Roni came up for the weekend to show us the wedding proofs. They were OK, but not all that exciting. I picked out an 8X10 of the family for us and for my mother-in-law and a 5X7 of the family outside the church. I think Roni was also checking up on her Dad.
She enjoyed meeting NuFitch and watching the lot of them running around, up and down, fighting, ambushing the dog, playing with the toys. She says the Kit Mahal is the true entertainment center, not the tv and VCRs.

While she was here, I fed her stuffed peppers. We also loaded her down with peppers and cukes. They always love to come home to the home-grown veggies! We started watching "A Town Like Alice" but I didn't realize it was 5 hours long so went to bed. I'll have to catch the last half of it later.

I had to get up early this morning to go with the Catechumens to the New Clairvaux Monastery at Vina! Back when I was working at Penney's I got a call from a monk there, ordering jeans. I remembered his name and started a correspondence, asking him to pray about some of the situations here. Eventually he invited us to his ordination, but I think that was right around the time my mother was dying, and we couldn't go. I was eager to meet this priest. (In the event, he said Mass but then went back to the cloister, so I didn't actually meet him. It's nice to know what he looks like in real life, though. I'd seen his picture in the Catholic Herald when he was ordained.) I've wanted to visit Vina for a while. The contemplative life has its appeals, especially when things are most chaotic here.

Rich took me over to church at 0730 and he went on in to Mass while the group gathered. My own sponsee, who had said she would come to this, didn't turn up. One wonders just how serious she is about becoming a Catholic. It seems to be a boyfriend-idea. (But if HE would come to church, one would suspect he meant it!) Oh, well, I wanted to go for myself, anyway. I got into a car with two of the directors of the classes, and off we went. This is about 100 miles up the Valley, so I had plenty of time to get enough U-Hauls for another Uhaul page! I also spotted a number of snowy egrets and blue herons. At the monastery I saw what I thought was a sandhill crane, but Brother Francis said it was a blue heron, and I might have been wrong. I'll be seeing the pictures later this week and maybe I'll be able to figure it out.

We also had a bit of a near miss en route. Our driver had a moment of inattention and went to the left, then swerved out of the way of the car in that lane and we were out of control for a little while. That woke us up!

I learned some things I hadn't known, like Father Heartthrob being on sabattical, working in Mexico and learning Spanish. He had spent some time in the monastery after teaching at St. Francis, and decided the cloistered life was not for him. This was good news for the rest of us. Both the women in the car came from far away from St. Philomene, one from Fair Oaks and the other from the Pocket area. They'd been invited to St. Phil's about 15 to 18 years ago and had enjoyed Father Heartthrob and the dynamic parish. Rich and I live in another parish, but go to St. Phil's, but our story is more mundane. We came to this parish because it was the only one that would take all three children in the school. (Never mind that we eventually went to public schools, that was our reason, and we commuted the 20 mile round trip while we lived out in Antelope.) So we picked a house close by, only a couple of blocks from the parish boundaries.

Another of our former associate pastors is doing better since his epilepsy medication was adjusted. Hooray.

The thing I found most interesting was that until recent years, the Diocese of Sacramento was discouraging local priests, preferring to get the Irish imports. Father Heartthrob was a rarity.

We arrived at the monastery just before 10 and were greeted by Brother Francis, our host. We looked around a little. I was disappointed in the shrill loud chatter everyone was indulging in. I'd really looked forward to a little peace and quiet. I think Brother Francis was a bit appalled as well. In any case, he occasionally abandoned the group and went off to check other things out. He showed us to the church and told us about taking a host from the chalice and putting it on the plate if we wanted Communion, and how to use the missals, which are a bit different from the ones we have at home. Then we went in to Mass. On Sundays, the monks also put a couple of the other daily prayers (they start at 0330, finish at 2000) in with the Mass. It was very beautiful. Father's homily was about how the laws simplified, from the many in the Pentateuch to the two Jesus told about.

After Mass Brother Francis gave us a short tour of the public areas of the monastery. Initially the land was part of a Spanish grant to Peter Lassen. Then Gerke put in the wine grapes (hence the name) and then Leland Stanford owned the ranch. There were 60,000 acres, and 3500 of them were planted in grapes. They built a huge brick winery. Outside it says "only members of the community" but Br. Francis let us in. The main section of the winery is now a garage! I've never before seen a cloistered garage! The winery has 4.4 million bricks. In the 20s, Vina (a booming metropolis of some 500 people) had 13 saloons. In 1915 the wine crusher was burned by prohibitionists. Then the land was split in 1916 and went down through a number of owners till Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky bought it in 1955 and established this daughter monastery. They support themselves by growing prunes for SunSweet and walnuts for Diamond Walnuts. There are paperthin walnuts, huge things, planted along the drive. These turned out not to be profitable, so we were invited to take as many as we wanted. A field of oats had just been harvested: Quaker Oats? No, Catholic ones.

