like a top. They left me a towel for a shower (community bathroom on the lower level), an alarm clock (but the big bell does the job anyway), and a couple of hooks for my coat and hat. I'm good.
UPDATE: In a more recent visit, the monastery has added a fabulous guesthouse. Someone built it for their residence and it didn’t work out for them, so the monastery inherited it. There was something cool about the previous conditions, but the lavish guesthouse brings another interesting dimension: they treat you like royalty while they themselves choose to be austere. (Oh, and there is basically no cell coverage and wireless is no longer available.)
Guesthouse
Blessed Community
When the bell rings, I wake up, put on some clothes in about 40 seconds, and head to the chapel which is about 30 yards away.
When we finish morning prayers, we head to the dining room/kitchen building about 20 yards away. Then I head to a similarly close building to help with some gifts to be mailed throughout the country.
The simplicity is lovely. No car. No public transit. No trip to the grocery store.
Morning prayers, which begin at 5 am, take place in a very dark building lit only by a few candles. The 11 monks serve and chant and worship in the main section of the chapel. A small section in back is reserved for scrubs like me. We stand. There are no chairs, although a few benches in back do allow the weak to sit once in a while. Every now and then, the service calls for bowing down and prostrating on the floor. This is not like watching Direct TV on the couch.
Two of the monks chant a good bit. The tones sound Byzantine, in two part harmony, not three part like the Orthodox Churches I attend. Also, one of the monks will often sing the same note over and over again while the other one moves around. It's haunting but moving.
Much of what is chanted in the hour-long morning service is Psalms. The prayers are a cry from the soul, and, as someone fascinated with things historical, it amazes me that what David wrote three thousand years ago remains extremely relevant today. Christ, the descendant of David, took his forefathers’ prayers as the foundation of the new kind of house he would build. David's house continues to be a house of prayer, just as Christ zealously proclaimed it should be.
After morning prayers, we move to the dining area for breakfast. This meal you grab by yourself, continental style if you will. But it is done in silence. And it's weird. Probably the part about monastic life that has most taken me by surprise is this concept of silence. I don't understand it, really, and I kind of really don't like it. I'm sure it's my problem, but I am too social not to have a lot of conversation going on.
Cyril and Stuart
Lunch and dinner are also eaten in silence. One of the brothers reads from the lives of the saints while the rest of us eat.
First, we stand at our chairs and pray before the meal. Then Fr. Seraphim hits this little bell to signal for the reading to begin. Everybody starts passing food back and forth (you pass food across the table, not to the guy beside you, for some reason).
The first meal was cabbage soup, rice, salad. Really wasn't too bad, with a decent amount of seasoning. There's always bread and peanut butter on the table in case you need more.
Once that little bell rings it’s all silence except the guy reading out loud. You wouldn't dare say something out loud. Sergius told me the story of an old black hillbilly in these parts who somehow became orthodox and attended services and meals at the monastery a few years back. His saint name was Cyril, and he couldn't hear very well. Once the bell would ring, he started up loud conversations: "Now where'd you say you're from, fella?"
A few minutes into the meal, I noticed everyone was done eating but me. I had sort of noticed that they all ate really fast. Then, the bell rang again. The guy stopped reading and everybody stood up. The meal was over, and I then realized why everyone devoured it so quickly. The next meal, I caught on and starting slurping things up quickly, just like that scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Heck, I grew up with three older brothers so I know how to play this game.
Time for some work. Fr. Sergius had me packaging up handmade organic soaps from goat’s milk and such that the brothers make from scratch. (They have goats.) Working next to me was Stuart, who promptly apologized for saying something the other night about how I shouldn't talk during silent hour. Someone had apparently bent his ear.
Soap-making station
"Sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. Nothing personal," he said.
I assured him it was fine.
A few minutes later, he walked over to me again. "Look, I just feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I didn't mean anything by what I said. I really just need to worry about myself, not anyone else."
He walked over to me again. I again assured him I was fine, but did silently note that the apologies were becoming more annoying than the original offense.
A few minutes later, wanting to let him know I cared about him, I asked, "Are you a monk or a novice?"
"Me? I'm nothing, man. I'm a screwball. They don't have a category for me."
Calvary
Dinner is the same routine as lunch. When the bell rings, the reading begins as we eat in silence.
As I mentioned, lunch was pretty good, nicely seasoned and tasty. The cabbage soup, rice, salad, and bread and water is monk's food for sure, but it was something I could handle.
For dinner, we had . . . the exact same thing.
Just before dinner, I met a guy working on one of the buildings, not a monk but a guy who lives in the area. He spoke with a tremendously thick accent.
"Hi, I'm Calvary," he said.
"That was my Daddy's name too," he said. Turns out Calvary, Sr donated land to the monastery.
"It means cross," he said, and left me to ponder the significance of a hillbilly named Calvary finding his legacy through establishing the Holy Cross monastery.
