I had not been here since the summer of 2012, when I lived for two weeks under the Rule of St. Benedict, waking before dawn, eating in silence, praying the hours. Now, more than a decade later, I returned with my brother—not for retreat, but to remember.
We walked the grounds slowly. I pointed out the library, modest but sacred. I had spent hours there, reading Gregory the Great and Thomas Merton, their voices echoing alongside the distant chant of psalms. Books were not escapes here; they were companions in the long interior pilgrimage.
The refectory came next. I described the rituals of the table—bowing in and out, the reading of the Rule during meals, the sacredness of simplicity. “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ,” Benedict had written, “for He is going to say: I came as a guest, and you received Me.” (Rule, Chapter 53). I had been a guest once. I was one again.
I showed my brother the path to the lake, where I once gathered wild berries in the early mornings after Lauds. It was a daily ritual that felt older than the Abbey itself—my fingers stained with juice, the taste tart and grounding. I thought of Psalm 104, chanted that summer in the chapel:
“You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth…”
Even the gathering of berries had felt like prayer.
Then, as we passed the basement entrance, we encountered Prior Aelred.
He was older, as am I. But the look in his eyes hadn’t aged. He spit a wad of tobacco toward the gravel—ritual, too, in its own way—then fixed his gaze on me and asked,
“Are you OK?”
It wasn’t small talk. It was pastoral inquiry.
It was monastic discernment.
It was Psalm 13 made flesh: “How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day?”
I told him I had come to pay my respects to Father Jude, who had died since my last visit. Aelred smiled, winked, and touched my shoulder.
“You know the way,” he said.
And I did.
We made our way to the monks’ cemetery, where rough-hewn crosses mark the dead in quiet rows. Jude’s was simple, like his life. I stood still before it and prayed—not because I believed my words ascended to Heaven, but because I know that prayer orders the heart. It gives structure to grief. Psalm 90 came to mind:
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
The bell rang for Vespers, and we joined the monks inside the chapel. The service was as it had always been: the chanting of psalms, the call and response, the stained glass darkening with dusk. I followed the words with my heart more than my lips. The Psalter remains the monk’s greatest teacher—no matter your belief, it has a way of peeling back pretense and revealing the soul beneath.
As we exited, a young man followed us out. He had been fired from his job, he said, and came here for the weekend to think, to pray.
He didn’t know what he was looking for.
But I did.
He was seeking what I once sought. What I still seek. A life lived with rhythm. With meaning. With the freedom to rise at dawn and chant ancient words that somehow still know your name.
In Chapter 7 of the Rule, St. Benedict speaks of humility as a ladder—each rung a deeper descent into truth.
That young man was on the ladder.
So was I.
So are we all.
And if we are lucky,
we find places like this—
places that don’t give answers,
but teach us how to listen to the right questions.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46)
Here, that’s not a metaphor.
It’s a way of life.