Two Days With A Friend

It snowed some more at my house. This is my view to the southwest.



I waited until the weather reports gave me permission to leave my hill. There was a good deal of snow along the route and roads didn't improve until reaching the Valley. Interstate 5 was clear though, and the rest of the journey was a breeze. Jeremy and I had planned this time together for some weeks and I really wasn't up to suffering a disappointment. The plan was for us to meet at the Abbey and then we would head up to the hills, to the Milk Ranch on the Abiqua. I am about to lay down some tracks in the freshly laid blanket.



In about 2 1/2 hours, I was at my destination. The first time I saw this sign was in July of 1972. My vocation director, Larry McGovern, was scoping out an alternative seminary to St. Patrick's in Mtn. View, CA. I returned in September to begin what would wind up being over a nine year relationship with students, staff and an introduction to a phenomenon I had never yet heard about: Monasticism.

I left the scorching heat of the San Joaquin Valley on that July day in 1972 and landed at the Portland International Airport where it was cool and misting. In July. Yes. Father Adrian, the assistant Dean of Studies and Father Anselm, the prior of the monastery at the time, were there to meet me. Anselm would become Abbot not long after our first meeting. The new bell tower is last year's addition and smacks of all the beautiful towers I saw in Italy. After a quick tour of the new digs, Jeremy and I headed for the hills.

This is St. Anselm's Hall. It housed a high school on the third floor and us undergrads on the second. The first floor was administration and classrooms. My Greek class was comprised of me, Steve Obersinner and Father Gregory. That's it. The larger classes were stuffed with upwards of a dozen students. I felt lost in those large classes.

Along the way to the Milk Ranch, I snapped this shot of one of the many hopyards that border the Abbey's edges.

This is the place. On the walls of the house are pictures of some of the monks who worked the farm around the early 1900s.

I cooked dinner and we supped well on pasta and sliced tomatoes and red onions in balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

I brought Big Night. Jeremy had not seen it. Here I am spying on Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossallini after a sordid romp behind Mini Driver's back. Those Italians!

The last time I had been at the Milk Ranch was as a monk of Mt. Angel. They still had two of my pots. I was touched. Inside this one was a used dryer sheet. Not having remembered putting it in there, I removed it.

My signature at the time.

We rose none too early and I prepared a frittata, coffee and toast for breakfast. My mother and father and grandparents would slide the frittata out of the pan and onto a plate to be then inverted in the pan for finishing the top. One day I just said heck with it and tried an idea that I now see routinely demonstrated on Food Network: You slide the pan under the broiler to finish it off. Lots easier and the surface looks so beautiful. We prayed Divine Office at the table after eating and later celebrated Mass in the small downstairs bedroom converted into a chapel. It was easy to fall into the role of acolyte again. And it felt good. This day marked one month to the day that Jeremy's father, Dick Driscoll died. We celebrated Month's Mind with Dick very much in mind. I knew Dick well and loved his every wrinkle of being. A funny, funny man who would call out from the bathroom nearly every morning after waking, "Oh my God, it happened again! I got better looking while I slept." Me, he referred to as "The Little Devil" and Jeremy said that Dick often asked what his son had heard lately from The Little Devil.

Here's a shot of The Little Devil at table with Dick Driscoll's son.

I took this picture with my new picturer, and I love it.

We were sort of hoping we'd get snowed in.

We were somehow able to plow our way out and we returned to The Hill. This is the monastery's laundry building. Novices get to do the laundry for the entire house and it is in this room that I spent my first year as a monk after changing my affiliation from the Diocese of Stockton to the monastery of Mt. Angel Abbey. My bishop was not too happy. I really didn't understand that. Vocations aren't from whim, you know.

Jeremy and I then walked back to St. Joseph's Hall where Brother Claude Lane has his studio. As we approached, Claude was writing an icon.



In Claude's studio is this piece which we all three collectively named, "Jesu Sub Tavala" or "Jesus Under The Table." We decided that Jesu Sub Tavala would be the Patron Saint of all those who labored for cash without paying taxes. Hey, someone's gotta support those folks.

Speaking of working under the table, Claude proudly displays his new shipment of "Community Coffee" which comes from another Benedictine house which may or may not be reporting their income from bean sales. Being not so sure, I don't want to burn their name, but the fact that they put chickory in their blend, well.....you can narrow it down from there. Claude and I were trying to explain to Jeremy the importance of Scarlett Johannson to film. You can see the edge of her IMDB filmography on the computer screen. We kept trying to describe Lost In Translation, but trying to describe Scarlett Johannson to a brilliant theologian is like trying to describe chickory in coffee to a tea drinker. Or something like that. A rare serious pose from Claude, you can see just how firmly he feels about that coffee and chickory. So do I. And I am not smiling as I say so.

Here Claude is basically saying he has no idea why his icons are so unbelievably, utterly beautiful. Okay, he didn't really say that, but they are. So is he. Not to mention being one of the funniest persons I have ever met. Claude introduced me to Mississippi John Hurt and Bo Carter and the Mississippi Sheiks. No one has heard of the latter. When Jeremy and I arrived, the former was playing on the stereo. Okay, he knew we were coming, but it was fitting.

If Claude cared to leave a comment, he could explain all that's going on in this icon he wrote, "The Giving Of The Rule." It was done for a Carmelite house. That little flower growing there means something. Claude said what it meant. But I am old now and cannot remember.

Here we are.

And there's the former Brother Gawpo, front row center.