In 1970 the monastery burned down (just after Br. Francis came, in fact). It had been in the old Stanford mansion. They rebuilt in "village" style, actually kind of like a strip motel. Each room is 9 x 12, though it seems smaller since the ceiling is 18 feet up. The buildings were designed by a brother who had been an art director at Paramount. He had the only traffic accident on record in Vina, and for some reason the monastic life appealed to him and he joined up. Anyway, after the fire, then the monks got their own fire truck. They've used it occasionally. Cities have to change equipment after 20 years, so this is where the fire truck came from, and it's still very servicable.

We looked at the guest rooms and the guest chapel. They hadn't actually planned to build that, but a brother pointed out that many guests are there on weekends and the church is closed for cleaning on Saturday. The statue of St. Joseph is very Buddhist-style: in fact at first I thought it was Quan Yin. They have the stones from a 12th century monastery that William Randolph Hearst had bought, given them by the de Young, and they plan to put it together (in their copious spare time) for their chapterhouse. They have a computer program that will put the jigsaw puzzle back together. I found out that Trappists don't genuflect, they bow.
Then we had lunch in the "hardhat area" under the trees, where I stalked the bird some more and looked at the daylilies that were for sale. I also saw the fattest lizard I've seen for awhile. I misheard the woman next to me ask a guy "Did you get Scott's call?" and thought she'd said "God's call". He said "No" and she said "well, he's kinda loopy." I started to laugh, and all was explained.

Brother Francis then gave us a slide show about the monastery and the monastic life. I was amused to learn that the reading that is done at lunch is currently a history of Lewis and Clark. Anyway, first were the Benedictines, then St. Bernard (BERNard, not like the dog) of Clairvaux reformed them and started the Cistercians in the 1200s. Again they got sloppy, and the Trappist reformation comes from the 1600s. They are the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Their black and white cat is "O.C." because of this. They also have "Benedicat" and other punny names. For awhile they had some Akitas. They also had geese ("honk if you love Jesus") but that was a bad idea and didn't last. It used to be that every monastery had to have a dairy, but this one has not. Brother Francis says they do a lot of monkeying around.

There are 12 Cistercian abbeys in the U.S. This one has 580 acres. The church was built in 1960. They have three picnics a year. Also, each monk has one "vacation" (retreat) day a month when he can skip the prayers, skip work, and just be with himself. They have "hermitages" scattered here and there for this. They don't leave the abbey except for very special occasions. Brother Francis went to Walnut Creek last year for his mother's 100th anniversary. You can tell he was glad to get back. It might seem very circumscribed, but his interior life is huge. Their parents can visit a couple of times a year, but usually the only people to talk to the outsiders are the guestmaster and the priests. They go into Vina (making more humans than dogs and cats) on election day.

Monks generally die of old age due to the healthy lifestyle, vegetarian meals, etc. Their burials are different, no casket. Nine monks have died since the monastery was founded. There are 30 monks there now, and about 8 of them are priests.

First one is an aspirant for some time, observing and being observed. Then a postulant for one year, a novice for two more. Then they get the black scapular and take simple vows. This lasts four years and then they take the solemn vows and are full fledged monks. Brother Francis says Murphy's Monastic Law #1 is that the funniest things happen at the most solemn moments. Giggling is really not supposed to happen. At the general chapter in 1969, they loosened some rules and no longer have choir monks and lay brothers.

I was impressed with the remote control air conditioner, by the way.

There are three parts of the rule: the Bible, a life of Christian values, and Observance. They pray by working. St. Bernard's reform had to do with the monks hiring laborers while they just prayed in church. The next reform came after the Black Plague, kings taking abbeys, and some of the abbeys getting too rich. Anyway, they're up at 0315 to pray, then they read the Bible and are back in church at 0600 (this hour is symbolic of the Resurrection) then there is Mass. They've eaten breakfast either before or after Mass. Then at 0855 there's Terce to remind them of Pentecost. They work 9 to 12, then have noonday prayer and lunch at 12:30. They might nap, then at 1:55 there's None, to remind them of taking Jesus down from the cross and they work again 2-4. Supper is anytime from 4:30 to 6:45 (the only meal they eat together is the main one at midday when they're read to) and at 5:45 is Vespers to commemorate the Last Super. At 7:30 is Compline, to remember the church, and the Great Silence, bedtime, is at 8.

Brother Francis taught us his method of praying always. For five minutes every day (till it's automatic) you focus on one thing, a color, an object, that reminds you of God. Every time you see that, you think of God. Eventually, this becomes automatic and you're with God all the time.

It was definitely a worthwhile visit, and one day I'm going back for a retreat.

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I'm another pound up again, argh. That lovely cake of Wednesday cannot have helped. One day of a short walk and otherwise awful, just as I predicted. I did send some things out in the mail.