"I'm Theodore," I said to him. When you become Orthodox, you take on a saint name. I don't use it generally except in church or when I'm visiting a monastery. My saint was a general in the 3rd century who refused to recant Christ and worship Caesar in the traditional way by burning incense at an altar celebrating the emperor's deity. Finally, Caeser commanded Theodore to return from the field and burn incense in front of he and the royal court. The general obeyed, came toward the alter with his torch, and instead lit the building on fire and burned the entire court and himself to death—a Samson-like story.
I didn't tell Calvary any of this.
"Theodore?" he asked. "I know who that is. He's one of the Chipmunks."
UPDATE: Since writing this blog entry, I have changed my saint name to Gabriel. This is not a common practice, but I had reasons. (I plan to write a separate article about the saga.) One of the several factors was that I wasn’t sure which Theodore I had named myself after (I was an eager newbie), and the burning people with fire story didn’t quite happen. I conflated a couple stories together, which figures, as Orthodoxy is not keen on arson and killing people.
Work
Anybody who knows me well knows that work is a four letter word. I try to only do work that takes place between my two ears, which begs the question of whether it really is work.
I had heard they do a lot of work at monasteries, and it wasn't something I looked forward to. But my first day went pretty well. Fr. Sergius took me to a workshop to do "Santa's elves work" as he called it.
The monks raise goats and make products such as goats milk soaps and hand creams, lip balm, a whole range of incense varieties and all sorts of other strange, crunchy products that would really jazz up the hairy-legged women at the Whole Foods grocer.
My job was to place three or four of these products in a box along with packing material, close it up, put a nice label on the gift box, then place shrink wrap around it. After a while I got the hang. I worked alongside Stuart, and learned more interesting tidbits about him, including the fact that he played defensive tackle in college and got kicked out of the monastery a couple years back for being too negative.
All in all, it was a pretty decent experience, and I was glad I persevered through the work aspect of the monastery.
After lunch, the superior, Fr. Seraphim, read a list out loud. At the end, he declared that I would be on clean up duty after the meal. More work. Cleaning the table, drying dishes, sweeping the floor.
During times of work like this, Fr. Seraphim instructs us to do the "Jesus Prayer." He doesn't want idle talk going on during work, so as I'm working around the kitchen, several monks are saying out loud as they work, "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."
It's kind of weird. But I try to do it as well. Most of the time I forget. But it is indeed a great way to focus on Christ as you do whatever you're doing. Monks say this is a truly practical way to "pray without ceasing" as the Apostle Paul instructs. In fact, there are scores of monasteries across the world where this prayer is basically all they do all day, a tradition older than Protestantism times two.
I got all that work done and felt pretty good about myself. As I was putting the last bit of dirt and dust in the wastebasket, a monk came up to me and said, sternly, "No! That's holy trash."
I was then instructed to use another waste bin and not the one near the candles and incense. Finally, I was given the blessing to quit.
I was now free to grab some coffee, head to my cell, and surf the net a little and blog. But Fr. Seraphim caught me before I got out the door.
"Did you see today's obedience sheet, Theodore?"
Of course, I didn't, not knowing what such a thing was. He showed it to me and pointed out that he had assigned me to bathroom-cleaning duty for the afternoon. I was to meet him at his office at 1:30 pm.
I trudged over to his office, resolving to be obedient but glad my visit is only for five days.
"I guess you didn't realize you'd be cleaning bathrooms in a monastery when you came to visit, eh?" Fr. Seraphim asked.
"The last shall be first," I said.
"That's it," he answered.
I was feeling pretty darn holy about that exchange, but of course, the plan in my heart is to continue to avoid cleaning toilets as long as humanly possible.
Father Seraphim
The superior told me to come see him at 10 a.m. the next morning.
I figured it would be a friendly chat about what I've done over the years and how I might be able to help out the monastery this week with my my writing gifts.
Fr. Seraphim allowed me to speak for a few minutes about myself, my aspirations, and my strategies for self-actualization. He then cut to the chase.
"Theodore, you have forgotten what our Lord said we must do to follow him. It starts by denying yourself."
Father Seraphim
He then continued for quite a while on this not-so-lovely theme of picking up our cross and following Jesus to our life of suffering and death. As it went, I figured I wouldn't have to say anything more.
"So, what do you think about this?" he asked.
"It stings," I said. "I guess it's like medicine."
We talked more about issues like sex and relationships, which he apparently knows is what everyone is thinking about.
"Americans idolize the single life," he said. "This is not only deceptive, but very wrong."
He explained that a man should either be in a monastic community or married, but singleness is a bad idea.
"Monastics are forced to live in relationship and are forced to sacrifice, compromise, and become more Christlike. Marriage also does this. So, marriage is good because without it, men--and women, for that matter--will never grow Christlike."
That was the first time I'd heard that take on marriage enrichment.
He then explained the Orthodox marriage service, a highlight of which is placing crowns on the heads of the man and woman.
"The crowns are crowns of martyrdom," he said.
Postscript: I left the monastery that week to head to Chattanooga. Dottie and I were married three weeks later. I was unable to postpone her martyrdom any further. ;) 
A year later, Dottie and I had our own monastery experience at Meteora, Greece.